Review of The Ancient Magus' Bride Season 2

While the writing is slightly better than in season one, it is still not good. Chise is still getting kidnapped or whisked away every other episode for some arbitrary conflict or exposition that is resolved by her stalker daddy threatening violence only for Chise to stop him and resolve it herself. The character designs in this series are pretty good even if the characters themselves are generic. The decision to move the setting to a magic school was a good idea except for the complete negation of character growth by having stalker daddy come with her. Nothing happens in this series. Each episode presents the loomingthreat and tension of "something bad" that could happen. But when it is revealed, whoop guess it wasn't really that bad after all. Problem resolved.

So much time is spent on the ensemble cast who were literally introduced all at once, name by name, one after another. There's no reason to care about any of them.

The world of this series would've been much better suited to one or two-off episode arcs instead of an overall plot. I mean, it kind of does this already, but very very poorly. The stories of Redcurrant (the succubus/vampire) and Joel, as well as Nevin were stand outs in Season One. But they didn't even continue that mini-story model throughout Season One, much less this Second Season.

Overall, can't recommend watching this season and I'm unsure if I would ever recommend this series as a whole upon rewatch. The curses Chise got at the end of season 1 were cool though; kinda wish they did something more with that.