Vinland Saga is an extremely popular seinen anime series that has already made its name in the vast number of anime and series available. And we can say that Vinland Saga Season 2 met our expectations in terms of plot, animation, character development, etc. And some of the strongest Vinland Saga characters are based on real life Viking legends. The anime revolves around Vikings and the Nordic lifestyle. Vinland Saga is quite unique, far more mature and realistic which has gotten the attention of many anime enthusiasts.
Moving forward in this article, we will have a look at the Vinland Saga Season 2 review. But before that, let’s dive a little deeper into the basic details of the anime.
Table of Contents
Vinland Saga Season 2 Cast and Studio
The cast of Vinland Saga’s second season is very talented and vast. Here are some of the major roles.
- Thorfinn: Yuto Uemura
- Thorkell: Akio Otsuka
- Ketil: Hideaki Tezuka
- Einar: Shunsuke Takeuchi
- Snake: Fuminori Komatsu
- Arnheid: Mayumi Sako
- Canute: Kensho Ono
- Emma: Wendy Powell
- Leif: John Swasey
- Lotta: Marisa Duran
- Narrator: Kent William
The studio behind the production of Vinland Saga is MAPPA (MAPPA Co., Ltd.), which is a leading name in the current anime industry. Some animes animated by MAPPA are Hell’s Paradise, Zombie Land Saga, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, etc.
What Happened in Vinland Saga Season One?
First half
Vinland Saga Season 1 moves on with medieval Vikings and their ideologies. Thors, an extremely powerful Viking warrior and also the father of Thorfin, was killed by Askeladd, the leader of a group of bandits in front of young Thorfinn, creating a state of revenge on Thorfinn. But things take a wild turn when he takes Thorfinn with him and leads him to follow and kill Askeladd, indirectly inspiring him with ideologies.
Second half
After joining Askeladd’s group, Thorfinn continued his journey, killing and creating bloodshed. On his journey, he met the current prince of England, Canute, a soft, delicate young man who was not suitable for Viking living standards.
Thorfinn was hired as Canute’s personal guard. The anime’s later plot leads to the assassination of Sweyn, the current king of England and Canute’s father.
In the climax of the first season, Thorfinn is unable to kill Askeladd as he assassinates Sweyn, which, in turn, results in his death at the hands of Canute, which is all preplanned. This left Thorfinn in shambles as he was unable to take his revenge.
Vinland Saga Season 2 Review
In season second, the story starts from where it left off in the previous season, but in place of Thorfinn’s storyline, we start from Einer’s past life, the life when he was not a slave and used to live with his mother and sister in a small village. But one unfaithful night, their village was attacked by a group of bandits, killing both his sister and mother.
Later, Einer was sold off by the bandits.
Now, this is where we meet our protagonist Thorfinn, who was also earlier sold as a slave and bought by a farm owner named Ketil. Usually, slaves can never get freedom, but Ketil offers a mind-boggling offer to all the slaves he owns: He will allow the slaves to grow crops from scratch and play their value to earn their freedom.
In the meantime, Canute, the young delicate prince from earlier, has turned into the fledge leader of England and Denmark, gluttonous for power and fame after being declared the king after his father’s murder.
The taste of freedom
Back on the farms, Thorfinn and Einer are both working hard for their freedom. As said earlier, they have to grow crops from scratch, and obtaining a plantation field is the first step.
For that, Ketil gave them a part of the untouched forest, so both slowly started removing trees to clear the space for crops. Here’s where Vinland Saga Season 2 gets more than interesting.
After a while, when the land was cleared and the crops were also grown, some free farm workers ( slaves who had already gained their freedom) tried to sabotage Thorfinn and Einer’s crops, which they succeeded in doing.
Enraged by this act, Einer tried to take action and talk to the farm owner, Ketill. On the way they meet the free farm workers, unable to contain his rage Einer rushes towards one of the workers, but is stopped by Thorfinn, but suddenly Thorfinn punches one of the workers which triggers a scenario in his mind of being thrown in the “Valhalla”.
He saw numerous warriors with rotten flesh, decapitated body parts, and killing instincts. He also saw some familiar figures, one of them was Askeladd.
A while later, he saw many figures reaching out to him. Horrifyingly, those figures were the people Thorfinn had killed throughout his life, reaching him to dragging him into the endless ring of blood and violence, but something unexpected happened. Askeladd helped Thorfinn by clearing off the obstacles hindering Thorfinn from escaping and returning to his senses.
From being a hothead to “I don’t have enemies”
The major plot point of this season happens here: a change in the mindset of a young, rebellious, and hotheaded boy to a calm and composed mature man.
The following event changed Thorfinn; one night, Thorfinn had a dream of a free life without violence, a free land, “Vinland”, and made his goal of life to reach that place one day to live a peaceful life.
Okay, so now, returning to the farm and the dispute, a new major face has been unleashed in the plot. “Snake”, a bandit who used to live on the farmland, found out about the dispute and met both Thorfinn and Einer; now, how did they meet? Well, after the dispute, both were taken to the bandit’s hideout and tortured.
Both were slashed in different places on their bodies; seeing Einer’s condition, Thorfinn took Einer’s punishment on himself. After seeing the condition of Thorfinn and his will, the snake is impressed and decides to interfere; later we get to know that Snake is the leader of that group of bandits who lives with the father of Ketil.
Ketil “the false warrior”
From earlier episodes, we got to know that Ketil, the farm owner has a good impact on others through his wisdom and kindness, but there is a bitter end in the personality of “The Iron Fist”.
Ketil, the farm owner, also known as the famous incredible Viking warrior, is a white lie; ironically, he is much more of a coward in reality, this lie only being known to a few people, including ‘Arnheid’, a female slave on the farm who was brought from a destroyed village.
We also got to see Ketil’s two sons, the elder one named Thorgill and the younger one named Olmar. Thorgill believes that his father was an extremely powerful warrior(The Iron Fist), which led him to become a powerful and bloodthirsty Viking himself. Being conscious, Ketil tried to keep his younger son Olmar away from war but failed.
A war without a reason ( Canute vs Ketil)
As we saw, Canute’s growing power led to a higher demand for food and resources. Canute offered Ketil to come under Denmark’s provision and provide food and supplies to the nation, but Canute, being cunning and clever, tried to sabotage Ketil for getting total control over the farm.
During the meeting with Canute, Olmar, the younger son of Ketil, demands to be the personal guard for Canute, which Canute takes as a chance to frame Ketil’s family for treason against the kingdom and eliminate the control of Ketil over the farm.
Olmar was taunted and enraged by the other soldiers for taking a wrong step and committing treason against the kingdom. As expected, the same thing happened: a fight broke up. But things got out of hand when Thorgil, Olmar’s elder brother, stepped in and killed a few of Canute’s men.
Taking this opportunity, Canute ordered his army to forcefully take control of the farm, leading to a war between the two factions.
False hope, total bloodshed
War broke out, and people were scared as they were against professional warriors, But Thorgil, being a bloodthirsty Viking, encouraged them to continue the war.
Having no choice, Ketil was forced to motivate his farm people for the upcoming war, which was a “false hope” as he also knew that there was no way for ordinary farmers to beat professional warriors.
Preparations were made, and people were full of commitment. In the meantime, a mysterious man came into the story, a strong and wild Viking in search of someone.
That someone was Arnheid, the wife of the unknown Viking. Gardar was the name of that Viking, a broken man as his wife was taken away from him.
Ketil, being fascinated by Arnheid, demanded that Garder be taken as soon as possible. In the meantime, Gardar killed one of the snake’s men, Lizard, which enraged Snake in finding and killing him.
This is when Einer and Thorfinn help Arnheid and Gardar escape the farm as it is already in a state of chaos and will help them escape easily, but the snake is already prepared and attacks Gardar.
It was difficult for Gardar to fight the snake after his injury. This is when Thorfinn helps and fights Snake and an intense battle breaks between them; in the meantime, Arnheid is confronted by Ketil, who is already in a bad mental state from the pressure of war.
A sad farewell
Being confronted by Ketil, Arnheid was suspected of cheating on Ketil. This led to an unfortunate incident as Ketil lost his temper and beat Arnheid brutally.
This led Arnheid to the brink of death; meanwhile, Snake and Thorfinn continued to battle, and the condition of Gardar worsened; seeing Thorfinn’s undisputed resolve to protect Gardar and Arnheid, Snake decided to leave them on their own and not interfere.
Both husband and wife were able to escape the farm but were unable to live the rest of their life happily as both of them died.
The fall of the resolve
Canute’s army is perched on the shores of the farm, an all-out war begins, and farm people are butchered. Seeing this brutality, the conviction of the farm workers broke, but Thorgil, being an unstoppable war maniac, found a way to ambush the opposition and somewhat succeeded in his plane but was forced to retreat when the reinforcement came.
The war lasted several days, and by the situation, it was a one-sided war. Many were killed, and many were injured when Thorfinn decided to talk to King Canute himself to end this war.
He went to the camps to meet Canute but was stopped by his men. Thorfinn tried to convince them that he had come to negotiate and was familiar with King Canute.
A Viking named Drott challenged him to take 100 punches. If Thorfinn could endure them till the end, he may talk to King Canute. The scenario changed from mocking to complete silence and concern as Thorfinn was taking all the punches to his face without fading, later Thorfinn was able to talk to King Canute and pleaded to him to stop this useless bloodshed.
Canute first was unable to recognize Thorfinn as the Thorfinn he knew was a completely different man, but later confirmed that he was indeed Thofinn.
He laughed at Thorfinn and said that if he ordered the waves to stop, he wouldn’t because it’s not in his power. The same goes for the war. Later, Canute withdrew his forces from the farmland, resulting in the end of the war.
Homecoming
Later Lief finally found Thorfinn and asked him to return to his home where his mother and sister had waiting for him for many years, Lief successfully convinced him to come with him, after several days of travel where he met his mother and sister with an aggressive but warm welcome.
Finally, Thorfinn has returned to his homeland, “Iceland”. With this, our second season ends.
Wrapping up
So this is it for the Vinland Saga Season 2 Review. Here we have tried to mention all the details that you need to know about the same. As for Vinland Saga Season 3, there are no confirmed dates for the release. It will most probably cover the journey of Thorfinn and Einer of Greece. Both of them will meet new people and warriors there. Comparing the story with manga, season 3 will deal with the Eastern Expedition arc, which lasts from chapter 100 to chapter 166 of the manga.
