Shin no Nakama ja Nai to Yuusha no Party wo Oidasareta node, Henkyou de Slow Life suru Koto ni Shimashita 2nd

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the second season of Shin no Nakama! Perhaps you thought this would be a formulaic continuation of the rather mediocre power fantasy isekai/slice of life the first season was. Little did you know that the showmakers decided to pander to a different market segment altogether. Yes, this show is now officially an ecchi harem isekai. Bring out the champagne!

Well, that wasn't totally fair. It is not just an ecchi harem isekai. It also has elements of (explicitly acknowledged) incest, polygamy, and sexualization of underage girls. Your FBI agent will definitely shake his head. That much, I can guarantee.

I can hear ... you say: "Surely, you're joking, Mr. Zolmir! You must be mistaking siscon/brocon for incest, right? They surely wouldn't go that far!" Alas, my friends, I kid you not. Ruti, our protagonist's little sister explicitly acknowledges that:

(1) she is OK with her brother marrying Rit because she herself cannot marry him (pesky social norms),
(2) despite not being able to marry him, she can still be his lover,
(3) this is OK because her brother can "handle two partners with ease", and ergo
(4) Rit can be the number one wife and Ruti can be the number one lover.

This is followed by Ruti joining the main couple (and the elven side chick) in a hot bath while totally naked. I rest my case, dear reader.

As for the sexualization of underage girls, just watch the opening. The main couple are nowhere to be seen, and we are treated to several half- and fully-naked scenes with Ruti (officially "17") and Tisse (looks 11 to me, but what do I know.)

Now that we have satisfactorily established the genre, the question becomes: "Is it a good ecchi harem isekai? What about the plot? I-I mean the actual plot!"

In terms of the actual plot, it is your run-of-the-mill slice of life isekai with sub-standard writing. In the span of three episodes, we have not one but *two* naked bath scenes (one hot spring, one bathhouse), one town festival, one outdoors trip/picnic, one "misunderstanding" battle, and one actual battle. Unfortunately, the battles have zero stakes. Since our protagonist's sister is the Hero with a capital H, they just auto-resolve battles, to put it mildly.

The dialogues are sleep-inducing and I am not even sure if they contribute anything to the show. In fact, you might want to seriously consider turning off the subtitles, because I am quite confident what you imagine the characters are saying to each other is bound to be more interesting than what the writers actually came up with.

What about the characters? As was the case in season 1, they are all cardboard cutouts. I mean that figuratively, of course. In reality, all our harem members (with the exception of Tisse) boast very respectable cup-sizes. And there is something for everyone! All cup-sizes are represented. Since it is their most distinguishing character trait, I am going to list our harem members sorted by descending cup-size:

1) Rit: Rit is the fiancée and prospective wife of our protagonist. She sports the biggest hooters of them all. Hence, it makes sense that she is going to be the official wife, and the primus-inter-pares of the harem. She is the girl-next-door and the faithful waifu.

2) Yarandrala: Yarandrala is the now-stereotypical libertine elf. In terms of rack size, she comes second to Rit, but she makes up for it by being completely unbound by human social norms, because... she is an elf, duh! (RIP, Tolkien...) She is brazen enough to join Red in the hot springs while totally naked.

3) Ruti: Ruti is the little sister of our protagonist, and she has a crush on him as previously discussed. She looks and sounds like a middle schooler, but she is officially 17, which checks out if you are a staunch believer of 500-year-old dragon lolis. Her cup-size is just above-average, which means almost flat by anime standards. Her existence is summarized by being the Hero and a brocon.

4) Tisse: Tisse is Ruti's sidekick. Her distinguishing features are being shy, being even younger than Ruti, and owning a cute spider familiar whom she has named as if she was a kindergartner. She looks and sounds like a grade schooler, so I guess that makes her a middle schooler? Her cup-size is below-average, and she is the only member of the harem who doesn't explicitly have a crush on Red... yet! Or perhaps she is afraid Ruti would murder her.

What about the protagonist? He is the stock-standard self-insert male anime protagonist: honest, hardworking, has black hair, and is admired by every female in existence.

To sum it up, the show is exactly what it says on the tin. If you are an enthusiast of ecchi harem isekais, you'd probably rate it at 6/10. To me, it is barely a 4 if I am being generous, and an easy drop...

While season 1's story had a lot of issues but underneath had a beautiful romance developing. Season 2 has nothing developing with a new story with the same issues.

Characters: 7/10

Everyone is still as nice and sweet as before. But the problem is that since Red and Rit are now a couple and engaged, and Ruti has retired from being a hero; this season gives nothing for these characters to do. There are 3 different romance plots that go nowhere since they're only used for jokes, specially Ruti's love for her brother (which would have been interesting to see Red dissuade her if they didn't sweep ... it under the rug). So from ep 1 to the last, these characters remain unchanged.

Story: 6/10

But there is a plot, somehow. There's a new hero and he's a nutjob. You know because 10% of an episode shows how sociopathic he is, until later episodes focus on him. But again like last season, the story refuses to go deeper than it is. The stakes are buried underground as the protagonist tells you again that "you're more than your blessing". And somehow he believes it and apologizes, but because the stakes reside in a cemetery, there's little to apologize for.

Animation: 6/10

It's not an A-lister so of course it's not going to be top notch. It's not bad but not good. But I noticed they lean into the comedic aspect by making more chibi faces. So that's something.

Overall: 5/10
I prefered season 1's gutless story with a side of beautiful romance than season 2's lackluster story with a side of nothing. The story is so lacking that if you watch only the last 2 episodes you won't miss anything important.

The worst kind of boring, just painfully dull and absolutely not worth your time. Entirely preticable and while the old characters are fun, the new ones are largely two dimensional, predictable, tropes.

The series is, again, split in half. This time between Van the new hero and Ruti adjusting to her new life. In theory this works but it also means neither story has time to breath. Both feel short-changed and lack any real substance. You know what's going to happen, how it's going to happen and honestly when it's going to happen.

One of the major problems is that all the main characters have fully ... completed their arcs. There's nothing left for them to achieve, so they're just milling around in the most ridiculous way. I guess the new, and side, characters are supposed to fill in but it all feels so forced. I rarely feel depressed than an anime exists, but knowing this got a second season when something else didn't is so, so depressing.

I can't honestly recommend this on any level, seeing as the minor changes that make up the plot are so dumb it's depressing that this got a second season.