Reviews WebAnimation / Gen Lock

Season 2 Review: A Spectacular Fall From Grace

I remember watching Gen:Lock when it aired on Toonami and I was impressed. You had a diverse cast of lovable characters backed with stellar voice acting and great action scenes. So when I heard Season 2 would air on HBO Max (due to controversy surrounding the show's director), I was excited. And though I grew aware of the more... controversial things regarding the season, I still decided to give it a chance. So, my final verdict?

"Look how they massacred my boy."

To call Season 2 a massive downgrade from Season 1 would be an equally massive understatement. Almost everything about this show has been butchered beyond recognition to the point where it's little more than a walking corpse calling itself Gen:Lock. At least with Game of Thrones it was a slow, steady decline. With Gen:Lock, it's almost impressive how HBO managed to take a promising show and run it into the ground in a single season.

Pros:

• The voice acting is as great as ever. You can tell the actors did the best they could with what they were given. Yasmine's scream when Kazu gets killed was chilling.
• Fight scenes are as good as ever.
• I actually like the concept of the Gen:Lock team becoming living nanotech and their Combining Mecha moment in the finale was petty awesome.

Cons:

• The pacing is godawful, as if they tried to cram five seasons worth of story into one. Stuff like the Earth dying from climate change, or Gen:Lock team becoming living nanotech are plot points that should be fleshed out over several seasons.
• Unnecessary addition of sex and gory violence because apparently sex + violence = "mature."
• Characters are wildly out of character (Chase forgetting how to trust his teammates, Cammie getting depressed out of nowhere, Marin going from reasonable general to mad queen, etc).
• Kazu getting killed after discovering he's bisexual is a blatant Bury Your Gays moment.
• Cammie committing suicide and then coming back as nanotech is disgustingly tone-deaf.
• Blatant retcons like the Union being a religious cult instead of a group of techno-fascists.

Conclusion: There's so much I can say, but 3000 characters isn't enough. Overall, Gen:Lock S2 is an absolute insult to everything that made Gen:Lock good. As far as I'm concerned, this show ended with Season 1 and the comics. Anything after that is non-canon.