Story: 7
Hakkenden season 2 continues right where season 1 left off. In this season Shino and his group continue to search for all eight of the marbles. The new character Ao becomes slightly more present in the second season, but not as much as I would have liked him to. Although I did enjoy this season, I found the second season to not be as "good" as the first season in terms of episode quality consistency. I expected the plot to be more in depth, but it felt extremely rushed. A lot of the episode were wasted on side-plots that did not relate to the original main plot. If this were a longer anime it'd be more understandable, but with only 13 episodes left the plot should have been more focused. Some episodes were simply awesome, while others were dull. What I did like though, was how well the tone switched so subtly, whether is was from happy to sad, or sad to funny. All the tones were well done, sad moments were truly meaningful, and the funny moments were actually funny. The anime did pick up in progression towards the end pleasantly.
Character: 8
There is not as much character development as I hoped to be, and there seems to be a lack of consistency in episode quality. Some episodes are very interesting, while others are irrelevant to the plot, or simply just dull and not entertaining. Coincidence is a key word, the characters with marbles seem to randomly gather together. The story even mocks itself by mentioning how coincidental all of these events are. What the story does do though is, create a strong "family" bond between all the characters that come into the story. Each character is given a back story and a defined personality.
Art: 10
The art is exemplary, it's evident that a lot of time and focus was spent on the colors and details. This anime would not be worth watching if it were not for the simple eye candy of how pretty everything is. The colors are soothing to look at and the characters are well drawn.
Sound:8
The OP is okay, the ED is better than the OP and provides a great end to each episode.
Overall:8
I'd still definitely recommend watching the second season if you enjoyed the first season. I wouldn't have too high expectations, but nevertheless, I still enjoyed watching this season. Towards the end the anime started to catch back on track and really become interesting.
