I just finished the second season of this show. I do not like it. It is just extremely easy to watch because it's so stupid and, when the characters are allowed to be characters, they are fairly endearing.
The best character is Fire Emblem, who is a Black trans icon of mythic proportions and trapped in this mediocre show. The best parts of the second movie are the sequences that explore their history visually; those are incredible. I also really like Dragon Kid, who is 1000% a baby transboy.
Neither of them got a lot of spotlight in Season 2, but one of the conceits of Season 2 is that all the superheros pair off into "buddy" teams of two. All but one of these is same-sex and they are ALL Extremely gay. They made a team of new characters who literally have Yaoi Chins and the black/white hair thing going on. They gave Dragon Kid a loli lesbian girlfriend and they moved in together. Fire Emblem paired off with Sky High, the superhero show's requisite Captain America expy, and they fuckin, yo. There's an entire episode about Fire Emblem feeling like Sky High is too perfect to be real. There is a point at which this is no longer subtext. It is Text with a gun pointed to your head and demanding acknowledgement. Acknowledge it I must.
But, like the first season, Tiger & Bunny 2 is content to spin its wheels and make you wait episode after episode for nothing to happen, with the main plot only coming to a head at the end of an arc. It is truly boring and devoid of good qualities for most of its runtime.
Unlike Season 1, the message Season 2 was building up to was worth hearing, though. At least, the second cour of Season 2. The first part was faff. The second half is only mostly faff.
At the end of the second half, Tiger & Bunny 2 takes a hard left into ACAB territory. There are NEXT concentration camps in response to an AIDS-scare-style metaphor, the superheroes have been relinquished of their duties in favor of the cops, when they try to catch criminals anyway the police are more concerned with stopping them than the criminals because they want the public to depend on them. The entire case is designated rogue heroes because they engaged to save the city during its darkest hour. The Final Boss is a guy name Audun who was not allowed to be an official hero during Mr. Legend's era because his father was a criminal. Audun saved people anyway, so society labeled him a rogue hero and Mr. Legend did everything he could--coordinating with the police--to lock Audun up in a supermax prison because Audun was so much more powerful and effective than himself. And the media has spent decades instructing the populace to idolize Mr. Legend's corporation-backed, for-profit heroism, which all of the hero characters chafe against because it constantly hobbles them in the field and personally, while demonizing Audun's heroism for its own sake.
The Big Bad (a completely different character) is absolutely right and she should say it:
"After [an incredibly Useful NEXT emerged], people started treating the NEXT nicer, but only as long as their powers were Useful like hers. This is all her fault!"
"So that's what this is about? You just resent Aurora for no good reason??"
"SHUT UP. You heroes are just as guilty! Your very existence made people think NEXTs have to be useful to them to exist!"
"I see your point. BUT IT'S NEVER OK TO KILL PEOPLE."
This is the cry of someone read for the fucking filth that they are, someone who has absolutely nothing to say for their own position.
Again, this show is not good, but it recognizes the true villains of real life. Moreover, it is authentically inclusive of the variety of human experience in a way that blows most other shows out of the water. It at least took the first step towards modern, Krakoan X-Men comics' Correct position that queer people have a right to exist and be respected regardless of their usefulness to """"normal"""" people, who are their oppressors.
I do not like this show, but I absolutely respect that.