White Album 2, or Hwhite Album as the characters say it, is not a sequel to the original White Album, nor does it have anything to do with the original besides having a song called White Album play a big part in the first half of the story.
The anime begins introducing us to our selfless main protagonist, Haruki, who is one of the last members of the dying Light Music Club. His character is that of an everyman, the anime tries to make him as boring as humanly possible, probably to make it easier for the audience to relate to him. That is not to say he doesn't have any defining characteristics, he does, he just doesn't have anything that makes him stand out too much. Even his character design is rather boring compared to the other male characters in the show.
His guitar playing is one of the main catalysts for the plot of the show and is what brings him and the two girls closer.
Setsuna is our second main character she is one of the two romantic interests for Haruki. It is made clear from the very first episode that she is the star of the high school, she is every boy's dream winning the school's Miss contest for the last two years. Regarding her character development the anime pulls a KareKano on us and reveals that she is in fact a nerdy girl who wears glasses. There is more to her than that, she is energetic, upbeat and a klutz, as she was built to basically be the polar opposite of the other love interest, Touma Kazusa.
Touma is, of course, best girl but also the one who provides a counter-point to both Setsuna's overly energetic personality and Haruki's overly dull personality. She is the daughter of a world renowned pianist and also an aspiring Hachiman when we meet her in the beginning of the anime. Her character, is arguably the one that changes the most, and I think she would have been better suited to be the MC of this anime, and the anime agrees with me because she has more than an entire episode dedicated to viewing the story through her eyes. Touma starts out as a cold and calculated music genius delinquent who because of the other two charactes influence grows a tiny bit more affectionate. Not too much though, wouldn't want to ruin her bad girl image.
The story revolves around the friendship these three create and the infinite amounts of sexual tension between them. As you may have already guessed having two characters of one gender and another of the opposite gender can only mean that we are going to have a love triangle. But rather than having the entire anime focus on the love triangle, the anime only uses its latter half to do this. The first half is more focused on how the characters got to like each other and, of course, the central event in the entire anime: the school fair concert. Honestly, I enjoyed the fist part of the anime mainly because it was light-hearted and more preoccupied with the music part of the anime. Not that I disliked the almost soap opera levels of drama in the second half, in fact, I would say it's the better part of the anime. Why do I say that? Well, probably because I like romance anime in general, I can see how some people might find the confusion, shouting and tears to be irritating but for me it was done well enough that I never felt irritated in the slightest.
I would also talk about the ending of Hwhite Album 2 a but I don't want to spoil anything so I'm just gonna say that while I appreciate what it was trying to do, that is, leave a bittersweet taste in the audience's mouth, I don't like how it did it.
The animation is pretty standard TV anime fare. Nothing really stands out most of the time, except for a few scenes where it seems like they might have used more of their budget like the concert scene. I really don't have much to say about this point, if you've seen almost any other anime set in a high school then just take that and add and orange tint to it since a lot of scenes take place at dusk and you have Hwhite Album 2.
You can't speak of the sound design without talking about the music. The songs in the anime, have a mellow feel to them and, since the anime likes its winter symbolism, they are "colder" love songs. And not just the vocals tracks either even the instrumental insert songs have this feeling of melancholy and coldness to them. The eponymous White Album is probably my favourite song out of the multitude of EDs, the OP and the songs sung on stage by our three protagonists.
As a final verdict, Hwhite Album 2 is a very drama heavy anime that uses music as a central plot element. Some might like it because of the romance, some might like it because of the music, for a 13 episode anime there are enough elements in it for most people to find something they like about it. I liked it because of the characters and their relantionships and interactions, there is a lot that I didn't go over in this short review, so if it seems like you may be interested in White Album 2 then I suggest you watch it because there is a lot to like here.
