“It was meh”, that's some words I hoped to not have to say after the amazing experience I had so far going through the franchise, even despite the issues I had with the first season of this entry that were saved more than enough by the positives, but Max Heart in my opinion is a sequel that doesn't provide enough freshness to feel necessary to be there.

The biggest change compared to its prequel is the introduction of Hikari, another girl with powers (but not considered a Precure) that fully focuses on supporting abilities for the girls, not being able to properly fight like Honoka and Nagisa do. Her calm and quite adorable personality is likeable, but she isn't particularly memorable IMO, and the show is once again carried by the main duo… that start to suffer from just the length of the series being too much for the depth of their characters, with 50 episodes it was more than enough for the fantastic development of their friendship, and in Max Heart it kinda becomes an overkill with some episodes feeling too similar to things already done previously because there isn't that much more to do for them.

The biggest negative in any case is definitely the villain side, Precure is a franchise that has some really lovable and/or memorable villain characters that bring a lot to the series, but that's not the case for Max Heart, they are just so forgettable and outside of the pretty funny Uraganos there is nothing I can even think of to describe the other evil characters, something I can't even say to the already underwhelming baddies from the second half of the original

With the significant negatives said, here come the good parts. The art got a solid improvement that was quite noticeable through the whole run, the action looks as nice as usual, and well, despite the staleness the series suffers from, Nagisa and Honoka are still great nonetheless. More importantly I have to admit that I was very satisfied with the conclusion of the story, something that saved quite a lot my opinion on this sequel.

I honestly wouldn't recommend much this sequel despite the still relatively positive score I gave to it unless you absolutely loved the first season or its been a good time since you watched it, the repetitiveness is very noticeable and I'm sad that I can't just go full fanboy as anyone reading my reviews on the franchise most likely sees me as, I can see people finding Max Heart outright terrible if they don't think that Nagisa and Honoka are as good as I do because they are what keeps this sequel entertaining enough to keep going in my opinion.