Radiant

At the beginning of this season, this show seemed like it was going to be a completely generic shonen anime series, featuring a young, hysterical, and overly determined boy who is fighting against monsters that come from who-knows-where, and he simply has to destroy them all at any cost. He is secretly OP, has to discover and master his powers, he makes some new friends, and - well, you get just what you kind of expect from a shonen... I was not that much into the first few episodes, it was quite predictable and even boring at times. However, at a certain point, when I thought I was just cruising on autopilot and it was treading water, I actually started to find it entertaining. I liked the atypical setting of the cities in the clouds, and the magical battles plus the magic itself. The mystery of Nemesis, which probably is not going to be as easy to solve as you think at the beginning, and most of the main and supporting characters are good too. Sure, Seth is perhaps not the best main male protagonist ever, but despite that, he goes from tolerable to quite likable after some time. Melie is also a fine character, and I am wondering which of her two diametrically opposed personalities I like better. However, I thought that the best character was definitely Captain Dart Dragunov, a member of the Inquisition - a charismatic bad guy with a pretty good moral compass. So, what about the narrative? It went from a generic beginning to the pretty great Rumble Town arc, and the first season raised a lot of interesting questions and potential twists that I could probably look forward to seeing explored in the future. So even though Radiant ends up being only slightly better than the usual show after the first season in my opinion (and that is taking into account the enjoyable opening, which I probably shouldn't), I am actually quite excited for season two in the fall. 6/10. (24.02.2019)

I cannot say I enjoyed the second season as much as the first one, and my feelings about it were more or less the same. At the start, I was trying to get to know some new characters and to reacquaint myself with some of the original ones. That massive sob story episode, in particular, disturbed me mentally, although I guess it was necessary for them to get it out of their system... At first, I found it very boring, wondering why I had said the first season was "above average" when this season is nothing special. Then things picked up, the great war started and I suddenly found it quite entertaining, and sometimes I was a little excited for the next episode. I only started to like the character Ocoho after a while, and I also grew to like some of the other characters a bit more too, like Grimm, Captain Dragunov, and the  "dark side" of Mélie. So in the end, I am awarding the second season 6/10, and I am looking forward to watching the third season. (09.08.2020)