Anime Review: 'Darker Than Black: Season 2'

It's been described as "X-Men meets X-Files" -- a mix of super-powered heroics, espionage and skullduggery, and full-tilt otherworldiness. There was no denying Darker Than Black was a cut above when it was first released, and that made anticipation for a sequel all the higher. Given how open-ended the conclusion of the first series was, there were any number of places that a second series could go.

Now that second season has arrived for English-speaking audiences: Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor.

Season 2 is far shorter than its predecessor -- only twelve episodes, plus four in an accompanying interstitial OAV -- and takes off in a markedly different direction. And it's a formal sequel, not a revisitation of the same material in a different form (much as Fullmetal Alchemist was to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood).

Some people have a problem with sequels in principle. I don't, if only because I've seen plenty of examples of how to do it right and how to do it dead wrong. It can cut both ways. I'm not sure a story as self-contained as Cowboy Bebop deserves a sequel, but something like Moribito -- which was based on an open-ended cycle of stories -- would have no trouble accommodating any number of additional installments.

And then you have shows like Tenchi Muyo!, which are just open-ended playpens into which is thrown any number of characters, situations and gags. The sequels were not designed to really continue the same story so much as just riff on the same material in different ways. Instead of asking "Is it consistent?", the creators asked "is it funny?", and left it at that.

So how does the second Darker Than Black fare compared to its predecessor? Check out my review and find out for yourself.

Image: Darker Than Black: Gemini of the Meteor. Image courtesy Pricegrabber.