Heaven's Coin 2 (1996)

Continuing the excruciating melodrama of the first season, Heaven's Coins 2 delivers more unbelievably frustrating situations, but to its credit completes the series in a very fitting end and is, in a masochistic way, satisfying.

I was hoping this time around the drama would recover from its predecessor, and it does, but only at the last episode. This means you need to go through another entire season of false love, real love, and misguided love (that still does not make sense). However, whereas the first season had no logical basis for most of the characters to fall in love, this season at least has the first season to go off of. While this can mean the lack of logic carries over, at least this time around we know what we're getting into. That's not a good thing to say, but it's the best one can make of it.

An example of this continuance of a lack of a basis, Mai Hosho's character has no real reason to love Shuichi. She recovers from this only slightly later on. Takumi's mother had a fitting story, and I believe the writing for her and her performance was a dramatic improvement for her character. And Takumi, who I felt was the best character in the first season, continues to be the best one in this series in terms of writing and performance. While the writing for Miwa Koizumi wasn't that great (again), I felt Tanaka-san's performance was strong. As for Aya, I think Sakai's performance was good, but the writing for her character faltered and her performance adjusted accordingly. Osawa-san was pretty much the same as before and while the character of Shuichi didn't develop much, it did moreso than the first season.

Unfortunately I cannot write much for this review as most of it would require I mention a ton of spoilers, a practice I am completely against. To continue my Bubble Bobble metaphor from my previous review, I will say that I was just as frustrated as I was watching the first season; however, the ending was much better than the previous finale. Not only was it fitting, but it completed the story lines of every character and explored each in satisfying detail.

I rated this two points more than the previous season for the ending, and for the fact that while it is an incredibly frustrating show in terms of writing, it still manages to be memorable.

(Originally posted January 5th, 2007.)

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