Haruki is a perfectly normal, genuinely nice guy. A guy who used to be the class rep, who's honest to a fault, who's content to sit on the windowsill absentmindedly strumming his guitar as life passes him by. His best (and only) friend is a guy who seems to overshadow him in every way, but Haruki doesn't care. He's happy to be there for whoever needs him, and content to be cast aside when they don't. He doesn't have any real talents or aspirations except for that one thing, that one stupid dream that's been jotted down in a notebook since last October...

Then a stunning singer and a genius kuudere pianist fall into his life out of nowhere, and insist on helping him make his dream come true... who could say no to that? Definitely not Haruki. Soapy drama ensues, and by the end of it, everyone involved has their lives and relationships mangled beyond any hope of repair in perhaps the bloodiest (emotionally speaking) waifu war ever fought in 13 episodes.

What's truly great about White Album 2 is that it knows exactly what you're here for: the love triangle drama. Other characters make very minor appearances, if at all, and every episode is really about our trio digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole. I won't break down the plot in too much detail in this review because, if this show is for you, then I've already sold you on it.

At the core of every good romance drama is lack of communication. The problem with most anime romances is that this drama stems from misunderstandings that go unresolved due to lack of communication. However, in WA2 this is not the case: Setsuna and Kazusa understand each other's feelings pretty much perfectly from the very beginning. As for Haruki himself... well, he is a romance protagonist after all, so let's cut him some slack.

The drama really stems from the fact that Haruki, deep down, is just too nice of a guy, which is ironic considering that's why the female leads fall for him in the first place. But it also means that the dramatic tension in this show is anything but superficial: it is not so much due to their circumstances, but due to fundamental incompatibilities in their personalities. Kazusa is too afraid to reach out and take anything for herself due to her abandonment issues, Setsuna is too selfish to let her first love slip through her fingers without a fight, and Haruki is too cowardly to turn her down or to admit his own feelings.

This isn't just contrived conflict for the sake of drama, either: it actually drives the plot of the show, and makes for an interesting rewatch/reread even if you already know the ending. None of the characters can even use regret as an escape, because if they had acted any differently in the beginning, they wouldn't have forged the unbreakable bonds with each other that now chain them down so tightly. You get the sense that they are just marching towards this unavoidable doom, which only the three of them can reach together, that only causes the three of them to suffer.

So, our main trio gets stuck at an impasse where none of them are really happy with their decisions, but unwilling to admit that any of them were wrong, and it all ends in the most glorious meltdown of a final episode that left me feeling empty inside in the best way possible. I thought to myself after seeing the ending, "there's just no way that anyone recovers from this".

TL;DR,

Take a main character who's too honest for his own good, two beauties that are way too hot for him to handle, smash them together with an amazing OST that sets the mood perfectly, and watch the sparks fly. All drama, all romance, zero bullshit. Truly this must be the pinnacle of the genre.