Hivemind
We're Touched
It's hard for me to address my specific complaints about season 2 without dipping into spoiler territory. But overall I think you're on the right track with your gut instinct, where s2 not living up to s1 isn't necessarily a condemnation of s2, it's just not meeting an exceptionally high bar that it had already established. In no way do I want to discourage anyone from watching s2.
Quasi-spoiler review below:
Season 2 definitely dips a lot harder into fantasy/video game trope territory, even going so far as an anime-esque "save the entire world" finale. It ends very far away from the rooted beginnings of the series.
S2 also assumes that the viewer has more background knowledge of the universe, and doesn't really spell a lot of things out. For someone with only casual knowledge of LoL, I had no idea who the Black Rose was.
The pacing is a bit inconsistent as well. Certain plot lines we spend multiple episodes on, and then other characters have their entire arc in a single episode. It feels a bit like the writers didn't know what to do with particular characters (especially Heimerdinger).
They introduce new secondary/tertiary characters and expect us to care about them, but do very little to give us reason to. Maddie is the only one we really develop feelings around, and those are mostly negative.
The music video montages and fight scenes, especially in the first three or four episodes, feel really gratuitous and jarring. I get that they're being used to exposition dump/time skip/show off different art styles, but it feels really blatant. I also dislike how often the lyrics in a song directly comment on the content of the scene.
S2 also assumes that the viewer has more background knowledge of the universe, and doesn't really spell a lot of things out. For someone with only casual knowledge of LoL, I had no idea who the Black Rose was.
The pacing is a bit inconsistent as well. Certain plot lines we spend multiple episodes on, and then other characters have their entire arc in a single episode. It feels a bit like the writers didn't know what to do with particular characters (especially Heimerdinger).
They introduce new secondary/tertiary characters and expect us to care about them, but do very little to give us reason to. Maddie is the only one we really develop feelings around, and those are mostly negative.
The music video montages and fight scenes, especially in the first three or four episodes, feel really gratuitous and jarring. I get that they're being used to exposition dump/time skip/show off different art styles, but it feels really blatant. I also dislike how often the lyrics in a song directly comment on the content of the scene.
