Following Darker than Black season 1 my reaction to this show was "what the **** did I just walk into?" The first season of the show established a paranormal world with a gritty undercurrent of syndicates, corporations and political alliances. There were assassins and undercover operations and some wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. Okay, that's cool. But primarily the first season of the show was SERIOUS.
DTB season 2 is NOT SERIOUS. There is a magical girl transformation scene that is in the first episode. The animation studio spent a budget on this and decided that hot damn they were going to make use of this underage bait fanservice, and proceeded to use the FULL transformation sequence every single time the main character decides to use her ability. Other contractors blatantly yell out their powers like they're in a half baked shounen show. This is so far removed from what the first season did, it's entirely like just firing up a completely different anime.
The characterization is dreadful. Returning characters from season 1 are either unfaithful to themselves or are just inconsistent messes. The new characters are boring and hard to take seriously because of magical bullshit.
Can't really complain about the art or sound, but it's obviously not improved from the first season. Oh but the transformation sequence is baller though. They blew their load on animating the **** out of that, and then didn't do any other touch ups to the art style.
Overall this show feels like the mother of season 1 ran off with Sailor Moon and Naruto, got impregnated by them, and came back and had season 2. They may share a surname, but from the first look (episode 1) you can tell they're not really related.
Avoid if you like DTB season 1 at all.
