So I heard Chuunibyou, my most recent series to get an S grade, was getting a second season midway through last year. And I dreaded it a little bit. The first season had a good arc, told a good story. Did it need more? I didn't think so.
And really, I still don't think it needed more, but so long as it's getting more, what it got was actually pretty good.
We get a single new character who is actually handled pretty well and becomes extremely sympathetic. We get more adorable and hilarious eighth-grader syndrome hijinks. We get some poorly written episodes that fail to commit. We get some very well-written episodes that don't fail to commit. For all that it's spurious and lacks the depth and power of the first season, Ren is definitely not bad and there was a little part of me that wanted to give it an A, but it just falls into a few too many traps.
I'm generally anti-sequel, so this is actually a pretty positive review. If you liked the first season, the second season has more of the good things that the first had: comedy, eye-melting imaginary action scenes, awkward romance, emotional turmoil, embarrassing deliberate melodrama. If you didn't like the first season, a) what is wrong with you it was really good and b) the second season doesn't change the formula much, though it is definitely about slightly different things, like building on a relationship, unrequited love and what friendship is about. Definitely doesn't make the first season better through it's existence but it also doesn't retroactively weaken it.
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