2nd Season of Tomozaki is here and it's been a 'second verse, same as the first' kind of experience, with our protagonist-kun still flowering socially among his Machiavellian class mates, diving through drama and friendships like a fish up a river, always fighting, always going forwards.
The story hook of the first season is nearly entirely gone, so if you expected development on the front that he's Japan's or even the world's best Smash player, that's not something the story wants to go into, despite it being a fairly significant achievement. Game or not, world's best is still world's best (or rather, rank 1, I guess).
It' also feels like the story is dragging out at this point with a romance plot being the red thread through this season with Tomozaki building up actual meaningful relationships with people with some substance to them in ... pardon my wording ... autistic detail.
Have you watched Lovely Complex? It's a comedy/drama/romance show from 07 that I love because it's just people being people, unreasonable, uncool but also a healthy amount of maturity that doesn't leave you thinking they're walking hormone bags.
My point is that Tomozaki, the show not the character, doesn't feel like it has real characters as much as it has idealized tropes from a visual novel and too much of their thinking is rationally explained.
What is interesting is the explanation of social dynamics in their class and how it's viewed from multiple perspectives, especially between Tomozaki and his rival/mentor Hinami Aoi. Tomozaki has grown a pair and challenges her on world views and values and both of them making good and bad arguments for good reasons.
Mizusawa, the blonde easy going and charming class mate, becomes a friend of his and has very interesting things to say that aren't necessarily obvious to people who find themselves to be similar reclusives and social outcasts, that the defensive behaviour you might pick up is repulsive to others. Don't talk yourself down, don't joke around all the time making yourself look like you're never serious, don't be a clown unless you want people to assume you're an idiot.
Do you want to be attractive to others? Not just romantically but socially? Then find confidence in who you are your achievements, what you've managed to accomplish and how you've figured things out. With every success you grow and become more confident and more outgoing.
And then you'll gain notice and it'll pick up, because once one person starts sniffing around you, others want to know what the smell is about and that's how you do it right.
These are crucial life lessons that a lot of people are missing in life, especially now as it's easier than ever to retreat into games or social media.
Story-wise there are interesting things going on and the drama is tense but never feels grating, so that's great, that's quality entertainment. As for the romance... Ever watch Quintessential Quintuplets? Does he go with the blue haired chick, the brown haired chick, the white haired chick, the other brown haired chick... It's all formularized to make you feel like anything could be possible. So that part is not terribly interesting.
The one negative that sticks out to me is that while Tomozaki has grown, he's still stupidly awkward and not always in a believable way. There are multiple bad scenes of him being weird in trying to accomplish set goals and it goes too far. Essentially he loses all his gained confidence and acts out of character, reverting to an annoying brainless stuttering idiot as soon as he's in an awkward situation and it doesn't play well.
Mild non-story spoiler:
The worst one by far is when he invites one of the girls out because he's supposed to take a picture of her eating ramen for his "pinstagram". He starts obsessing over the fact that she's ordered a different meal and it becomes this ridiculous mess of him trying to swap their meals and then making up this story about him taking a picture of her as proof so she doesn't eat his egg, all the while acting horrendously suspicious and having an annoying tropy stutter.
Even the most socially awkward outcast would just ask for a picture and not care about the specific food she's eating, mostly to get it over with and not have to make up insane lies along the way.
This stuttering "oh gee, oh no, oh golly no, what do I do, what do I do" trope repeats a few times and it never feels right. I get that some love this sort of cringe humor, but to me it's just not well executed.
Besides that we have some exposition hidden in an analogy that spans multiple episodes which is not my cup of tea and it overstays its welcome in my opinion. It's not exactly exposition, but it may as well have been.
Other than that, it's fun. Go watch it.
