The defining feature of the entire series: how they manage to draw every character with dead eyes throughout the series, yet expect us to enjoy ourselves. The defining scene: horrible side character creation 1, dreadlock kids, sobbing and venting to horrible side character creation 2, his crossdressing dad, culminating in being more likely to make you laugh than cry as he sobs and whines into his cake. The defining question: how they expect us to believe Hei can still kick everyone in the world's ass with no powers and reduced to "living the good life" (that one was a minor meme joke, do not worry if you did not get it).
There are already other reviews that detail exactly how the plot is (stupidly) aimless and bereft of basically most of the useful details it should have, so I am not going to rehash that. What I will touch on is how the plot is awful with the characters it uses: it introduces lots of new characters, all poor creations that are impossible to care about; it has a lot of short, impossibly one sided battles; it gives random annoying flashes to some apparently crazy event involving Yin, with absolutely no real explanation as to why they happened; it has random, annoying flashes to these blonde twin girls, who speak in tittery, annoying voices and "say mysterious things" i.e. nonsensoleum; it has cop lady chasing desperately after Li, despite the fact that she has no real insight to anything in this series, never does anything, and just wastes our time; it has former cool cat Mao back as an awful, ridiculously (poorly drawn) cartoony flying squirrel like creature (they called it a mamonga or something, whatever). Get the picture?
This version of Darker Than Black just tries to establish how SAD and AWFUL everything is for everyone, and it definitely does a good job of showing viewers an awful time. Of course, just like people are unwilling to be objective about Code Geass 2 since they loved Code Geass 1, similarly no one will be objective about Darker Than Black 2 since they loved Darker Than Black 1. I cannot wait until the OVAs come out to "connect the seasons" and people act like it redeems all the flaws.
