Reviews

The second season of Hamefura is sure to please enjoyers of the fun vibes and warm empathetic notes of the first season. Catarina once again excels in being what fans have come to call "Bakarina": an amusing yet charismatically caring buffoon who seems eternally oblivious, but manages to stumble backwards into solving problems with her friends and her five brain cells. The dissonance between the situation and how Catarina perceives (or doesn't perceive) it makes for great comedy and permeates much of season two. The large, jovial, central crew of characters who came to love and admire Catarina in the first season reprise their roles, remaining great friends with one another aside from the sparks of romantic rivalry, and continue to showcase their personalities when the central cast faces dilemmas.

Having cleared the doom flags of Fortune Lover, Catarina has been freed from the shackles of turning into the archetypal otome game villainess. However, without that clear threat looming over the protagonist, most of this second season could possibly be titled "The Hijinks of Catarina Claes and the Friends She Made Along the Way". There's not really a broader plot that ties the season together aside from the romantic tension that Catarina has helped foment between essentially all of the core cast. One could reasonably argue that Hamefura X counts as slice-of-life. There's a lot of screentime dedicated to backstories for new secondary characters and throwbacks/callbacks to previous events (such as before the season 1 timeskip). Several episodes are wholly dedicated to opening and closing a particular incident or story "arc", nipping the bud for any further growth of the story. It takes until episode 9 for the show to take itself a little more seriously and hold and develop a plot point with stakes for more than one episode. These serve to flesh out the characters and their attitudes, but might be a drag for viewers wanting more forward progression. The backstories and the diversions that lead to them can be fun and intriguing, but many ultimately don't contribute a whole lot to the plot, and some of the introduced characters don't add a whole lot. In fact, one of the episodes is essentially a recycling of an episode from season 1 re-envisioned in a different setting. The characters don't change substantially throughout the season, though some of these diversions give them some additional depth.

As a whole, Hamefura X doesn't particularly stand out as far as comedic reverse harems are concerned, but viewers who liked the comedy and characters from the first season and their united pining for Catarina will probably enjoy season two, with clearer romantic beats. Those looking for a renewed focus from season two or a deeper dive into the "escape from an otome game fate" storyline from the first season may be left wanting more. In that respect, Hamefura X feels more like an extended bridge between the first season and a possible third entry in the series rather than a complete work unto itself.