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It's not going to change your life and you wont feel anything you haven't felt before, but it's a nice little slice of romcom with "a little something extra" tucked away. Oddly enough, for an anime without supernatural elements, extreme situations, or a cornucopia of fan-service; it's relatively entertaining. This is primarily due to the strength of the character "revelation", which is splendid. Unfortunately the storyline is a little mundane (the typical high-school love trope), but some of that is to be expected given the medium. However to really appreciate this show, I feel that you need to try and look ... past the obvious interaction between Usa and Ritsu and pay closer attention to the supporting cast.

The art is decent in this one, maybe not the most beautiful or original artwork I've ever seen, but it's not simply riddled with blank-faced, motionless, characters in the background. The scenes are generally pretty lively, the ambient lighting is nice, and the cut-away humor is great.

That said, it would appear that the nature of this anime is to give us a glimpse into the simple life of Usa and his roommates at the Kawai Complex - which I'd say it's accomplished.

Some detailed thoughts:
While scrutinizing this anime, I thought over many situations involving daily life at the Kawai complex. At first, I suspected that the living situation might be untranslatable (as is often the case in anime) - however it would appear I was wrong in this initial regard. Bills are mentioned, laundry is done, and we even see poor Shirosaki working an odd-job to make ends meet.

It's also worth noting that the back-stories do a great job of explaining "why" a character acts a certain way, but that they don't actually "develop" that character (except perhaps in the nominal sense that our view of the character has developed, but that's a whole different level of meta). What I'm getting at is that two of the supporting characters (with strong backstories) remain rather static while one (who receives only minimal backing) actually changes and evolves with Usa and Ritsu, and our point of view is influenced more by their current actions than their history. In-fact, it's almost more accurate to say that this particular character changes more than Usa and Ritsu do over the course of the anime.

SPOILER ALERT

The character I'm talking about is Shiro. His character development is distinctly different from the "revelations" we have about the other tenants of the Kawai Complex. In-fact, it's even possible to say that over the course of the anime - he is the only tenant who observes the others around him and adjusts his "set course" to compensate for the needs of others. If you're watching this for the first time, or the second time, pay close attention to his progression through the story and you can note how he evolves from a "hentai" detriment on society, to a caregiver and a nurturer through his actions.

With the first season in the chain ending as "fair" at best, the second season of Infinite Stratos is barely mediocre (and that's being generous). Consisting mostly of bottle episodes wherein the characters spend enormous periods of time at the academy doing uninspired and rather uninteresting activities, the second season doesn't even pick up the fecal-stained ball dropped at the end of season one.

While character development in season one was weak, it's nonexistent in s2. The characters literally don't change. So with no character progression and no story progression, what do we have? Mostly just a series of *unexpected* (sarcasm) bouts with a ... mysterious cult that presumably hate's Ichiga's harem enough to try and kill him every 2-3 episodes. It's truly mind boggling how the show might have improved dramatically if they'd succeeded! But I digress, after a series of predictable and cliche engagements they only managed to "gain sufficient data". Which I don't entirely understand because *SPOILER ALERT* they defeat Ichiga and the ladies. So if their main priority was to kill Ichiga and his sister, why not just do it? Oh, because it makes more sense to defeat him in battle so you can gain valuable intelligence on... how to beat him in battle.

In conclusion, I'd say this anime is best viewed while you're doing something more important. Perhaps you could leave it playing while you clean, cook, study, feed your cat, or whatever it is you do. The main point being that it's not really worthy of your full attention, but it's not so terrible that it can't be used in the place of the windows bubbles screensaver.