Season Two sees Clark learning more about Krypton by a memory of his father Jor-El while Amanda Waller learns about his vulnerability to Kryptonite. Lois and Clark grow closer after he helps break her father General Lane out of prison. Luthor allies himself with Waller and supplies her with a robot army while Superman contacts his equally powerful cousin Kara who previously made friends with Jimmy. The youthful alien is really under the influence of the genocidal android Brainiac who is the one responsible for the destruction of Krypton. Kara kidnaps her cousin Clark, although he manages to get through to her after she learns the truth of Brainiac’s galactic crusade to bring all life under his mechanical empire when he’s not destroying whole civilizations. Waller sets up the Human Defense Corps to protect Earth from aliens as Lois and Jimmy head to space with Brain and Mallah who just happen to run into Kara as she was planet-hopping. Brainiac takes over Superman’s body and begins his assault on Metropolis. The HDC fail to stop the psychotic robot even though Lois and her friends break Clark free. After various standard anime power-ups, Superman and the new Supergirl demolish Brainiac in a final battle at the sun along with the help of some reformed villains from Intergang and Task Force X. The door is left open for more trouble from Luthor as he sets up his own business with Slade Wilson.
Instead of building up to Brainiac like he was the final boss of a video game, this season went straight to making him the main source of conflict with Kara acting as his willing agent. This streamlined the story considerably and left just enough time for Clark and Lois relationship to flourish. They continue to grow as individuals and as a couple with all the shonen action tropes added in to the plot.
Speaking of shonen stereotypes, Season 2 is weighed down with way more of these than Season 1 did. Superman and Supergirl both gain new outfits and unlock different powers such as projecting a force field during moments of great stress. Like how he was written in the Silver Age, whatever power Superman needs to have to resolve a certain situation like manifesting freezing breath. He even gets a fiery glow around himself just like Super-Saiyan mode. Season 3 will probably have the Man of Steel shooting out rainbow beams from his hands creating disposable miniature versions of himself.
The DC Universe gets somewhat expanded here too as we’re introduced to other alien races. Hawkman’s people from the planet Thanagar are shown to be nearly extinct thanks to a brainwashed Supergirl. We’re also introduced to a hint of the Green Lantern Corps when Superman must fight a hologram of one. This is supposed to lead into an upcoming spinoff animates series titled My Adventures With Green Lantern starring Jessica Cruz that will be produced by co-showrunner Jake Ryatt.
The character of Brainiac is a tipping of the hat to 80s anime as his form is totally different in this series as opposed to his prior designs. He regularly looks like a green-skinned human with wiring on his bald head, but now he appears as a fully mechanical android much like the Paranoids from Gall Force which were gelatinous lifeforms living inside robot bodies like the Daleks. Instead of being a cold emotionless AI, Brainiac here takes a cue from the MCU’s version of Ultron and added more of an actual personality to the emotionless villain who is voiced by Michael Emerson. After previously playing an older Joker in The Dark Knight Returns animated feature, Emerson portrays a more sadistic and malicious Brainiac like his character on Lost as he is motivated to saving Krypton’s culture by eliminating all other life in the universe to preserve his world's way of life, even if that meant destroying the all the Kryptonians to do so.
The characters still maintain their anime-influenced look, most especially Kara as her disguise for blending in on Earth was taken directly from Dragonball Z as she’s dressed exactly like Android 18. Supergirl’s original outfit even gives off the look of an Evangelion Unit with huge shoulder mounts. There is also a greater sense of body shape diversity as Batman’s occasional girlfriend Silver St. Cloud here is a tall muscular woman, plus a gender-flipped version of Flash’s enemy Heat Wave is a muscular woman who carries on a lesbian relationship with Livewire who oddly helps Lois in her mission to reach Superman and defend Metropolis against Brainiac. Slade Wilson remains a disappointing blue-collar take on Deathstroke, and Luthor is just a young preppy teen who's just waiting to get his hair blown off. Jimmy evolves a little bit too as he leads his new Flamebird news crew and jokingly goes through his initial five-million-dollar investment throughout the course of the series.
The mecha designs in this season are also reflections of various anime titles. The transforming sentries working for Brainiac appear as simple android droids capable of causing problems for two Kryptonians, but very angular in form void of any real humanity. Most of the alien weapons also shoot out missiles inspired by Macross and other space anime.
The greatest anime homage in this are the fight sequences which are right out of Dragonball, My Hero Academia, and Demon Slayer. The animation takes full advantage of the fact that these are fighters with powers like super-speed and flight while firing heat-vision from their eyes. It’s very crisp and sharp containing and great attention to detail aside from how fast they might seem to the naked eye.
Season Two of My Adventures Of Superman digs even deeper into the otaku mindset. There are plenty of callbacks to recent and classic anime titles. Supergirl especially does her best as an alien first visiting Earth as a fish out of water which has been used in several otherworldly girlfriend scenarios. Anime fans can watch this without seeing Season One if they have a basic enough idea of the Superman mythos, although since each season is only ten episodes each, it wouldn’t take too long to get through either set in a short amount of time.
