Minami-ke Okawari

While the first season was your standard "Cute girls are doing cute things", second season is weird, and mostly from the directing and animation point of view. Strange pauses, transitions, views and movements kinda catch you off-guard. Yet because of that it's way more memorable and interesting to watch. It kinda breaks itself, but not to the point of being unwatchable, but just weird, a tiny bit surreal even.
Plot-wise also gives you a bit deeper things, but again, does not overstay it's welcome, and most of the time it's your average slice of life.
Definitely not for everyone's enjoyment, but definitely worth trying.

Minami-Ke Okawari is the 2nd season of the series and with a studio change there's plenty changes that are apparent from the start.

Tl;Dr : Jump straight to EP8 if you want a more similar vibe to the first season.

The first change that you'll see is the art, the characters are changed into a more generic anime look with very distinct features to differentiate themselves from others, such as Haruka's eyes having a red color, Chiaki's hair has a fade color and the strand is animated and more that screams "hey we are the important characters" + the unimportant characters have blacked out skin. The ... surrounding area is more realistic and is also more metropolitan with the apparent tall buildings around + Haruka's high school felt like a completely different building.

The story is also formatted differently, can't really comment much since if I'm being frank the plot of the first 7 episodes are very forgettable and very boring while at the same time try really hard at the entertainment aspect in more ways than one. The reason why I mention only the first 7 episodes is because they are different than the rest of the episodes moving forward and I'll tell you why.

The obnoxious fan service, I usually just shrug it off but the fan service shown here just felt wrong since the fan service is straight up just the characters being nude, and worst of all the majority of them are targeted towards Chiaki, previously it would only revolve around Haruka and Hoshino's suggestive poses but this time they really need to push the fan service really hard.

The characters also felt very out of character, Haruka becomes mean, Chiaki is just the straight man to Kana's shenanigans, Touma is just boy, Makoto is just girl, Uchida's stupid, and the people that I see still maintain their established mannerisms were the middle-schoolers. The kid that they introduced are very forgettable and there's no sights of Touma's brothers.

The only reason why it's not a straight up "Not Recommended" is only because the remaining episodes starting from episode 8 are very watchable, while they still maintain the art and all, the characters revert back to their usual selves and there's an interesting plot happening that pays off in the end alongside the lack of fan service which is actually great to see

Overall, this season is a half disaster and the fact that the 2nd half is very different from the 1st half shows that they made a mistake along the way, because the 2nd half is genuinely a great watch if you enjoyed the previous season, it's just the 1st half is a bastardized version of what existed, almost felt like Chiaki told Haruka to complain about the quality(season 1 tv gag, highly missed) and asread did change it for the better.

I'm giving this one a 5.3/10, skip the first 7 episodes if you liked the vibes of the 1st season and the rest are worth the watch if you want more of Minami-ke, I'd give episode 8 and onwards a pretty solid 7.8/10.

The first thing I have to say is that I'm not an English speaker, so please excuse my English mistakes.

It's the first time I write something about an anime on MAL, but for "Minami-ke Okawari" it has to be said:

*** Stay away from this anime! ***

I really enjoyed the first season which I completed in two days, it was so fun. The next day I was really excited about beginning the season 2, but a bit worried about the change of studio. I couldn't imagine how right I was to be worried...

First things first, the art. Many reviews here are saying the art is more ... or less okay, and even better than in season 1. I couldn't disagree more. The character design of the first season has its flaws (weird triangular mouthes and sometimes some weird foreshortenings) but at least it was original (and nice). In the second season, the character design is generic as hell, seen about 10.000 times. All the characters looks the same. Asread even changed the color of the eyes, you can hardly recognise Haruka. In addition to that I think the use of colors is very bad (it was very nice in season 1).

Then we've got the animation. Better than season 1? Are you kidding? From the very beginning of the opening you can see seemingly CG drawn characters, walking with loops of about 3 frames per sec, and the animation is so bad (jumpy and unnatural) it hurts the eye. Wow, bad start. And in the actual show? It's the same, not good at all.

As for the "fun" stuff, do you remember the small strand of hair Chiaki has on her head? Well, now it's animated... Sigh...

And on top of this, you've got a Onsen episode at episode 1. Yes ladies and gentlemen, a fan service oriented episode right on the first episode of the season.

Usually I watch 3 episodes to make up my mind before deciding to drop an anime but this time I've had enough with one. Stay away from this show, especially if you enjoyed the first season.