Story & characters - 8
My experience with this anime introduced from first season started maybe like most of yours did: an anime about magical boys is assured to get some laughs, at worst, it'll be just something cheerfull to watch when you want to shut off your brain, at best it'd be something that's funny for how bad it is. Well...i take that back tenfold.
"Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love!", at least first season, managed to turn into a masterpiece. And this season isn't far off. Why? you might ask. It's just a funny show about bishonens that just do random stuff and transform into magical boys thinking they're Sailor Moon and co.. What's the deal? Well, dear reader, if you believe that then I shall give you a slight change of perspective and ask you: Why does it look like a ridiculous all-boys version of Sailor Moon or -insert any magical girl anime that you grew up with here-? Because it doesn't just try to look like it and make it funny, it also takes out and presents the best and the worst tropes of the magical girl genre by showing how ridiculously stupid they can get in a way that's at best hilarious and at worst nonsense. This is what we call a parody, where the story and characters don't exactly matter as much as the concept it revolves around.
The first season manages to do this masterfully and while episodic, which makes me understand why some people might have found it repetitive, it follows the exact same structure as any average magical girl anime. The second season follows the exact same formula as well: it introduces the magical updates, more over the top powers/attacks, another set of villains, more mascots, but the reactions of our protagonists don't usually go much out of the parameters of an "eh..." which is hilarious, because our poor boys didn't already go through enough ridiculousness as it is, so their reactions can only be translated as ultimate acceptance!
Besides that, what differentiates this season from simply being a copy-paste of the first season is that it digs more into the already brought up subjects of the first season which they didn't have time to develop, such as television, fandoms, networks and more importantly, the "idol mentality". It just impresses me how this show managed to be so aware of how we, as a mass of people, the audience, sometimes tend to like entertaining stuff that don't have much thought put into them besides being entertaining more than actual quality material, without our "magical boys show" itself forgetting what it's supposed to parody. It impresses me how it brought the sometimes-issue of fandoms and how much importance they're getting to be able to decide what goes and what stays by a simple push of a like button. It impresses me how it brought awareness to the duality between idols being a concept built on lies and shallowness and idols as bringers of hope and encouragement. The whole show promotes the entire concept of perspective change and how one thing can be seen as ridiculous, but seen in another way it actually becomes a serious subject, or even a dark one such as the bringing in of "obsession".
Art & Sound - 8
Honestly, I liked all songs in this season, while I can't remember at all the ost of the first. The twins' songs, the opening, the tracks inbetween it, it just brought a smile to my face everytime. The art is also as good as the first one, nothing to say there. It does sometimes slip, but it manages to be colorful and cheerful for the most part.
Conclusion - 8
In short, it's really a great parody that tackles a variety of tropes and subjects. What it managed to do less well than the first season though is the element of surprise. Yeah, I know, after what I said, I imagine it'd be the last thing you'd imagine me to say, but this comes to personal preference more than there being an actual issue. The repetitiviness does get tiring at one point and there is a lot of space that could be considered unecessary during the middle of the show and maybe even less funny for trying to bring in so many subjects to build up the climax which really paid off, but a lot less than in the first season, which was overall more simple and I do tend to value semplicity when it's done right and not superficially. At least, the first season was all about magical girls tropes and the conclusion was a big twist; here it was just an expected conclusion to several elements by introducing the consequence of said elements without excessively dwelving into them.
I recommend the whole series of Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love to those that like parodies, but also to those that would like a brain-shut once in a while.
