Well with a NEW GAME for Aoba and the gang to get back to work and all what changes does Aoba and the gang faces?...well what you expect from second seasons, new characters aka. interns and a restructure of the character design team and character growths LA didn't expect from certain characters.
Let's start off with the new characters that actually appear in the later half of the anime in the form of Momiji Mochizuki voiced by Arisa Suzuki a character designer who has a friendly rivalry with Aoba and has almost the same aspirations as Aoba and looking up to Kou and Tsubame Narumi voiced by Hitomi Ohwada, Momoji's best friend and a programmer. There is another character that was technically introduced in the finale of the first season, Christina Wako Yamato voiced by Kaori Nazuka, one of the Producers for Eagle Jump, but she gets less screentime compared to Momiji and Tsubame in this season and she's briefly looked at, mainly because she's sisters with Shizuku Hazuki. At first LA thought Momiji was going to be the annoying rival to Aoba and was gonna thoroughly teach Aoba a lesson in being a character designer, instead LA was surprised that Tsubame was the one who did this and to Nene at that, though LA understood WHY she was acting up like that to Nene (as she got an internship with Eagle Jump through her contacts aka Aoba to become a debugger where Tsubame worked diligently and as hard as possible without her family's help) but nonetheless her attitude was by the most part unacceptable, thankfully she got her comeuppance with Nene helping her which resolved the matter, both of Tsubame's failings and patching things up with Nene.
Now the restructure of the character design team definitely helped many of the main cast in this season, mainly Hifumi, Aoba and Kou as a result of this. Hifumi for LA was a character LA ignored in the first season due to her shy demeanor and odd but interesting way of communication she had, here in the second season however with Hifumi now the de-facto leader of the character designer team, she was interacting with her peers more and communicating in general thus she got better and increased her screentime as a result of this and hey she even got a few good quirks that aided in some of her more funnier comedic skits in the anime. Aoba became lead character designer for the new game which was named PECO in which caused some strife with Kou because of this and saw that not only that Aoba was growing as a character designer but also showed that Kou wasn't the perfect character designer we hoped she was and this lead to both of them having actually some good drama because of this and again helped these two grow further form their limits as characters. We do get into more insight to Yun and Hajime in one episode but LA thinks that was enough as their placing wasn't changed due to the restructure. Now Nene is quite interesting and as you would have guessed from what LA aforementioned about Nene helping Tsubame, Nene getting an internship working at Eagle Jump was good character growth for Nene as not only did she actually got to help Aoba with a game she created through character designs but she grew as a character through having her own hardships as a debugger and programmer and her own work drama in the form of Tsubame and her work in general and heck it has a flow on effect to Umiko as she's essentially become Kou but for the programmer team and opening up to her interns and members of her group. Seriously this second season did not let up on it's character development and growth of it's already quirky cast of characters. LA is gonna leave the best character til last as she becomes important in the finale.
The animation done once again by Doga Kobo was expected moe from them, with the typical art style of character designs from the first season and the same 3D CGI work used on the in-game character designs. It's the same vibrant atmosphere and the typical comedic moments and inflections it has in it's animation. If it's ain't broke, don't fix it is what the animation is for the second season's animation really.
The voice acting was decent and even the new voice actors of Momiji and Tsubame voiced by Arisa Suzuki and Hitomi Ohwada were great additions to the anime voice cast. But LA having watched the dub of the first season of New Game!, LA thinks it's wise to add in what LA thought of the dub of New Game! here as the majority of the core cast would be reprising their roles in this second season. LA will say this here and now but this dub by Funimation doesn't have the problem of doing moe horribly, this mainly comes in the form of Megan Shipman as Aoba, Jill Harris as Hifumi and most definitely Kristen McGuire as Rin who was on par with her Japanese counterpart Ai Kayano. Some problems arose for LA when it came to certain voices however, in this case, Tia Ballard as Hajime as they gave her a too masculine and too thick accent to go with Hajime, LA gets the masculine part as Hajime is like that but did Tia had to make her accenting thick? Leah Clark as Yun was given NO regal accenting when that was exactly her character archetype instead given her a typical normal voice but the character voice that irked LA the most was Michelle Rojas as Kou and LA says this because LA utterly loves Kou Yagami as a character in this anime that LA needs to talk about her dub voice. Michelle Rojas' take on Kou was that although at times she did her interpretation of Kou well especially in the more comedic parts, Michelle had tendencies to come off as TOO abrasive as Kou, where in Yoko Hikasa's case, she had the balance of nowhere near as being abrasive yet snarky when she needed to and Michelle Rojas just didn't get that balance right. LA still loves this Funimation dub without a doubt even if Michelle Rojas and Tia Ballard irked LA. Ohh and if you thought LA would be annoyed by Bryn Apprill's voice acting for Nene, well no, as her inflections and mimicking Madoka Asahina's vocals and character mannerisms were almost exact thus more commendable as a matter of fact.
So the finale and about Kou, well it was a tearjerking finale LA but it was definitely a well done finale nonetheless and again gave Kou growth as a character as well as Aoba by the end of it and was a nice farewell to New Game!! in more than one way. This finale essentially gave opportunities for the whole cast to evolve from Kou's decision not only through character interactions but through their work in Eagle Jump for them to strive for more and this finale did a great job at relaying such as message to the cast albeit in a tear jerking way god damn it!.
New Game!!'s second season maybe the same thing as the first season, but made this second season worth while watching through it's character growth, integrating new characters with new conflicts for them, giving genuine drama with it's main cast as well as it's new characters. New Game!! did not disappoint and with a strong...tearjerking finale to boot.
