I was spoiled about the news of a second season for Radiant this fall before I watched the final episode, and it certainly changes one’s perspective.  I must confess to a certain measure of surprise at the announcement, but I feel pretty confident this was planned in advance.  There’s no evidence I can see that the series has been a big commercial hit here, for starters.  But more than that, the knowledge that a second season was in the works makes some of the narrative choices Lerche made with the first more understandable.  No less irritating, but more understandable.

My hope, of course, is that the second season follows the course of Tony Valente’s manga more closely than the first did.  The parts that did so were excellent – the problem is, there weren’t enough of them.  Basically the into and the Rumble Town arc and everything in-between directly involving Dragunov, as far as I can tell – and all of these subplots touched on the themes that are clearly at the center of Valente’s work.  While I detest the word and the way many fans use it as a blunt instrument, I can’t call the rest of the first season anything but filler.

If indeed I’m right about the thinking here (and I’m really just guessing) it implies that Kishi-sensei and his staff wanted the season to end at this point – that, and they felt that a little more world-building was needed to transition the material to a Japanese audience (if so, I think they were wrong about the latter).  And no argument, this does seem like a logical place to leave things off.  A change of venue, a change of supporting cast, and the hero in personal limbo – that’s a shounen season break if I’ve ever seen one.

The new venue will apparently be Caislean Merlin, a far-off city where Yaga notes that there are sorcerers searching for Radiant (Yaga himself has bolted on the news that Alma is in town).  Doc is none too keen to take Seth there, it being very far and presumably dangerous, and he being debt-ridden (thanks to Seth) and stuck in an older but still chibi body.  He also drops a serious guilt trip on Seth about taking Melie into danger again, not totally without justification (or effect).

Lots of names are dropped when it comes to this new place – “Knight Sorcerers” (we’ve heard that one before), “Dracoon”, et al – and it’s noted that the Inquisition is about to go on a sorcerer hunt there, intent on restoring some of the influence that the Rumble Town fiasco has cost them.  Of course Seth is still intent on going, but before any final decisions can be made a rain of nemesis eggs falls on Artemis, forcing him into a rescue mission for Melie, who’s off collecting mushrooms for Doc’s research.  This leads to an encounter with a hatched nemesis, which leads to berserker Seth emerging again and Grimm noting that the boy’s power is “unnatural and dangerous”.

As spotty and inconsistent as the first season was, I’m still interested in where Radiant goes from here and I still think there’s a lot of potential in this premise.  The world Valente has created is an interesting one, and his focus on then themes at the heart of story was quite prescient as regards the rise of the xenophobic far-right across Europe.  Between Piodan, Dragunov and Grimm we have some interesting wild cards in the mix, I like the idea of Seth teaming up with Alma again, and the way Radiant has managed to cast almost everyone and everything in the story in a morally ambiguous light is quite fascinating.  Now we just need the second season to stick to all that and dispense with all the bad improv.

As the first proper manga from France to be adapted into an anime, Radiant had a lot of historical significance – but like any other anime, it has ultimately to be judged on its own merits.  I want it to succeed, both artistically and commercially, because that success could help persuade a conservative and risk and change-averse medium that there’s untapped potential in this body of work.  The first season was a mixed bag by the first measure, and for me at least it’s unknown how it fared by the second.  But the date of the October premiere of Season 2 is the first day of the rest of Radiant’s life, and what matters is less what’s come before that moment, and more what comes after it.  I’ve seen enough in the past 21 episodes to make me hopeful, but not enough to make me confident.

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