Spy Classroom Season 2 · review
Season 1 of Spy Kyoushitsu a.k.a Spy Classroom — getting to know the main characters and the setting...that ultimately overpowered itself in its own heft to do an adaptation right. Season 2 of wannabe spy girls ready for their mission — it's Lights, Camera, Action! There has always been the saying that novelist Takemachi's Spy Kyoushitsu a.k.a Spy Room is one of the most notorious hard-to-adapt anime adaptations that absolutely butchered the impeccable LN when it first came out back in Winter. And with one more season of the anime to prove its worth, does Part 2 a.k.a Season 2, finally justify what its prequel season setout to be? In many ways, it's definitely a redemption arc for the anime adaptation, though still a far cry from being like its great source material.
TL;DR, just in case you missed reading my review back in Winter, the other Lamplight girls who get the spotlight this time that were missed in Season 1:
- Monika, codename: Glint. The most talented of Lamplight, being able to think on her two feet of last-minute decisions.
- Thea, codename: Dreamspeaker. The oldest and most attractive member of Lamplight, she is good with negotiations.
- Annette, codename: Forgetter. The one who is good with engineering, her becoming a spy is just natural progression thanks to her special skills.
Otherwise, there is just nothing that is significantly new to add to the sequel, other than acting out the part of truly being James Bond's Mission Impossible, where the Lamplight spy girls and Inferno's head honcho Klaus head out to big lands to conduct their spy sortie shenanigans against other prominent spy groups that risks their reputation and lives on the line. The other girls (a la Lily, Grete, Sybilla, Sara and Erna) already featured in Season 1 get better as time passes, and so do Monika, Thea, and Annette, showcasing their reasons of wanting to become spies. I felt that the compromise of "show, don't tell" works well in the sequel for being adequately paced, though the prequel had the train of thought from director Keiichiro Kawaguchi to cram as much content as possible should there be the off chance that the Winter show was the only one they would get, which does a major disservice to the LN either way.
With nonoc's 2nd OP song, I pretty much liked the 1st OP song just because it made sense and was a good fit for the show, and that goes the same for sajou no hana's sequel ED song, to which I preferred Konomi Suzuki's prequel ED song. But it's not like either song really piqued my interest for the "I Spy" tunes. The OST was average, and still continues to be so in the sequel.
"Disappointing" is the only word I can use to describe Spy Kyoushitsu a.k.a Spy Room's anime adaptation as a whole, even if Season 2 here is better constructed overall. It's an improvement, no doubt, but in my opinion, not much.