It's basically the same as the first one, but with perhaps a larger budget and cast. And more guys. Because a film that is about women, women's relationships and fighting the old stereotype of "evil witch" of course needs more men - I mean bullies, cowards, thugs and probably corrupt government officials - in it. None of whom actually advance the plot. None of the relationships outside the trio from the previous film are explored in any meaningful way, like between previous film's protagonist and primary antagonist, and most of the characters outside the main trio are background characters. The new female characters serve little purpose and we learn little about them. Two of them have little to no speaking lines.
The main problem I had with this was the bullying storyline. I don't know why this is popping up more and more, but we've seen it before: a group of, typically, male children are messing around and decide to pick on some of the main cast. The main cast typically does not retaliate through fighting, but instead tries to cure cruelty with kindness - a noble endeavor. The bullies seem to start to figure out that their victims are good/interesting. And ultimately the bullies just go back to bullying them in the same way. But now the main cast has accepted it with a smile. For no apparent reason other than the storyline has come to an end. The moral being, I suppose, that bullying is incurable, you should just accept it when people decide for one reason or another to assault you, and boys will be boys. You see this elsewhere in incurable street harassers: after going on some journey with the female cast member, they still catcall or harass her, but in a "loving" way, while the female victim chuckles or smiles or shakes her head. Ah, men... I just described "Yu Yu Hakusho" and "The Proposal".
Even outside of the toxic lessons and trope-forming crap, this serves zero purpose in the storyline. The protagonists don't even attempt to deal with the problem in an intelligent manner. Sure, they eventually sort of show that witches are useful people, but they don't find the parents of the kids to explain "hey, your children attacked us without provocation for somewhat prejudicial reasons." They don't go to the authorities or try to see how widespread this prejudice is. They just create a light show and accidentally defeat a giant. And these kids are HORRIBLE. The scene where they steal the thing they steal made me feel SO uncomfortable. Especially because they face NO consequences for it. The ringleader almost gets crushed to death, I guess, but ultimately all they do is the same bullying they did when they were introduced. Which is supposed to be fine, apparently, given that they're primarily at fault for nearly destroying the town and killing countless people???
Not much else to say about it. Akko was terrible. I know at least two people like her and I can't stand them. I was happy that she faced at least some consequences for her actions and did eventually apologize profusely. Although it would have been nice if someone had explained to her JUST WHAT SHE DID WRONG instead of assuming that she would figure it out by using psychic powers? Yes, it's obvious to us as the audience but it doesn't seem like she's aware. At all. As far as we know, she probably thinks she just ripped the equivalent of a piece of notebook paper in half.
There's a TTGL reference because of COURSE Studio Trigger would put in a nonsensical TTGL reference. It really doesn't make any sense. Maybe it'll make sense for the next film or series or whatever if they got into the lore behind the special wand. I doubt it. But maybe.
I wish I could be excited about this storyline that initially seemed focused entirely in a largely non-sexually-objectifying manner on women and women's friendships and magic done by and administrated by women and women's history. But it's just a giant disappointment recycling boring sexist and cliche tropes with some added bad writing.
