Otaru and his bevy of marionette beauties return in
less than fine form for a follow-up series to the original Saber Marionette J. Picking up more or
less where the first left off, the new set of adventures feels very thin on material and is hampered
by a few too many filler episodes in its first half.
The major storyline, featuring a trip out of Japoness
that separates Otaru from Lime and the others, doesn't get underway until very late, and really would have
been better suited to an OAV. It's obvious the creators were stretching to fill the extra episodes,
and many of these added plot developments really
should have been left on the drawing board. Though
there are plenty of things to like about the show,
especially the continued growth of the marionette
girls and a very fitting ending to the entire
franchise, there is an equal amount of downright lousy
schtick to trudge through. For example, it takes
several laborious plot twists to get Faust and the Saber Dolls back into the action, but they eventually
wind up distracting from the central story instead of contributing to it.
The most noticeably problematic part of the show is
the weakness of the visuals. The animation is very poor, and the designs are so twisted, the characters
always look strangely misshapen. A few new villains rear their heads, but are unremarkable and easily
forgotten. Smaller characters, like Dr. Hess and Hanagata get time to expand their roles a bit, but
this more of a symptom of the excessive filler than anything else. All in all, the show is a
disappointment, and feels more like a cheap knockoff
of the first series than a true sequel. Fans of the
original who want to know the ultimate fates of Lime, Cherry, and Bloodberry, should just skip ahead to the
last volume and save themselves a lot of trouble.
