ART STYLE: There is a noticeable difference in art style between seasons 1 and 2. In season 1, the art style was more unique and colorful and fits with the overall mysterious atmosphere of the tower. In comparison, the art style + color palette in this season is completely bland and generic, and the characters are often drawn off-model and look inconsistent.
ANIMATION: Frankly, the animation is ass. This season is full of still shots and the animation completely lacks any fluidity. The fight scene in the first episode is the best in animation the season has to offer; afterwards, the animation for the rest of the season completely plummets. The punches and blasts completely lack any impact, the fighting choreographies are lazy, important techniques specifically named and emphasized in the manhwa are skipped, and most of the non-fighting animation are limited to either character mouth movements or character walking/running movements. The characters always look so stiff and lifeless, and even the characters walking or running look very awkwardly animated. There are minimal body or hand gesture movements, plus character expressions are also mostly static.
DIRECTING: This season is directed by someone who is a complete novice at directing, and it shows. Everything about the anime looks so cheap and uninspired, and in turn makes the entire show feel so soulless and bland. It's no exaggeration to say that a vast majority of the shots consist of either zoom-ins/face shots or characters just awkwardly standing around with zero creativity or thought put into the camera angles. The camera pans on the characters' eyes or faces so often that it's distracting and an obvious way of cutting corners. The transitions from scene to scene feel awkward and disjointed as well. Even the "comedy" scenes are not funny, any emotional scenes lack any impact, and the scenes that are obviously supposed to feel very hype and tense lack any suspense and intensity. It feels like the studio is adapting things by going through a checklist of what to adapt instead of actually putting effort and care into what they're adapting.
CHARACTERS: This season focuses on the introduction of a completely new cast of characters from the first season. While season 1 revolves around a cast of genius characters with above average strength, this season revolves more around a cast of normal/misfit characters with mostly average/below average strength. Yes, the main cast of characters from the first season make brief appearances and will eventually return, but this season is mostly a setup to the introduction of the new cast of characters and for the big battle arc next cour.
However, this season fails at making any of the new characters compelling. Their interactions as a team feel so forced and the characters are barely given any depth. Numerous character interactions were cut from the manhwa that make you care more about the characters and help to develop them to understand their personalities, views, and motivations for climbing up the tower. A lot of the dialogues that were cut were a baseline that build up to dialogues that were included in the anime, so some conversations the characters have in the anime feel so unnatural and out-of-nowhere.
It's especially hard to care for any of the characters when the way they are drawn and animated is so dull and lifeless. The VAs have to carry many of the scenes, since the anime, with the static character expressions and stiff animation, fails to properly convey the various emotions of the characters.
STORY: The storyboard writing and the way the anime presents the story is clunky. Many times, the events that occur in the episodes seem random, disconnected, and rushed through. Key information to understand the context of what's happening in the show, such as time skips or what floor the characters are on, are omitted for no reason.
The first four episodes of this season are especially painful to watch. The first big game/test arc of this season has horrible pacing, so much so that it's difficult to understand the game rules and care about anything that is going on. The anime even skipped out on properly explaining the conclusion of that arc, which was vital information and had no reason to be excluded.
The remaining episodes have slightly better pacing; however, everything else - the directing, the storyboard writing, the animation, etc. - continue to be subpar, thus failing to create a fluid, cohesive story and failing to make the developments in the story feel exciting.
MUSIC: Kevin Penkin's music carries the show. He never misses when it comes to creating a playlist of epic soundtracks. However, the placements of the OSTs in some scenes are questionable, and it sometimes feels as if the OSTs are randomly thrown in everywhere to make up for everything else the anime lacks.
The OP is visually presented like a scrapbook, while the ED shows 1-3 snapshots of each episode. The studio really seems to be doing all they can to cut corners when even the OP and ED have little to no animation.
Ultimately, S2 is a huge disappointment. This season is barely watchable. I can't recommend it when the source material is clearly not being respected and the anime doesn't offer anything above mediocrity in any aspect, aside from the OSTs. You're way better off reading the manhwa while playing the OSTs in the background.
