[Can you hear it? The true melody.]
Just as my review for the first season I won’t really dive too deep into the plot, because I want to keep it as spoiler free as possible, but there's still things to say about this beautiful anime.
In ef: A Tale of Melodies which is a sequel to Memories and definitely something that’s necessary to be watched before or a lot of things in Melodies won’t really make sense even if we are mainly following 2 different plots in this season. As mentioned this season focuses for the most part on 2 new stories which I both enjoyed a lot and they really showed how interwoven all the stories are in ef thanks to all the relationships between certain characters. The first romance I want to go over is the one between Mizuki and Kuze which had a bit of a lesser focus in the show overall, but it still fulfilled its part and I liked the themes it did deal with in their relationship and how it developed with an ending that I very much enjoyed. The second romance we are following is the biggest part in the series and also the key to a lot of mysteries which we finally got answers to this season. Yuu and Yuuko are the focus of it and it’s my personal favorite romance I followed in this show and it did have some darker themes in it which they executed in a fitting matter and it is also worth mentioning that this part of the story is set a few years before the others and also gives us more insight into characters like Kuze and it’s just something that the series does so well in linking all of the plots together.
Just like in the previous season melodies is animated by studio shaft and there isn’t much more for me to add to how great the show looked and how much use they made of colors and symbolism which I haven’t already mentioned in my review for memories, but I do think that they went even more with it this season and it had more really abstract scenes which I enjoy a lot when there’s storytelling and emotions conveyed through art alone.
The soundtrack is just beautiful and they really knew how to enhance and elevate scenes with it especially in more still scenes that have it slowly build up as the tension in the scene keep rises. They also had multiple ending songs which were all very fitting to the episodes they played them in and especially the opening is one of my favorite songs in the anime.
Overall I think ef: A tale of Melodies is an outstanding sequel to the first season with two really intriguing and well written main plots we are following while it also gives us a few more glimpses on the couples of the first season and resolves the mystery of things which most likely kept a lot of people questioning at the end of the first season. If you liked the first season and are looking for more of the same style of show I can recommend it without any doubt!