After watching the first season like 4 times I found myself a bit hesitant on starting Chrono Stone because 1. Im not a big fan of the scifi time travel gimmick and 2. I didnt find the cast of Go particularly endearing. But in order to make my way through the whole series I decided to sit down and give it a go. And honestly if anything Inazuma Eleven Go: Chrono Stone feels more like a scifi anime than a sports anime. Its a step down from the og series but more enjoyable than Go in my opinion. The plot is your average time travel scifi plot which different from the previous seasons. However it really feels like the soccer was put on the back burner even though the plot revolves around saving the future of soccer. It just seems like the writers got lost in the sauce and decided they were more interested in the Raimonvisitsthepastandfuture than the actual soccer. Which to be fair was fun for a bit especially seeing how the cast mingled with different figures + some of their outfits were super cute :D. But it just didnt have the flavor I was looking forno training arcs no slice of life no working on new hissatsu no adrenalinefilled matches. But it definitely is different from the previous seasons so if youre bored of the same old Inazuma Eleven you could give this a whirl. They introduce a new mechanic mixi max which is basically a fusion. I found it pretty neat but honestly for all the trouble the team went through it felt really underutilized. Essentially what happens for a majority of the first 3/4 of the show is the cast time leaps around and tries to fuse with famous historical and fictional figures in order to make the strongest eleven but it doesnt even feel like it did much. We barely even got any interesting hissatsu shoots and techniques which I would have loved to see more of especially since there were so many notable characters. Feels like a waste of potential. Not to mention the newly introduced avatar armed. They have this long ass animation only for it to be blown away in 2 seconds. The most significant example I can think of is when the team is fighting Betas team and theres just a 23 second sequence of like four characters releasing their avatar armed and then Beta just blows through all of them in 5 seconds with one of the best hissatsu shoots of the season. The buff given by mixi max coupled with avatars and a new avatar armed really robbed us of any good hissatsu techniques. It was mostly just long repeated animations. The power scaling is a bit odd too. While the characters did get power ups through mixi max there was barely any training to make their improvements believable. Many of the characters are able to use avatar armed in the middle of matches after no prior training at all in the middle of some heated moment in the match. Like I get its the clutching up during a dire situation thing but it just happens so many times for no reason at all that it just starts to feel really cheesey at some point. The characters introduced this season are quite neat. I really liked Zanark Fei and Beta a lot they have really fun and unique personalities and playstyles. As for character development it is noticeably lacking this season. I dont think well ever get anything as good as Fubuki or Kidou again but its really just not there. None of the characters from the previous season save Tenma got any significant attention. Fei is for sure the focus of the season and has a decent arc especially near the end. Tenma has a crisis over whether hes fit to be a leader or not again near the end of the season which is valid but its resolved without much trouble. Tenma and Feis clash of ideals with Saru in the last match is really engaging and interesting but that is as good as it gets. I think the message they were trying to explorethat of what connects people whether it be power or bonds built through friendshipis a good one to especially for a kids anime but the execution was questionable at best because this clash of ideals really only felt relevant in the last few episodes. Otherwise most of the characters didnt feel like they had much substance at all which is a shame because on the surface level they did seem interesting. Its like we were edged and never got our release : This leads me to my next point. The entire season is chock full of these mini matches that barely last an episode. They were terribly unsatisfying and didnt even really build up to the final conflict which is strange because I did see parallels between El Dorado and the Second Stage Children especially when it came to how they viewed human relationships and power. The writers just didnt really go out of their way to make that connection. I firmly believe that the soccer matches are where Inazuma Eleven does its best character exploration and development but since these matches were so insignificant we barely got to learn about the characters at all. This is probably why most of the newly introduced characters didnt feel like anyone of significance. All the matches against Prototype Omega are pretty short and rather dull not giving the spotlight to the antagonists and hence when they join our side to fight the final boss it just feels like it came out of left field. I thought the concept of having El Dorado join hands with Raimon was neat and was ready to see how the parties from opposing sides would collaborate but I guess the writers got lazy because they didnt explore that dynamic at all. Overall pretty disappointing. Regarding the more technical things the music is good as usual. Theres a particular track in episode 48 around 13:43 when Saru goes sicko mode during the final match and its just this beautiful haunting piano melody that really captures the tragic dire situation everyone is in. The opening and ending themes are bangers as usual I especially thought the endings where the VAs of the characters sing together are cute. The animation this season is alright. There are points where it kinda feels like youre watching a powerpoint but there are also some really well animated scenes especially the hissatsu techniques that are there. The 3D animation is also a step up with the Inazuma Caravan variant looking pretty clean. I also really really like the character designs of the mixi max versions of the characters especially Shindou/Nobunaga Tsurugi/Okita and Super Zanark. Overall not the most groundbreaking season of Inazuma Eleven. Definitely enjoyable at times but leaves you wanting more.