It was kinda whatever up until around the halfway point where the plot took a complete nosedive culminating in a trainwreck of a final episode. Spoilers from here on out but you probably shouldnt watch this season anyways. Ill start with everything except for the plot. I didnt notice much of a difference in art/animation quality the music seemed equally unremarkable nothing besides the plot had any remarkable change in quality. Now about the plot.. Their first major error was effectively concluding the entire story up until that point only halfway through the season. It immediately sucked all the momentum out of the show and made me lowkey want to stop watching. This is kind of my first gripe with a lot of anime that is especially bad here: Manga cannot be guaranteed to work within the structure of standard anime seasons. This issue is pervasive throughout the industry. As an overwhelming amount of anime are adaptations rather than bespoke stories crafted for their medium they more often than not cram their source material into the structure of anime seasons and almost always do not fit naturally. This shows up most often in the tendency for most anime to have terrible pacing and rushed final episodes. Thats the writers trying to force a bow onto a narrative that wasnt written to end where the anime needs it to. This isnt always true: I personally felt as though Your Lie in April didnt suffer from the shortcommings of being an adaptation at all and in fact was better of as an anime than it wouldve been in a nonaudiovisual medium. Side note Your Lie in April was a 22 episode season. In my opinion it wouldnt have worked in 1213 nor split across 2 standard seasons. Unfortunately in this case this show was not part of the exception. It was long from it. This show made 0 attempt to adapt the source material into the medium and if they did they did a horrible job. Consequently the season basically ended halfway through and then the writers had to hobble together some semblance of a progressing plot by cramming 3 simultaneous arcs into the story. These new arcs meander for much longer than they need to interrupt each other before it can feel like anything is changing and are a tonal departure from what the show had been up until that point. It only starts getting truly bad once Kanades arc kicks into gear. Kanade was always the audience insert up until this point. Her role was to be the straightman to the main couple Yukimura and Himuro and now that their arc was essentially over there was room for Kanade to grow. This isnt bad I am on board. I started finding it a little frustrating with how long she was holding onto this I have to be normal point but they were going ahead with it so I was listening. This could be a nice little arc about the plain normal audience insert learning to embrace what makes her unique and become an interesting character in her own right. Then it turns out that the guy she was seeing was a complete nutjob and the entire arc was instantly invalidated. In feeling the need to make the driving force of Kanades I have to be normal belief a completely crazy person they cheapen their story to a ridiculous degree. Theyve effectively done an appeal to ridiculehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appealtoridicule which is a fallacy that doesnt actually make a sound argument. Now instead of being about Kanade learning to be true to herself and stop repressing her feelings they effectively force her to change her mind by making normal look absolutely insane. It went from being a lesson that might actually ring true to some in the audience to completely detatched from reality and obnoxiously comical. To suddenly spring those disgusting traumatic things onto the audience of a show like this is also a baffling choice. This is not what your audience is here for. A lot of writers will mistake shock value for emotional depth because it lingers but its a cheap trick. You havent actually written a good scene. You just shocked the audience. It can be effective but only when its actually justified in the plot. Its like raw fish: if prepared right it can be great. If you dont do it properly or use the wrong kind youre gonna get food poisoning. And I wouldnt use raw fish in my breakfast cereal. This tone was not appropriate for this kind of show. At all. The psycho Kanade was seeing was not properly set up in this way either. You may argue that he was hanging out with the sketchy crowd to begin with but the crowd he was with was just some goofballs used for lighthearted jokes once or twice and it never got nearly as serious as it suddenly did in the final bit. Its forced inappropriate and something no one in the audience wanted to see. Kanade didnt deserve that and neither did we. Not only was it tonally inappropriate in the context of the show it was tonally inappropriate within the context of the scene itself. This almost doesnt need to be said but the pacing of that final scene was so bad that it was actively distracting. It was so removed from reality that it was absolutely impossible to connect with any of the emotions trying to be conveyed. While Kanade was having her honestly really grating on the ears outburst to all the sketchy guys that had literally just kidnapped her were seeing all these scenes and flashbacks on top of her rambling which superficially disguise the level of fantasy playing out in the moment. If the camera were instead fixed on whats actually happening in that room youd have 4 dangerous creeps patiently waiting for the girl they just kidnapped to finish having an emotional breakdown like some kid. When Kanades knight in shining armour Yukimura bursts into the room he not only behaves like a complete moron but also starts behaving out of character. Behaving like morons for comedic effect is common in this show and usually fine. Its not fine when weve just seen a guy get clobbered and tazed and threats of sexual assault. Yukimura then proceeds to completely fail to make a decent rebutal towards Kanades wishes to be normal effectively telling her that she is her and because she is her she should not be other people. Thats not what Kanade was hung up about but since shes tied up and being threatened by the word normal zip tied to a serial killer she suddenly agrees. If anything shes more moved by Yukimura going this far than by any point he made even the writers struggled to believe Yukimuras argument wouldve been effective here. Its so disappointing because theres been multiple moments throughout the series that Yukimura has had that I enjoyed. I thought the part with him on his laptop breaking down all the reasons he liked Himuro giving massive points to her rattling off a tonne of things he really admired to be really cute. The moment at the end of the first season where the mood index or whatever was perfect was also some nice reincorporation and they managed to smoothly slide into it. They just really didnt have a good concept here. Thats ignoring all the other small nitpicks like him taking a beating with a bunch of glass bottles in his vest him and Himuro happening to overhear the professor tipping him off that the guy was bad news Yukimuras complete lack of self preservation and gravity to realise the kind of situation they were in its all these small things that dont line up that make a bad narrative bad. Im really tearing into this one scene here but it just goes to show that this sort of thing was out of the shows depth. You cant put a scene like this in this sort of show or else it exposes all the flaws in its writing. As always we have now run out of time and need to hastly wrap things up. The ending now has to be crammed into literally the last 2 minutes of the final episode. Its not like Kanade falling for Yukimura was unjustified after all he had just done for her and its not like Himuro being sorta chill with it was unjustified given the rapport the two had built with each other but personally none of that is enough to justify jumpscaring the audience with a love triangle especially in a wholesome show that hadnt tried to do pull any romantic drama thus far. And the writers know this because they dont do anything dramatic with it The seriousness was tantamount to back when Yukimura was confronting a bunch of kidnappers like 8 minutes earlier. It wasnt what I wouldve done but it wasnt nearly as bad as the literal crimes of earlier that same episode. To be honest I think the only reason Himuro was so chill with it was because the writers think they have to always end a narrative by bringing it back to the very beginning and they had to find a way to reincorporate her line from the very beginning of the narrative. Which I dont always mind but it is a bit forced in this case. If you had told me that they had rushed through the source materials story just so that they could end at this point and Himuro could say her line again I dont think Id have trouble believing you. I dont understand how the scores for these animes are always the same. This was clearly poorly executed and it doesnt seem like many people disagree. If you enjoyed the first season but actually cared about the plot maybe avoid this season. Itll leave a foul taste in your mouth. PS. If you liked Yukimura as a character maybe check out Steins Gate 1 and 0 instead. Theyre not really that similar the shows not exclusively a romance and the first half of the first season is a drag but Ill always love Kyouma and its just a way better show. Maybe Ill go rewatch that now.