Mushoku Tensei II: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu - Shugo Jutsushi Fitz

Now, I'll start the real review.

Story: They decided to adapt some special chapters from previous volumes + a part of vol 9 as a starting episode. This is a great decision imho, it's better for the flow of the show to start from this. Content wise they did a great job, it can be a bit boring but it's surely essential. Vote: 8/10

Technical quality: The episode was inconsistent, yeah. They used also cgi. But if you see who worked for this episode, you'll see it was greatly outsourced, so it's understandable. The fights animations were great tho, on-par with S1. Direction was good, bit confusionary ... sometimes but good. Musical score too, the composer didnt change and it's great. The design... well, it was good for sylphy and ariel, but not good for Luke and some characters like Darius(the old fucker that also executed Sarius, Eris' grandfather), it is what it is. Vote: 7/10

Overall, I'll give it an 8 because im biased and im happy that apart from the inconsistency the animation was great. Definitely recommend it, and trust me, an LN reader: this season's cour 1 maybe wont be that perfect but cour 2 will be a masterpiece.

Mushoku Tensei is probably my favourite anime as of right now, and my all time favourite fictional story.

I want to keep optimistic, but this episode did fall short on my expectations. I read the LN so I have the context, and even then this episode was a little hard to follow. It wasn't just the drop in animation quality that we were all expecting, because season 1 was just too ridiculous, but the direction this episode took was strange, they gave you just enough cookie crumbs to get an idea of the situation, and that was likely due to the constraints that they had to ... literally fill in the time-line of the exact moment where the mana disaster left off to near the time-line Season 1 ended all in one episode. Sylphy's side story wasn't amazing or anything, but it was definitely important for the story moving forward and I felt like we didn't get a proper representation of the characters and the situation they were in is all. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I wished they did a 1 hour premiere like some of the other animes, just to properly execute Sylphy's side of the story and then to lead us into Rudeus's situation.

They kinda failed to animate this episode. From the first season, this is the first time I'm disappointed with how they animated Mushoku Tensei.

The voice-over of Ariel did a great job, the other va just sounds good, since this episode is trying to introduce Ariel. So, I think it's fine.
But, honestly, the animation feels bland, Shylphy's magic and even their movement looks awkward. I reduced my expectation when I watch the teaser, but I didn't expect it to be this bad.

The first season teaser and trailer also have a goofy animation, but they nailed in the anime. But this time, I feel disappointed.
Hopefully, they didn't ... rush to make another season, without good preparation. They can release another season 3 or 5 years later if they struggle to make the animation.