If you are curious about this series and haven't watched the first season yet I recommend you check out my review of the first season The tl;dr can be summarized as "great show with interesting characters focuses on character growth/development through a gaming lens." If you enjoy character dramas with well-done romance/comedy and are intrigued by the gaming hook you should give it a try!

I was honestly torn on whether to do a spoiler free review or not. I decided to have my cake and eat it too by creating this spoiler free review with a separate blog post on MAL under the screen name that goes into more details on the show with spoilers.

Story/Plot 9

Continuing from where things left off in season 1, we start with a brief refresher of what happened last season, including the change between Hinami and Tomozaki on their arrangement going forward, with a review of his longer-term goals as well as a new small task for him as part of his continued growth and development. Although, there is a new wrinkle to things now, with Tomozaki pushing back on Hinami’s tasks to clarify that he won’t act fake or make a false confession of love to achieve the tasks Hinami sets for him. It’s a nice callback to the climax of the first season, and a reminder of how things will be different going forward. Expect more pushback from Tomozaki towards Hinami going forward, especially over their conflicting views on ethics. After that, we enter the first arc, the sports festival, as Tomozaki starts gathering information, creating a plan, and then implementing it to try to achieve Hinami’s tasks. Much like the 1st season, while his effort is always there, he manages to succeed and fail in a myriad of ways for all the tasks in season 2. After the sports festival, we get the bullying arc, as Konno starts lashing out in class in the aftermath of the sports festival. Once that is over, we get the longest and last arc of the season, the school festival, with a greater focus on romance as Tomozaki is pushed by Aoi to consider whom he likes so he can decide who to pursue a romantic relationship with as part of his medium-term goal of getting a girlfriend.

While this review is spoiler free, I do want to address the proverbial elephant in the room regarding romance. Whether it is in the reviews and/or comments on MAL, Crunchyroll, social media, etc. you will find a lot of discussion regarding the romantic direction of the show and Tomozaki’s decision for whom to pursue. Such is the plight of a dramatic romcom with multiple love interests. Watch out for that if you don’t want to be spoiled. Also, if you are the type of person whose enjoyment of a show is predicated on your preferred waifu/best girl winning, this might not be the show for you. While romance takes center stage in the last arc, this is still a character drama at heart. Romance just so happens to be the easiest way to add drama to a show given the emotions at play for the characters. I will go into greater detail on this issue with my blog post, so feel free to check it out after watching the show for yourself, or if you don’t care about spoilers. The one thing I will say here is that the decisions make sense to me given the developments across both seasons. I think part of the issue is the 3-year gap between the first and second season has left a lot of people forgetting some important details from the previous season, but it is ultimately a matter of differing opinions.

The other thing I want to quickly note about the plot is that the changes made to the story used in the school festival have symbolic significance to the plot. They may seem irrelevant in the moment, but you will grow to understand their significance in time.

On a separate note, it might just be my own bias since I read the source material after rewatching the first season with the dub earlier this year, but the pacing felt off for me at times this season compared to the first one. For reference, the first season adapted 3 volumes in 12 episodes, while this season adapted 4 volumes in 13 episodes. While the 4th and 5th volumes that make up the first 2 arcs are relatively short, it is clear the director prioritized cutting as much content as possible to end the season with the 7th volume. While I agree with his decision to end it where he did, the climax at the end is beautifully done and had me in tears when I first read it in the light novel, it feels like a little bit too much was lost trying to fit everything into 13 episodes. I thought a lot more of Tomozaki’s internal monologue was needed to help flesh out certain important scenes, including the climax itself. Some emotional depth from the LN was definitely lost in translation in the anime. Another testament to the brutally cutthroat nature of the anime industry? As if we needed more reminders...

Art/Animation 7

The character designs themselves remain gorgeous and stand out in the series. The overall production quality is mostly fine, but since the show is a character driven drama the focus is mostly on making the characters look good and their dialogue. I will note that there are a few occasions where the animation looks abysmal, usually involving hand clapping and characters running. The show does a good job of expressing the emotions of the characters through their facial reactions and body language, which is important given how much focus is on the dialogue of the characters.

Sound 7

Given the continuity with the VAs from the first season over to the second season, both the Japanese subs and English dub remain as good as the first season. Although I want to continue to shout out Ai Kayano again as I do strongly prefer her performance as Kikuchi’s Japanese VA over her English VA.

The anime continues to reuse stock tracks for the sound for much of the season, although there are a handful of times that it elevates an important scene using dramatic pauses in the sound and different music than the stock tracks.

Characters - 10

I really enjoyed the characters in the first season, and they continued to shine in season 2. They remain well rounded and act in a realistic way given how their characters were established in season 1. Mizusawa becomes an excellent best male friend to Tomozaki as he navigates the social hierarchy of school and his drive for self-improvement. Mimimi is the funny outgoing friend everyone either wishes they had or treasures. Aoi is as sadistic as ever as Tomozaki’s taskmaster pushing him onwards towards his goals. Kikuchi is still the adorably shy bookworm whose insights help guide Tomozaki. Tama and Izumi are charming to watch as they navigate their own personal struggles with changing who they are. All these characters mentioned, with perhaps a notable exception for Aoi, receive development this season as they continue their own personal journey of growth during adolescence, inspired in part by Tomozaki. It is a testament to the character writing that I can imagine all 5 of Aoi, Fuuka, Izumi, Mimimi, and Tama as viable love interests for Tomozaki under the right circumstances when Aoi starts questioning Tomozaki about who he is interested in. They have all received enough development, and Tomozaki has spent enough time with all of them over the 6 months that have elapsed since he started changing, to connect with all of them and establish chemistry in different ways, even if most of them will just be friends.

One of the great things about Tomozaki’s character is that despite the improvements he has had made over the past 6 months, he will backslide when confronted with situations that push him too far outside his comfort zone. He has spent too many years believing he is a bottom-tier character in life to overcome that self-doubt so quickly. For me, it is good character writing for him to fall back on his old ways of thinking and behavior in those moments until he starts making the biggest change of all: Changing his perception of himself via his own self-esteem.

Enjoyment – 9

Despite my complaints about a few issues with the show I still enjoyed it immensely. It’s a rare show for me that manages to be dramatic without feeling melodramatic, while also successfully balancing the romance and comedy together. It’s become one of my favorite series that I am happy to rewatch just because I enjoy the characters and story such that even knowing what happens doesn’t impede my enjoyment when rewatching it. That is an exceedingly rare thing for me to have for this genre of show, because too often these types of shows are either too unrealistic, too stupid, too boring, or just drag on way too long as we wait for the couple to finally get together for me to ever consider rewatching them, if I don’t just drop the show altogether. It is also notable that this show manages to stick out positively for me amongst the sea of self-insert wish-fulfilment fantasy shows that populate the genre. The girls are pretty, but they aren’t models with giant breasts flopping around everywhere for fanservice like a lot of shows. None of them are magically in love with the loser protagonist Tomozaki was in the beginning for little to no reason or are part of a harem of love interests. I could go on quite a while with these common lazy writing tropes, but you get my point.

Since the strength of anime as a medium for entertainment lies in its ability to show action in ways that live action series either struggle to replicate, or that require outsized budgets relative to animation studios, finding a show engaging enough to maintain my interest without standout animation or lazy writing tropes carrying it as a crutch is notable. This series could easily function as a live action drama with minimal changes compared to the anime. In a sense, that is the highest form of praise I can give the show: Good enough to stand on its own merits without the usual crutches used in anime that prop up lesser works.