I moderately enjoyed the first season due to its many genuinely funny moments involving amusing characters like Hiratsuka, Totsuka and Zaimokuza. While completely devoid of romance, at least that season lived up to the "comedy" in the title of the show. Hikigaya, the lead character, is a refreshingly bitter loner whose observations most people can relate to. The bleakness of his worldview is amusingly contrasted with some very silly situational comedy. Personally I find the funniest character to be Hiratsuka, the home room teacher and club counselor who throws a mean punch, but can't seem to land a husband.
The second season has been absolutely dreadful though. Gone is all the comedy from season one. Gone is the silliness of the supporting characters, many of whom hardly even make an appearance. It's like an entirely different show. Where it was once a relatively lighthearted and amusing watch, it's now a slow-paced drag with endless vague blabbing about things that largely go unmentioned and unspecified. It practically grinds to a halt mid-season when we're suddenly supposed to care about a new character and endless meetings about some pointless Christmas show they're putting up with another school.
This is like a crash course in bad writing. Characters reacting to things that are left unsaid. Lots and lots of pseudo-philosophical nonsense and observations that don't match what we actually see on screen. Reactions and character motivations that make zero sense and seem to come out of the blue. Conflicts that are never properly explained or resolved. Throughout most of the second season, Hikigaya and Yukinoshita are apparently having a falling out, but only God knows why. The writers don't bother explaining it, but it serves as the dramatic focal point of their relationship regardless. Now that I've watched the whole thing, I'm honestly not sure why I didn't drop it all mid-season.
It's an agonizing and depressing slog to sit through, but hey if you enjoy watching hours of emotionally crippled characters not being able to communicate with each other and yet having seemingly profound experiences without ever really involving the viewer into the why and how and what and where and when of it all, this is the show for you. There's no romance and no comedy though, so if there was an award for most misleading title, this would surely win it.
I'm not going to spoil anything, except to warn potential new viewers that the ending is unresolved and unsatisfying and makes you curse yourself for wasting so much time on the 13 excruciatingly boring episodes of this frustratingly terrible season.
