I first want to address the obvious. Yes, the animation is f***ing orgasmic in Hibike Euphonium. However, is this quality of animation necessary for something like Hibike Euphonium? I know that HE season 1 also had great animation, but in comparison to season 2 it was still pretty tame. In this season you have a lot of complicated and beautiful shots for the simplest scenes. It also does this with scenes that were supposed to show the friendship between the two characters, but the way it was animated was so dramatic and over the top that it felt like it was supposed to be a romantic relationship. This led to an incredible amount of people coming to the conclusion that HE2 was just queerbaiting the audience. And I don't think it's wrong to think that because the show was presented like that. The overanimation was also very distracting. It was kind of difficult to take the dramatic scenes seriously or to even pay attention to what was happening.
Now let's talk about the story and characters. The story has unfortunately become very standard compared to the first season. The reason why I loved the first season was that almost every conflict or problem were there from the start. And by the end of it almost every problem is solved. In season 2 though most of the main conflicts of the show tend to be problems that have suddenly showed up out of nowhere and there was only one conflict that was there from the very beginning and it's my favorite storyline of the entire second season (it is the conflict between kumiko and her sister). It's also notable that the conflicts appeared one by one. This did not happen in the first season and that's why the first season felt like a breath of fresh air. This kind of story structure made season 2 look like a very well produced by the books highschool anime, but that's not what HE was. I can understand if people don't care about this kind of stuff, but for me it was drag to watch through. It also doesn't help that season 2 has a crap ton of flashbacks which I really hate. The first season was able to avoid most of them but it seems that that kind of writing has been lost in season 2.
Some characters in season 2 are completely ruined. Let's take Asuka as an example. The reason why she worked in the first season was that she was a very mysterious big sister kind of character and no one really understood what was going on with her and that's why she was my favorite character. She deliberately acted mysterious for the sake of the concert band. This character is completely ruined because she was the focuspoint of one of the storylines AND she got a backstory. I can talk about more characters who were completely ruined but this review is already pretty long so I'm going to keep it at that.
But what about the soundtrack and the sound though? That has to be good right? And to be fairly honest the soundtrack itself is really good. The same is for the sound design. My only problem with the sound is that I sometimes felt that the soundtrack was used way too much in dramatic scenes for EXTRA DRAMATIC EFFECT, but that is just my personal opinion. The sound of concerts is as good as season 1 and the sound of the instruments itself are again very well done.
When I look back at my viewing experience of HE S2 I would say that I very rarely enjoyed this sequel. There were moments where I was amazed at what Kyoto Animation had done with this second season but it immediately disappeared as soon as I dived deep into the story.
So would I recommend Hibike Euphonium season 2? Well it's difficult to say since I can see why most people would enjoy it. But if you want a well written story with a good structure with fun and consistent characters, I would recommend the first season of Hibike Euphonium. The first season can stand on its own feet since it's a complete story. I would only recommend season 2 to people who really want to know how the story would've continued, but even then I would just recommend reading everything online instead of actually watching the second season.
If you're still here after all that gibberish then congrats and thanks for reading this review and not immediately ignore it because of the score!
