White Album 2

Review updated after playing Visual Novel which affected my view on the anime.

I think I was too harsh on my first review of this show. The main isse I had with the anime was the lack of content, for me the pace was too quick for such dramatic love triangle unfolding before my eyes.

That's where the main adaptation, the game, comes and solves the issue.

After thoroughfully getting through the game I can say with peace of mind, that this show is really one of the better romance series with actual DRAMA in it.

The plot is heavy, but not overwhelming. In this love ... triangle every character has it's own personality, they are hiding their true feelings, making decisions in the heat of the moment. Making assumptions that are not necesarrily correct and making choices that affect their relationships with each other.

It is not your normal show where you know everything about the characters and all you can do is try to understand them with every minute of the showing.

The anime adaptation is OK. The art, soundtrack, and especially lack of Kitahara's inner monologues creates a gap in quality... And lets not forget the fact, the anime shows the first, introductory part so it is obvious it won't be as good as main chapter where the real work begins.

You can't grasp the delight of this fenomenal plot with just the anime and my poor ability to write reviews, so you need to finish the game yourself. Still, personally with many finished shows and especially romances on my account, with all content considered, I see White Album 2 as one of the best romance titles I've ever seen.

“White Album 2” is what happens when You take the name of something that actually had an interesting premise, slap a “2” at the end and make it a generic love triangle.

Most people have an opinion that “White Album 2” is much better than “White Album” and I tend to agree… for the first 5 episodes. After that it becomes a generic, boring and painfully predictable piece of a class B romance.

The story revolves around a musically skilled but socially inept daughter of a famous pianist, a school sweetheart that all the bays drool over and a pragmatic but dull af boy. Their ... ambition to perform in a school festival, to become friends forever and the drama revolving around a love triangle. Pretty common stuff to be honest.

As for the main cast…
Haruki Kitahara - an intelligent, preachy, annoying at times but caring young man aka our resident moron. After all, what's a romance anime without one? To be honest, for the first 5 episodes I liked him as the protagonist. He was determined to achieve his goal, the fact that he actually had one set him above most of the protagonists, unfortunately after that it’s all downhill for him. He becomes a bland, goalless, passive character with a slight hint of a backbone late in the last episode.

Kazusa Touma - A very skilled musically young woman. She sits next to Kitahara in class and sleeps most of the time while at school. She does have an attitude problem when it comes to most people and teachers. Her social skills are beyond horrendous, she’s unable to verbalise her own thoughts and feelings up until the last two episodes. Despite that, she's more than happy to take on the role of Kitahara’s music teacher. To be honest she’s the worst of all three main characters. She has a semi-sad backstory involving her famous mother but all in all she’s just a spoiled brat and changes very little across the show. The only thing that does change is that she actually grows a pair and confesses her feelings… in a dumb, roundabout way but I guess it still counts.

Setsuna Ogiso - last of the three stooges. Setsuna is a pretty, vocally talented school sweetheart. She befriends Kitahara and Touma rather quickly and is the catalyst of change that starts with Touma and her ability to verbalise emotions. To be honest she’s the least annoying of the main cast. She’s straightforward and in her own twisted way, cares about her friends. She’s the most aware of the social dynamic between the main cast and does have some reservations about intruding but that doesn’t last long. The reason why I think she’s the best of tha main cast is that she’s not reserved like Touma and isn’t as dense as Kitahara. She even volunteers to play the villain (and fails) just so Kitahara can feel better about himself (which he doesn’t deserve, at this point he’s pretty much scum).

The plot is divided into two distinct arcs. The Festival arc and whatever the hell the shit after is. Don’t get me wrong in a vacuum the second part of the show would be serviceable but contrasted to the first park it crashes and burns quite a bit. In the second part everyone loses their drive and motivation and focuses on keeping their friendship intact. Something that at this point is impossible and only Touma seems to realise that and even tries to step aside to let Kitahara and Ogiso have their space. It’s really badly written. EVERYTHING that happens in the second part could be avoided if Kitahara took some time before jumping into something he didn’t actually wanted.

That’s why I have problems giving a proper numerical value to the show. The first part is properly written, nicely directed, has some good music and is all in all enjoyable. The second part (starting from episode 6) is a goddamn shit show. It’s like a whole different cast of people made that part. The writing is lazy, using only the most cliched tropes out there and relies almost entirely on plot armor and deus ex machinas for its development.

I guess You can still watch this but after the first half get a drink to soften the blow.

It pains my heart to see all of the positive feedback for this series. Perhaps if you can swallow a few massive pills, you may be able to see the light in this series and it's so called "message" or "moral." Which is I guess don't settle for the one you don't love (terribly portrayed). But when I saw terms like "masterpiece" and "realism" being thrown around, that's when I realized many people just want to see the world burn. It wouldn't be possible to review this without jumping into mild spoilers, but as I begin, I just want to say that this is going ... to be a very passionate and heartfelt review, because I cannot stand for trash like this to be praised when it is so very wrong and poor. Let's begin

Perhaps the only reason why I wouldn't give this a 1/10 is the first 7 or so episodes. It was good, fun, dramatic, entertaining, but nothing romantic really happened. It wouldn't be fair to rate a series solely based on it's final few episodes but such is the nature of a romance anime, it's the reason why everyone clicked the series in the first place. A huge problem I have with this series is that the characters just turn into completely different people after 7 episodes. They go on LONG tirades about wanting to "stay together forever" as the tropes goes on and develop this very deep friendship. And they all throw it away "in the name of love." And yes, of course, love is something deeper than friendship, but what happens is that both the MC and the two love interests begin to start backstabbing each other like crazy. It's as if they never knew each other and it's just terrible writing to be honest. The writers really didn't opt for realism here. I have absolutely no fucking idea how you can call this show realistic. Mild spoiler: the MC is in love with two girls at one time, but surely you already knew that, it says love polygon in the description. Another mild spoiler: the horny fuck ends up hooking up with both girls. The show isn't packed with fanservice but there is definitely enough to sexualize both the girls. Just because the virgin losers are sex deprived and would fuck both girls does NOT mean the MC is relatable to you in any way. This terribly written MC is simply the idiotic writers way of ensuring this damn-awful anime finds it's way to it's target audience. Afterwards, the writers don't know what to do so they just pull out plot-twist after plot-twist along with random backstories to simply create as much chaos and melodrama as possible.

We need to discuss what really makes a drama good. I really really hope that most people would acknowledge things like TENSION and BUILDUP and EMPATHY. There is NONE of that present. Obviously one girl has to lose out in the love triangle, and while I was completely neutral (I promise), the authors had the audacity to have said girl say that she is "vile and rotten for making her move." What a load of absolute bullshit. There is no consistency in your writing, from the very beginning of the series onwards, the Main character acted in a way as to say to her "I promise I will be with you forever" MULTIPLE times and then the other girl tells the losing one that "she had no competition" initially. Listen here, whether or not she deserved to lose or was the best option is far from the point. The whole connection regarding this has to do with the production team/author's opinion of "wholesome" is, and let me tell you, it is completely warped.

Spoilers start to get a little worse here:
The authors develop a friendship and a number of dialogues that just get thrown away later on. You can't just develop a character like that and then throw her away as if she was a mere plot device it is just bad writing. It goes to show that the authors have no sense of what is right and wrong as the MC and winning love interest start to become intimate right in front of the other girls face. But then they realized that this is somehow wrong. I'll go ahead and narrate how they chose to write this.

Writer 1: "guys what do we do I don't think you can just cheat on a girl in front of her face." Writer 2: "hmmm idk bro i've never been in a relationship"
Writer 1: "yeah me neither bro I only know my body pillows and harems"
Writer 2: "WAIT BRO THATS IT!"
Writer 1: "wtf are you talking about."
Writer 2: "lets just throw her in there and have her act like she doesn't care that her best friend and lover are fucking in front of her knowing her feelings and then she acts like she doesn't care as long as the three of them are together and then they live happily ever after!"
Writer 1: "that's genius bro, then we can act like it's deep and realistic because apparently, in real life, people get cheated on!"
Writer 2: "that's crazy bro, my waifu's would never cheat on me!"

I am not sure if you have any friends or not but if you do have somebody you are close to, I implore you not to watch this show. I understand that there can be different perspectives, I totally get it. However a lot of the reviews of this anime tell me that some people just couldn't care less about the bonds between friends. Yeah I know it's just an anime, enjoy what you want or whatever the fuck they say. However, when it comes down to evaluating the writing and story of a piece, you can't just skip over such elements just because you enjoyed it.

To conclude, from the bottom of my heart, I implore you not to watch this anime. It's just pure trash, and not the good kind either. A lot of trash (rent a girlfriend, all isekai harems, girlfriend girlfriend, scums wish, citrus) know that they are trash. But the shows are still alright? Why? How can that be? I'll tell you, the writers aren't stupid enough to think their show is alright, that their characters are realistic. Because in order to truly bring about realism, there must be a level of self-awareness from the creator. The series' I mentioned do this in some shape or form, whether that is character development and change in the series' that try to be serious (citrus, scums wish) or just endless anti-climactic moments and laughter in the comedy ones (rent-a-girlfriend, girlfriend girlfriend, classic isekai harems). I'll say it once, i'll say it again, and i'll say it forever, this show is poorly written and complete trash. plot sucks character sucks art is mid, soundtrack and voice acting are good, there you have it. If you disagree with me, have a reason why please. My DM"s are always open, if you wanna discuss anything I said in this review, I'm game. Thanks for reading, -nashy