The second season of Bokuben starts off incredibly similar to the first. It’s a series of short stories, most taking up half an episode, just showing off Nariyuki and the girls studying and such with a strong emphasis on comedy and fluff. Things never get overtly dramatic. There’s not really any sort of progression. It’s just some light fun. The issues with that also persist, such as that it can feel like it’s getting kind of stale at times if multiple episodes are watched at once. Thus, for better or worse, it’s just a continuation of what came before.
Things start changing about two thirds into the season. There’s actually some long term progression with one of the heroines, though only somewhat and mostly in the background. And then it proceeds into an arc focused on another one of the heroines that takes up multiple episodes and is quite a bit more intense than the series had been up to that point. That still isn’t that intense mind you, but the contrast with how this went all in on forced melodrama despite how the rest of the series had seemed to have been trying to avoid such melodrama results in it standing out, and ultimately I think as a result the heroine focused in that arc ultimately got the best development of all the heroines in the series.
It then proceeds into the three episode finale. This isn’t intense like the arc before it, but it still differs tremendously from the rest of the series in that instead of having a short story focused mainly on only one or a couple of the heroines, it’s an extended story that focuses on all of the heroines essentially equally and a decent amount on the related side characters as well. This is a pretty refreshing change, and thus despite the core comedy and fluff still being pretty similar to everything before it, due to the changes to the pacing in terms of how quickly it was jumping around and the extra element of how interesting things were in how all the various plot threads fit together, it was quite interesting to watch from beginning to end and didn’t feel like it was getting stale or repetitive in the slightest.
The problems become apparent once the post credit epilogue rolls. The final arc was really good in and of itself, but it resolved nothing. It didn’t even progress anything really. At the point when it reached the final credit roll, no heroine had “won”, there wasn’t even any heroine that felt like she had an especially stronger bond with Nariyuki. The heroine focused on the arc before the finale I felt was somewhat ahead because she got the best arc in the series and it occurred right before the finale, but that turned out to not really matter. That would be perfectly fine if this wasn’t the end of the series, but it very much is. It was clearly stated that Nariyuki wouldn’t think about romance until after they had taken their exams, which very strongly implied that it would be taken into consideration after the exams. And the epilogue ends far after the exams, which means he likely did make a choice and the romance was resolved.
And from that perspective, it feels like it is very strongly hinting that one of the girls did win, but it’s so subtle it feels like they might as well have not have bothered and just ended the series before he picked someone and left things completely ambiguous. As it is, I don’t think the people that wanted the heroine hinted at to have won would be satisfied as it just glosses over it, and I think the people that wanted other heroines to have won, which includes me, would be even more unsatisfied, as it feels like there was absolutely zero point in showing that the other heroines lost. Beyond that the epilogue is mostly fine in that it shows everyone getting the happy endings they had been working for, though in an incredibly rushed format, and shows that Nariyuki finally got the character development that had been hinted at pretty strongly since pretty much the beginning, though this was also pretty rushed. But as this is a rom-com, the fact that things were left unsatisfying in terms of the romantic aspect is a pretty major issue.
In terms of art and animation it’s still incredibly solid. I wasn’t all that fond of the art style and character designs in the first season but they’ve really grown on me and I’d have to say I like them quite a bit at this point. There’s a single dance sequence that has very visible use of CG that isn’t all that great, but it’s essentially one scene that overall is still pretty good so I don’t think it’s too much of an issue. The OP was pretty solid in terms of audio and visuals. The ED I didn’t particularly like much in terms of either. The soundtrack I think is still noticeably good for the genre, though as far as I can tell it’s pretty much just a repeat of the first season’s.
