Just like in season one, K-On!! is a laid back slice of life anime focusing on five high school girls and their music club. It's very light-hearted and overall a very peaceful watch. If I were to compare it to another anime, I would say it's somewhat similar to Aria the Animation in that both anime are very slow paced and never really get anywhere in terms of plot.
Don't interpret that as a negative comment though! I liked Aria a lot and I enjoyed watching this anime as well. The first few minutes of episode one were very inducing and I was immediately interested. Many following episodes were very cute in various ways and usually kept me wanting to watch another episode ( I finished the season in about three days). The later episodes seemed to drag on a bit, in particular episode twenty ( you'll know what I mean if you see it) but I was already so deep into the series I figured I'd finish up.
My main issue with this anime is really just its focus. The anime is about a music club, so I was really hoping to learn a lot about music and in particular, guitars and how to play them. Sadly, the anime really doesn't have very much to teach. It's focus is more on the 'moe' of these high school girls, for lack of a better term. This disappointed me in season one and it disappointed me again in season two, though the second time I was more or less expecting it.
If the anime wasn't going to teach me anything, my second hope was that this anime would motivate me to want to put in some effort and learn how to play guitar myself. It's not that unusual for an anime to do that. Prince of Tennis was very successful in making me want to play tennis, and even now I still play quite frequently. Hikaru no Go easily motivated me to want learn how to play Go and get relatively good. Recently I've been slacking, but at my best I was around 4-5 kyu. In the same way as those animes, I was hoping K-On! and K-On!! would motivate me to want to play guitar. Sadly it never does, and the biggest cause of that is the anime's minimal focus on the instruments and the music. Honestly, the club the girls were in really could have been anything at all and the anime would still have worked.
But despite all that, I still enjoyed what this anime had to offer. No, it wasn't what I was hoping for, but what its got is certainly not bad. I grew to like many of the characters and truly felt touched at certain parts of the anime ( I even teared up on a particularly sad scene). Many scenes were genuinely funny, even for an American like myself who didn't catch many cultural jokes. When they finally got to performing I even felt nervous for them.
All in all, it was a good show. It was better than season one despite the fact that it really didn't offer very much innovation. If you liked season one, you'll like season two. If you thought season one was meh, then give season two a chance, it might surprise you.
One more thing I would like to thank this anime for: keeping it clean. K-On!! manages to prove that anime girls can be attractive and charming without the need for any sexual focus, whatsoever. No fan service at all. Not one panty shot, not one close up on breasts. I, as a strong anime fan, am grateful for this, especially since recent anime have shamelessly squeezed in as much sexuality as humanly possible ( looking at HOTD mainly). And would you look at that? If you go to anime doujinshi website, you'll find almost nothing for High school of the Dead, but if you look for K-On!, you'll probably find countless pages! It just goes to show that sometimes less is more, and in this case, none at all is definitely more.
