Rose Guns Days - Season 2 General Discussion

[Aspirety]

General discussion topic for Season 2 of Rose Guns Days. Please tag references to later Seasons and outside works with [spoiler] tags, providing adequate context for the spoiler in parenthesis.

While this topic will serve as a general hub for discussion of the Season, if a conversation ends up flowing in a certain direction, don’t be afraid to continue it in your own topic! Keep the “reply as linked topic” button beside each post in mind.

What would you rate this Season?

[poll type=number min=1 max=5][/poll]

[ctom42]

Season 2 of RGD is when things really begin picking up. It contains the later half of Caleb’s arc, as well as the introduction to the Wandering Dogs.

The real highlight of the Caleb arc is the growth that Rose goes through. Lee manipulating her into trying to assassinate Caleb is executed phenomenally, as is the resolve and growth she achieves after that. It’s also good to see Rose learning to fight to defend herself instead of merely relying on her bodyguards. This all leads up to a fantastically determined and competent Rose during the final confrontation with Caleb.

Rose is the true protagonist of RGD, and the story Jeanne is telling is about her. This becomes clear when at the end of the Caleb arc Leo gets put on a literal boat and shipped off. This was a very risky, but highly rewarding move by Ryukishi. Leo is a fantastic character, but at the same time he is overwhelmingly competent to the point where he manages to win a 40-1 gun fight in an open lobby. Leo is a badass but keeping him around will only serve to make future fights seem trivial.

Which is why I love the transition to the wandering dogs. We get out of an arc with a 40-1 gunfight and switch to a group of 4 people that have to resort to tactics and tricks to take down a single guard. And you know what? It’s just as exciting, if not more so. Ryukishi manages to turn combat into problem solving puzzles, something that rings true to me as a martial artist, but that is rarely conveyed properly in fiction. Instead of combats merely being about punching and shooting, they turn into distracting, disarming, off-balancing, and aiming for weak points.

Zel is my favorite character in all of RGD. She has a very natural charisma, one that is quite different from the cool guy routine that Leo employs. She doesn’t put on a show, she just does what comes naturally to her. She has a sharp mind and is a natural leader, able to quickly figure out the best way to put the skills of the other 3 wandering dogs to use. The three of them thought of themselves as useless, but they had incredibly talents and untapped potential and merely needed someone to guide them. Wayne for all his excellent character growth, failed to be the leader they needed and let their potential go unrealized.

Rose’s outfit change in this arc really adds to her more mature and powerful feeling, and the fact that she switches between the old and new outfits emphasizes when she is acting as Madam and when she is merely Rose. Wayne and Cyrus’s new outfits make them feel like real mafioso, which is pretty much the point.

Unlike season 1, season 2 leaves off with the conflict just beginning to show itself. The new villain is not shown until after the credits, and there is no next season preview. I can’t imagine what the wait must have been like for those who were reading along with the release.

[soggysadboi]

Oh boy, Rose Guns Days just keeps getting better.

(As Season 2 contained parts of two different years, I’ll split this post into two sections.)

End of 1947: (Caleb arc end)

“I’ve got to become a dragon… I’ve got to become a dragon…”

One of the most interesting things of the Caleb arc is Rose’s development, through Meijiu’s brilliant manipulation. Seeing Rose learn to defend herself and her ideals was a stark contrast to the previous Season, in where she practically left everything to other people. This is where I really came to like Rose as a character. Not that I didn’t like her before, but she kinda felt like the odd one out in the great cast of Season 1.

Rose. The sweet, pure, innocent girl running Primavera, now with bombs!

Initially, the explosion scene with Claudia and Wayne shocked me. I sat there, absolutely stunned. Though, before my emotions started building up and boiling over, I remembered the fact Wayne had survived, and was alive in 2012. At this point, I had the thought that Claudia hadn’t survived, thus bringing more conflict. Now, this ended up not being the case- a theme that Season 2 seemed to keep up. I’ll go into that more in 1948.

The final stand, and the “Night of Roses and Guns” was absolutely brilliant. I absolutely loved every moment of it. Whether it be Leo fighting off an entire group of men, to Rose and Wayne confronting Caleb and Miguel, nothing failed to keep me on the edge of my seat. However, there is one scene that stuck out to me; Miguel being “dismissed” by Caleb. There was some real emotion behind that scene, and I can’t deny it did hit me. I also really liked the comparisons between Wayne and Miguel, fighting for who matters to them, being Rose and Caleb respectively. I thought that was one hell of a send off for that lunatic, and a fitting one at that. But… again, I’ll bring this up in 1948.

In any case, when it came time for Leo to leave, it felt really surreal. By that point, I’d really come to enjoy Leo as a character. We even had some romance between him and Rose shown, which only made the idea of that magnificent bastard leaving even more somber. I really hope we get to know some of the things that go on while he’s away, but I’m sure they won’t be lighthearted. Anyway, I look forward to when he returns. There’s no way he isn’t coming back.

1948: (Wandering Dogs arc begins)

We start off with some very fancily dressed versions of the characters we’ve come to know and love, showing their growth and the changes that have happened since 1947… then a girl gets hit by a car. Okay then.

This is how we meet Zel. Our focus for this part of 1948. I’m very curious to see what she is, exactly. It’s obvious she’s still on the very edge of her current self, and whatever she was beforehand. That girl that keeps showing up keeps telling me Zel wasn’t associated with a good bunch of people.

At first, the new three really didn’t interest me much. I had a strong feeling I wouldn’t like Charlie and Oliver, but that I’d probably be rather neutral on Nina. I was absolutely wrong on all accounts. Charlie and Oliver are absolutely hilarious, and Nina isn’t bad either. Zel is also on her way up, rather quickly! The Wandering Dogs crew really is quite a contrast to the crazy fights of 1947, in that they have to work hard just to pull down a single guard. I’m really, really liking these guys. From their gags, down to their dynamic of being rats. Having Wayne look over them really shows how much he’s grown as a character, as well.

Skipping over a bit here, sorry about that, writing this at like 3 AM ^^;

The idea of The Soy Sauce War as a whole is really interesting, as is the idea of food culture. So many conflicts are resulting from this, and I’m really interested to see where that goes.

Now, this is where I want to talk about Season 2’s refusal to kill a character off. Caleb surviving just made sense, I couldn’t see him going away so easily with all of the focus on his ideals compared to Rose’s. I figured that had happened, and the same for Amanda. But- Miguel living kinda rubbed me in the wrong way. I actually kinda had to pause for a minute and question what the hell Ryukishi was thinking, considering how much Miguel’s “dismissal” meant death. We’ll have to see what becomes of him later on. Another thing I wasn’t expecting-

GODDAMMIT, ALFRED.

I’m sure this trend of absolutely never killing a character won’t go on for much longer, as it seems Season 3 is going to be filled with hardship for the Primavera members. I am very much looking forward to (and am slightly afraid of) Rose Guns Days Season 3!

(Side note: Seeing old man Wayne was great, even if his design makes him look like an old, washed up 70’s pornstar. )

[SuperM]

So, I picked RGD last Thursday, after a break of about half a year, up again (goddamn I regret this break) and it definitely was the right decision to do so.

The thing that completely struck me in the first half of this season was the explosion where Wayne and Claudia seemed to be dead. I was stunned and filled with emotions because I forgot the fact that Wayne is alive in 2012, oh man it was such a relief to see Wayne jump out at the right moment after Rose’s speech and hear that Claudia is also alive.

Then the “Night of Roses and Guns” happened, it was absolutely beautiful to see the showdowns in Primavera and the Hotel. Goddamn Leo, that man gets even more frightening in the 40 vs 1 Gunfight (The Minigame helps sooo much I was completely into that Fight). It was kinda sad to see Leo go away at the End of the Caleb Arc but I think it was the right decision to emphasis that Rose is the true Protagonist in this Story. (I hope he comes back tho.)

So now to the Second Half of this Season here they Introduced Charles, Oliver and Nina the “Wild Dog Dropouts” how they liked to call themselves and the girl that lost her memory that is given the Name Rapunzel or Zel. And I must say I Love these 4 Kids, it made me really Happy to see them grow into a Group of 4 and getting Acknowledged by Wayne so that they became the “Wandering Dogs” a special crew of 4 Kids under Wayne. The thing I liked the most about them is that they only work as a group, so they combine all their Strengths and become so powerful, that they even took out a Guard in a mere 3 seconds.

I’m really hyped for Rose Guns Days Season 3!
(The thing I’m constantly asking myself after Season 2 is: What happened to Rose and the others after 1950?)

[Ushiromiya_Battler]

That was fantastic.

I mentioned in the general discussion thread for season one that Rose and Wayne are two characters with most room for development, and boy, did the second season deliver in terms of that.

Words cannot express how pleased I am with Wayne and Rose’s character growth and just how much they changed by the time we reached the events of the third season. Rose is now as mature as fierce as a true leader of the criminal underworld should be (even if a lot of it just putting on a facade, she does it so well), and Wayne seems far more mature and dignified than he was in the past (loving their new outfits by the way, so cool!)

Caleb remained compelling until the very end, and one thing that pleasantly surprised me was the fact that Miguel, who I previously considered to be a mere bloodthirsty lunatic, was depicted with far more complexity than before. A man fighting his own war who had a surprisingly complex relationship with Caleb, his superior. I have to admit that I am glad that both Caleb and Miguel, as well as Amanda, are alive. Their characters have become more likable and they seem like powerful allies for Primavera.

However, I will go right ahead and state the two things I didn’t really like about Caleb’s arc:

1. The conclusion to Leo’s story.

Why? Because I found it incredibly ridiculous even for RGD’s standards. First of all, when Leo leaves Wayne and Rose and goes to the lobby to confront the incoming men, the way the whole scene was set up made me feel like Leo was going to sacrifice himself in order to buy time for Rose and Wayne. Because clearly, there are like forty men there, and there is no way Leo can survive that, right? WRONG. Because Leo somehow manages to defeat forty fucking men (because why not) and then basically leaves to help his comrades in some distant country and is essentially removed from the story. Now, I don’t mind Leo being removed from the story, but wouldn’t it have been far more compelling (and realistic) for Leo to die and have his death serve as additional fuel for Rose and Wayne’s character development?

Leo surviving just felt so cheap and pointless. And I don’t dislike Leo, I just really hate the way his whole departure was handled. Sure, Leo is a legend, but this was just bad.

2. Alfred/Butler

Butler somehow manages to fuck up twice in a row (once was acceptable, but the second time made it seem like a parody) and one of those fuck-ups is related to Alfred randomly robbing some bank or something? Isn’t Alfred dead? What was up with the pointless comedic appearance?

That’s pretty much it.

I feel like if those two things were changed, Caleb’s arc would have been pretty much perfect.

---

The third arc, which I will call Zel’s arc, was so good.

First of all, props to Ryukishi for introducing a bunch of new characters in the middle of the story, and managing to make me care for every single one of then. Not gonna lie, initially, I didn’t give a crap about Charles, Oliver, Nina or even Rapunzel. However, slowly but surely, Rapunzel’s mystery began to intrigue me (and it still does) and I genuinely started to grow attached to these kids once I realized how they were being treated by others (especially Wayne). They were the underdogs, and in the true underdog fashion, it made me wanna root for them. I wanted them to succeed. And succeed they did!

Rapunzel is quite a mystery, but there are several obvious hints that she’s probably an important figure related to the Chinese. Not only does she speak fluent Chinese, she knows martial arts, has good leadership skills, and it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if she is a royalty of some sort or even a trained assassin who somehow lost her memory. I’m actually a bit anxious about how Rapunzel’s story will be resolved, because I do not want a nasty conclusion for the Wandering Dogs. A part of me suspects that Rapunzel has already secretly regained her memory, and that she may actually be an enemy, but I truly hope that is not the case.

And one thing I certainly did not expect was starting to feel a little bad for Meiju. Meiju is a snake, definitely, but from what I’ve learned from the second season, he doesn’t hold all the cards and isn’t nearly as influential as I initially suspected him to be, especially now that he may be replaced despite the fact Meiju genuinely only wants to help his countrymen. Once again, props to Ryukishi for being able to portray his characters in such a realistic way, thus making you feel bad for those you didn’t even trust at the beginning. How times have changed.

I have a bad feeling about the third season, I hope nothing bad happens…