Saihate no Paladin: Tetsusabi no Yama no Ou

A story that follows the hero and his party on a quest to vanquish evil, and purify the cursed lands.

This season of The Faraway Paladin revolves around the tale of the rust mountain and its denizens. We follow William going on a quest to help them, where he travels with a band of friends, to cleanse the mountain from the evil that has overtaken it.

The plot is very linear and follows the classic structure of an adventure group going out to save the lands. It is generally done in an interesting way, that explores the road they have to travel and the dangers along the ... way. The first couple of episodes are lead up, and is sadly kinda forgettable, but the rest of the story carries a nice feeling of a true adventure.

When it comes to the characters are they rather basic in some degrees, where some show significant character progression and others are rather stagnant. The main issue is that the characters lack some stronger personality traits, something that isn’t just courageous or just. The characters would have been more interesting, and worth investing more into if the characters were a bit more spiced up.

For the animation is it still keeping the same style as the previous season and seems to be a fine effort, with some good effects during fights.

Overall is this season an improvement from last season and is a nice watch, with a very nice adventure party plot. So i would recommend watching this season if you watched the first one, even though it lacks a bit in the character department.

The Faraway Paladin - It's still one of my favourite "not-so-Isekai" Isekai reincarnation fantasy shows to come out of recent years, just behind the juggernaut that is Rifujin no Maganote's Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation.

I'm still very firm on the belief that novelist Kanata Yanagino has done an absolute "masterpiece" for Season 1's content, which covers the first 2 volumes of the LN, that the anime sadly weighs it down to just being decent, if based on the overall production alone. That said, waiting 2 years to finally see Season 2 come out...and while it's still good, it's just not on the same wavelength that the ... author used to write compelling stories that really secured the sole thing that sold the prequel: its humble storytelling that comes from inspiration, not imitation.

It's clear as day that Season 2, which covers the remaining Volumes 3 and 4 of the LN (before the author actually went into hiatus because of his physical and mental health issues back in late 2020), that Kanata Yanagino was feeling the pressure to deliver a compelling story that made his worldbuilding and character writing so great, faltered so much. The basis is that both Volume 3: The Lord of the Rust Mountains and Volume 4: The Torch Port Ensemble were essentially two stories that could be better linked together, but it came to the stage where the author felt that he could write no more with his dwindling creativity, and it's sad to see such an accomplished author having reached the point of a writer's block. Here's hoping that Kanata Yanagino can eventually recover and continue writing his series, though it'd be better if the LN is on a permanent hiatus for millennia.

Getting into the meat of the series' continuation, William G. Maryblood, along with elf Meneldor, has descended into Torch Port, along with the new friends that he made along the way: Robina "Bee" Goodfellow, the halfling travelling troubadour who loves to spread tales of heroic deeds to the public through poetic storytelling and singing (which serves most of Volume 4's content); and mainly the dwarven army of the proclaimed Rust Mountains to reclaim back their rightful place from an evil dragon god who has blindsided them (which serves Volume 3's rather long-ish 2-volume parter content). The Faraway Paladin has so much to do in so little time that it feels as if he could not catch a break, seemingly with all that's happening around him, having to run all around to get his jobs done. But still, Will manages to take time and reflect on his solace (which I appreciate as one of his strong character points) to take retrospectives on the people that helped him mould the character that he is now. And that's the key to writing compelling characters that make you move your heart and appreciate good character writing.

For the anime, however, the entire staff team from the prequel season has been given an overhaul: freelance director Akira Iwanaga leads his team with the ever-so-illusive OLM and Sunrise Beyond studio collaboration, and the production definitely has upgraded a fair bit to look as good as the LN's manga adaptation counterpart. Even Will's VA got an upgrade, from the young-un (VAed by Maki Kawase) to the young adult now (VAed by Shoya Chiba), and he sounds a lot more mature now than he has since his growing-up days in Season 1, and for the better.

The one disappointment I have for the sequel, however, is the OST. H-el-ical// and Nagi Yanagi did an outstanding job with their OP and ED songs for Season 1, and while the latter came back to perform the sequel's OP song, it was decent and a lot more action-heavy with its riff-raff (which actually strikes the chord for Season 2), something that I'm not so used to Nagi Yanagi performing this way since like forever. And while KOTOKO's ED song was decent, just like the OP, I am pretty biased towards Season 1 due to its pure fantasy emotions that did the prequel so much justice.

How ironic, eh? The story and music were (for me) the highlights of Season 1, and those same aspects wore it down in the enjoyment of Season 2. A perfect balance board, I would say, but that's just about the fate of The Faraway Paladin, as far as I'm concerned. It's decent at best, but it still does its fantasy genre justice enough to warrant the sequel for at least a binge.

While the start of the first season was a rather interesting one, in S2 we are given more like the ending of the first season - a rather ordinary isekai OP MC story with no innovation or effort put in it. Let me just give you a quick rundown so you can go watch something better instead.

Story. Typical OP MC isekai stuff: our hero takes on “impossible” challenges while being constantly praised for being basically godlike. This time “The Hobbit” was taken as the source of inspiration and most of the season is about the journey to a fallen dwarven country to kill a ... dragon. Sadly no creativity was put into making this copy so the entire arc was so generic that not once I was caught off guard and I always managed to predict what will happen in the next scene. While being predictable and well telegraphed is better than Deus Ex Machinae events used to dodge poor writing decisions (there is one those here too though), it is still not a good thing.
Characters. You know how it goes. Old ones don’t really show much, new ones are added to praise our hero even more. Only the party has enough screen time but I struggle to say that they had serious development (with the exception of the newbie who went from a wimp to a battle hardened veteran in a span of like 2 episodes).
Art. I will say it looks cheap. Some things look horribly stiff in motion, some scenes are just ugly, but mostly the visuals are “servisable”.
Enjoyment. Well, is it even here? The show is so shallow, generic and forgettable that it doesn’t really feel like I even enjoyed it, more like “I consumed it” and moved on.

So yeah, overall I can only see fans of the show that are OK with any adaptation enjoying the second season. The rest of the potential viewers? Just watch something else.