I think what I am most impressed by when it comes to Clevatess‘ second season is just how consistently entertaining and compelling it has been. We haven’t had any truly standout moments that compare to the heights of emotion and brilliantly bloody spectacle that the final arc of the first season delivered, true, but this adventure at Solsein Academy has been satisfying in a different way. Where I think the character development and dark fantasy aesthetic hit a little bit hard in Season One, Clevatess has been quite successful in complicating its plotting and fleshing out the world-building here in Season Two.

“Whispering Voice” is a great example of what I mean. This is the kind of episode that is mostly dedicated to adding even more layers of conflict and intrigue on top of an already very busy story. Since poor Alicia spends the entire half-hour getting violently squished to near-death by an evil magic tree, Rhode Royes has to step in and steal the spotlight while he confronts Andrew Hwyp. For his part, Andrew gets a surprising amount of attention as the antagonist of the week. I expected his creepy obsession with giving his precious plants plenty of dead flesh to feast upon was merely going to be the story’s excuse for keeping Alicia busy for a couple of weeks, but no, the kid actually shakes out as a threatening little villain in his own right. Vordin the Evil Salamander gets a ton of time to vamp about the mysterious age of the “Real Hero” and all of its lost secrets, too, and I haven’t even gotten to Naie’s side of the story. All the while, we have characters like Zavthier and Sarasa slinking about, and Clevatess is still up there in his Dark Tower, relishing the opportunity to monologue dramatically to himself.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an episode like this mark the beginning of the end when it comes to an anime’s quality. These high-stakes battles featuring a dozen different individual storylines sure seem cool in concept, but they’re a son-of-a-bitch to get right in practice. Hell, it’s this terminal compulsion just to keep throwing more characters and plot threads into the mix that basically derailed Jujutsu Kaisen once that Shibuya Arc got going. In the case of Clevatess, though, I think the balance is holding out just right. For now, at least.

For one, the show’s signature sense of style just makes it fun to watch all of this gothic freakshow nonsense go down while characters like Naie have to scramble like mad to avoid dying horribly. Or, in Alicia’s case, they have to scramble like mad to make sure they die just horribly enough to charge up a new move reserved especially for Zombie-Slave-Heroes-Turned-Cute-Dark-Beast-Squirrels. Clevatess‘ mix of raw Heavy Metal style and genuinely compelling world-building has yet to get old. I’m not sure it ever will.

I also love how good this show is at letting its morally ambiguous monster characters actually be threatening, mysterious, and alien. For as much as I went on about Clevvie warming up to the likes of Luna and Alicia, I think it is important that we get episodes like “Whispering Voice” that treat him like the ultimate final boss he has been characterized as. We’re still able to root for him, since he is technically fighting the possessed pawns of a presumably even more dangerous foe, but Clevatess goes out of his way to point out that it would make more sense just to kill these brainwashed child soldiers, what with the lesser species being no more valuable than a horde of filthy insects and all.

That’s the deliciously grimdark fantasy storytelling that I live for. That said, I am eager for all of these new plot threads and lore teases to build to a point where Alicia and Clevatess can be reunited. I know the Laws of Clevatess demand that Alicia must be literally chewed up and spit out by the meatgrinder of the story several times before any given season of the show has concluded, but I think our girl has had her skull crushed and her eyeballs popped out enough times to deserve at least one little win. Wouldn’t you agree?

Episode Rating:

Clevatess Season 2 is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.

1st 3-in-1 omnibus volume launches in English on March 23, 2027

Mad Cave Studios’ Nakama Press imprint confirmed to ANN on Friday that it will release the Yūji Terajima‘s Ace of the Diamond baseball manga in a 3-in-1 omnibus format, starting with the first omnibus volume on March 23, 2027.

Abby Lehrke is the translator for the first 24 volumes, and Devon Corwin is the translator for volumes 25-47 with lettering by Chas! Pangburn.

The company describes the story:

After a crushing middle school loss, Sawamura is recruited to attend Seidou High—one of Japan’s most competitive baseball programs. Surrounded by elite players, including a prodigy catcher and fierce rival pitchers, he must fight to prove himself worthy of the mound.

As intense training and high-stakes competition push him to his limits, Sawamura begins his journey to become the team’s ace.

Terajima launched the Ace of the Diamond (also known as Ace of Diamond) manga in Kodansha‘s Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2006. He ended the manga in January 2015, and Kodansha published 47 compiled book volumes for the manga.

Terajima then launched Ace of Diamond Act II in August 2015, and ended the manga in October 2022. Kodansha published 34 volumes for the sequel manga.

The Ace of Diamond manga won the shōnen category of the 34th Kodansha Manga Awards in 2010. Kodansha USA Publishing began releasing the manga digitally in English in March 2017 under the title Ace of the Diamond. K MANGA is releasing the Ace of the Diamond Act II manga in English.

Terajima’s manga inspired a television anime that premiered in 2013, and Crunchyroll streamed the 75-episode series as it aired in Japan. Ace of Diamond: Second Season premiered in April 2015, and Crunchyroll also streamed the 51-episode series as it aired.

The Ace of Diamond Act II anime premiered in April 2019 and aired for 52 episodes. Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired in Japan. Ace of Diamond Act II Second Season, the sequel to the 2019-2020 anime, will premiere in October on TV Tokyo Network (TXN) and AT-X, among other broadcasters.

The manga has also inspired a series of stage plays.

Source: Email correspondence

Looking back, I can say with complete certainty that I’ve never been as emotionally invested in any episode of Saga of Tanya the Evil as I was this episode. Oh sure, there have been moments where I’ve felt my stomach drop (like when Tanya was forced to let Charles de Gaulle proxy, Pierre-Michel de Lugo, escape) or when I’ve felt as frustrated as Tanya with the foolishness of others (like with the High Command’s recent decision to continue the war). However, this time I was bludgeoned with a triple whammy of sadness, frustration, and dread like none before.

If nothing else, Saga of Tanya the Evil has done a fantastic job of making everyone in the cast seem human. Even Tanya, though she is called a monster, is only a product of her environment. As we saw way back at the start of the story, in a peaceful world, she ends up as a middle manager—a bit of an unempathetic asshole, sure, but neither malicious nor violent.

This inherent humanity is what allows us to empathize with the characters—especially those on the side of the (not-so-evil) Empire. No one in either the military or civilian government was ready for something like a World War—and now the damage is done. Those at the top now are either focused on their own self-interest or their emotional pain—which means that a whole bunch of people are going to die.

All this brings us to Zettour. He’s a cunning strategist and a master politician. He’s brought about some of the bloodiest moments of the war and some of its most peaceful resolutions. But unlike the others atop the chain of command, his eye has always been on the prize: the welfare of the Empire.

He is the very best that the Empire has to offer. He would make a fantastic king or chancellor, but now, he has been all but exiled—tasked with doing nothing but holding the line while far less talented minds get a lot of soldiers killed. Yet, even then, he can’t sit still—can’t help but try and pull one last victory out of his hat for the sake of ending the war even one day sooner.

This entire episode feels like Zettour’s swansong—like he’s destined to die before the credits roll. Cowards surround him, and he is thus forced to over-rely on Tanya—knowing that even her troops are unlikely to be able to pull off this operation. And so Zettour plays his final piece to even the odds: himself.

While he knows he’s been basically abandoned by the High Command, the enemy does not know this. To them, he is a target of extreme strategic value. It is through him acting as a decoy that we see, unequivocally, what kind of man Zettour is.

In a real way, he’s what Tanya could be if she had a goal greater than simple self-interest. His impending death feels like the death of any potential redemption for her. After all, without an example to show her a better path, how could she hope to change? And it feels like Tanya knows this somewhere deep down as well—like she is aware of her kinship with Zettour even if she can’t explain why. She does everything she can to save him even as the body count among her men rises. And then, when it comes time to make the hard call between her life or Zettour’s, he makes it for her: he chooses Tanya’s.

Even as Tanya wins the aerial battle and proceeds to lay waste to the Russy troops, there is this frantic emotional panic and crushing weight. This was the end for him—the death of the last competent man with any real power in this war. Without him, there is no hope for Tanya, her men, or the Empire at large. Only senseless death remains—spurred on by a petty god and the hate born through the suffering of the human heart.

And then, somehow—unbelievably—Zettour survives. Tanya finds him on the battlefield. It is an unexpected moment of elation. Then you remember: Mary is coming—and this battered old man and exhausted child have nothing left to stop her with.

Rating:

Saga of Tanya the Evil II is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.