The Summer 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World Season 2

After Alice, Iska, and Sisbell defeat the Object, they return to the Nebulis palace. Iska becomes Sisbell's guard through a secret pact, and they find themselves drawing closer with each passing day. Alice's heart aches upon seeing her sister arm-in-arm with Iska. A dark conspiracy is at play, and the trio is caught in the crossfire.

Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World Season 2 is based on the light novel series written by Kei Sazane and illustrated by Ao Nekonabe. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

I have to admit: of all the anime out there, I never thought that this one would get a sequel. That's not because the first season was bad but rather it was only a tiny bit above average. The animation looked fine, the characters were enjoyable enough, and the plot had the needed amount of originality to hold a viewer's interest. However, no aspect of it dramatically set it apart from the other anime to come out in 2020. Considering the slim pickings we had during covid times, that's somewhat damning.

Yet, while I admit that I haven't even really thought about Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World since I finished watching it back then, I am still invested enough to be happy to see it back. With that said, this episode isn't exactly the reintroduction I was looking for, or the one I needed after three-plus years.

On one hand, this episode feels like we're simply being thrown right back into the story. There's no big recap of the first season—no big montage of key events or dump of expositional dialogue. On the other, I can say that I never really felt lost while watching, even though I know there's a ton of stuff I am forgetting. The show subtly drops in all the key bits of information we need to remember; The team is on “vacation” and just finished a big battle; Iska once saved Sisbell from prison—derailing his life in the process; Mismis has become a witch and the squad is trying to figure out how to hide it; and a more war-like faction among the mages, lead by a masked figure, is looking to drum up political instability to inflame the war between magic users and non-magic users to new levels.

It also helps that the characters and their motivations are all worn on their sleeves. Iska and Alice are smitten with each other, even if they are loath to admit it even to themselves. Sisbell sees Iska as the one person (outside of her mother) she can count on. And the rest of Iska's squad are all willing to do whatever is needed to help Mismis, as long as they don't have to betray their country to do so.

Another cool point is that we're getting to see mage society up close this season. This adds a lot of looming danger to the story as, besides Mismis and Sisbell, none of Iseka's team are mages. The moment they're discovered, all hell is set to break loose. And as is par for the course for our fated-yet-star-crossed lovers, they find themselves once again standing side by side. Now, Alice will have to decide between her duty as a princess, her love for her little sister, and her feelings for Iska. No matter what happens, it's going to be a mess and I can't wait to see how it all shakes out.

I'm going to level with you: I didn't hate the first season of Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World but I also didn't exactly love it. I don't necessarily think describing an anime as “generic” is always an insult meant to imply that this makes it unenjoyable, because silly as it may sound, there's an art to being generic—it's the difference between such cliché-heavy anime feeling boring and predictable or familiar and charming. And admittedly, there are times where Last Crusade (both last season and even in this first episode of season two) achieved the latter—but more often than not, it fell into that “boring and predictable” camp for me. And if this first episode of season two is indicative of anything, then we're in for 12 episodes of much the same.

The episode doesn't waste time recapping the first season and instead opts to just jump right back in. Our Empire protagonists are still on their mandatory vacation, and Mismis is still struggling with semi-secretly being a witch. Meanwhile, over in the Sovereignty, we see what appears to be the planting of seeds of suspicion and conflict between Alice and her mother, the queen. And while a smattering of other events that feel like they'll have mixed levels of relevance also happen, the bulk of this first episode revolves around Sisbell asking Iska and co. to escort her back to the Sovereignty in exchange for her help in concealing Mismis' witchdom (which they agree to).

This would all be great news if I could find it in myself to feel more invested in the story, but even after a whole season of this show, I still feel like I know so little about what's really going on. One of my biggest gripes with the first season is that it keeps dangling the carrot of cool lore and worldbuilding in front of its audience but rarely to any meaningful payoff. This wouldn't be as noticeable of a problem if at the same time, this anime's story didn't rely so heavily on knowledge of the politics and history of these warring factions. In tandem with a full cast of plain characters I just don't care terribly much about, the result is a story that I'm not super engaged with—and one I think I only half understand.

There is one thing that's for certain though: this episode leans a lot heavier into the idea of having a love triangle (which is actually more of a love wedge symbol, but I digress) than the first season ever did. Namely, one between Iska, Alice, and Sisbell. And as the series progresses and Alice and Sisbell are around each other more often, I could see this dynamic being one of the more entertaining aspects of this season of Last Crusade.

However, as is, this first episode is nothing special—it doesn't stand out as particularly bad or good. Perhaps a bit boring to be honest. The imminent love triangle seems like it could be fun as the series goes on though and here's hoping we'll actually learn enough about the world this series takes place in that the story beats actually have more gravity this time around. But in the meantime, I won't exactly be chomping at the bit to watch new episodes the millisecond they're available.