Nanbaka Season 2
ナンバカ 2期 (Nanbaka 2)
- Action
- Comedy
- Drama
- Super Power
- Episodes
- 12
- Duration
- 23 min per ep
- Aired
- Jan 4, 2017 to Mar 22, 2017
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Life at Nanba Prison settles back into its oddly comfortable rhythm as the inmates and their guards continue their daily routines. The balance they’ve built makes the facility feel almost like a strange kind of home—even with bars and watchtowers.
That calm starts to crack when a new presence moves in the background: Enki Gokuu, a figure tied to Samon’s past. With motives that remain unclear, his arrival brings a looming sense of danger that threatens the fragile peace inside Nanba Prison.
Otaku Consensus
Nanbaka Season 2 earns its 7.49 MAL and 73 AniList reception by turning Shinji Takamatsu’s hyper-colored prison comedy into a more serialized action-drama, with the Enki Gokuu/Samon material giving the season a sharper emotional spine and more fight-driven pacing. The tradeoff is also the dominant complaint: viewers who came for Season 1’s constant slapstick often find the comedy diluted, even while praising Satelight’s loud character designs, wild hairstyles, and energetic visual personality.
Why You Should Watch
Watch Nanbaka Season 2 if you want a comedy cast forced into a more serious battle-anime mode without losing the neon excess, theatrical posing, and ridiculous male-ensemble chemistry. It scratches part of the same itch as Gintama for viewers who like tonal whiplash, but this season leans harder into prison-faction conflict, super-power action, and emotional backstory instead of pure gag density. The appeal is in the contrast: Juugo, Nico, Rock, Uno, and Hajime are still built for loud reactions and slapstick timing, yet the season gives them a darker framework that makes the fights feel less disposable. If Season 1’s chaos was the hook but you wanted the world to matter more, this is the payoff season.
Key Characters
- JJuugo(VA: Yuuto Uemura)
Juugo remains the emotional center of the inmate side, compelling because his flashy comic surface keeps colliding with the series’ darker super-power and memory-manipulation elements.
- NNico(VA: Daiki Kobayashi)
Nico is the cast’s purest conduit for exaggerated anime energy, the kind of character whose reactions make the show’s shift toward heavier action feel stranger and more playful.
- RRock(VA: Ire Shiozaki)
Rock gives the main group its physical, hot-blooded edge, balancing the series’ glittery comedy style with straightforward brawler appeal.
- HHajime Sugoroku(VA: Tomokazu Seki)
Hajime is the guard-side anchor fans remember for turning authoritarian prison discipline into deadpan comedy and hard-impact action beats.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
Season 2 makes a clear structural pivot from gag-forward prison comedy to a more serialized action-drama built around Enki Gokuu’s connection to Samon. That shift is the season’s defining creative choice and the source of both its strongest praise and most common criticism.
- 2
Satelight’s adaptation keeps Nanbaka visually identifiable through saturated color coding, flamboyant hair silhouettes, and costume-heavy character design rather than fine-detail realism. Multiple viewer reactions specifically single out the designs and hairstyles as the show’s most memorable visual asset.
- 3
The season’s AniList tag profile is unusually specific for a comedy sequel: Prison at 80%, Slapstick at 79%, Anti-Hero and Crime at 79%, plus Memory Manipulation at 72%. That combination signals why the season feels less like a simple gag show and more like a tonal hybrid.
- 4
The cast profile is heavily male-coded, with AniList listing Primarily Male Cast and Male Protagonist at 97% each, while also tagging LGBTQ+ Themes, Bisexual, Femboy, and Crossdressing. Nanbaka’s character appeal is tied as much to gender presentation and flamboyant styling as to action-comedy dynamics.
- 5
At 12 episodes airing from January 4 to March 22, 2017, the second season is compact and arc-focused. Its pacing favors escalation and confrontations over the looser sketch rhythm associated with the first season.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Nanbaka Season 2 was produced by Satelight and directed by Shinji Takamatsu, with Mitsutaka Hirota handling series composition in addition to script work. Hirota was joined on scripts by Fumi Tsubota and Shingo Irie.
- Fun fact 2
- The anime adapts the work of original creator Shou Futamata, while Kento Toya is credited for character design. That design role matters here because critical and fan comments repeatedly identify the cast’s color, hair, and styling as the show’s immediate hook.
- Fun fact 3
- Shunsuke Ishikawa is credited on both episode direction and storyboard duties, showing direct involvement in how individual episodes were staged as well as planned. Toshiharu Sugie is listed among the key animation staff.
- Fun fact 4
- The season holds a MAL score of 7.49 from 70,807 votes and an AniList score of 73/100 with 500 favorites, placing it in the zone of a well-liked niche sequel rather than a consensus blockbuster.
- Fun fact 5
- Viewer reception is split along tonal lines: one fan review praises the season’s action, comedy, and emotional moments as an “absolute banger,” while other web reactions describe it as less humorous than Season 1 but stronger as a serious action installment.
Studios
- Satelight
