Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend ♭ is the second season based upon the light novel series, beginning with an "Episode 0" followed by 11 episodes. The series follow Aki Tomoya, who in the first season, while riding on his bike during spring break, comes across a girl whose white hat blows away. He picks it up and is stunned by the girl's beauty. This inspires him to make a game to capture this magical and fateful moment. Tomoya is an avid otaku, loving anime and dating sims while purchasing all their merchandise. From little, he wanted to be a game producer.
He recruits various members into his circle. The heroines is Megumi, who is Tomoya's classmate. Her role in the circle is a bit vague but mainly for modeling. She doesn't usually display her emotions but is very perceptive. Her dialogue and reactions are really funny. Kasumigaoka Utaha is the scenario writer. She is also an established light novel author. In this season, she finalises the game's story and sets her eyes on the future as she is moving to university soon.
Sawamura Spencer Eriri is the illustrator of the game. She is an erotic doujinshi author who's pretty popular and famous. She is a childhood friend of Tomoya's and is a tsundere, unable to display her true feelings but easily feels jealously whenever Tomoya spends time with another girl. Hyodo Michuru is the music arranger and she is Tomoya's cousin, having been born on the same day at the same hospital. They are pretty close to each other. Michuru is in a high school band with Tomoya as the manager. Like the first season, Michuru barely gets any screentime here, since the focus is on the other three heroines.
Unlike the equivalent in season one, Episode 0 won't confuse you and chronologically happens before the first episode of the season. It is a pool episode, where the group visits the pool to help with the pool scene within the game. It is an excuse for as much fan service as possible since the main episodes don't have too much fan service in them. This second season explores even more of the backgrounds of the characters, such as the interactions between Eriri and Utaha before they joined the circle. This was something that wasn't even hinted at in the first season.
It pulls out several emotional punches. As the jobs of several of the characters are starting to come to an end, what is their role now? What are they going to do for the future? Their circle surprisingly finishes their game in this season and the after events are perfect and the most logical follow up. Time does pass in this series since Utaha is graduating and indecisions galore as she ponders the very real reality of what to do afterwards such as university and career decisions.
As hinted in the first season, a rival circle led by another past friend of Aki's is putting out a dating sim game as well. Aki's friend is more commercially oriented and is painted as more of an antagonist. The group, known as Rouge en rouge, is well known and sells doujinshi by the thousands during Comiket, thus it seems like a hopeless uphill battle for Aki's group, Blessing Software. This competitive angle isn't fully realized and seemingly drops to the wayside only for a quick resolution in a later episode.
Megumi herself gets a lot of character development and when she finally expresses her emotions, the impact is much greater because of it. That episode where she and Tomoya speak their feelings to each other is one of the best episodes in the series and leads to more than a few sweet moments. However, it is sad to see that each of the heroine's feelings not being reciprocated by Aki. Aki has to choose one at one point but for now, he is avoiding that in order to avoid awkward moments within the team.
It can be painful and sad to watch when some of the girls are hurt by Aki's actions. While he has made some bad decisions, they were innocent mistakes since he is so clueless at dealing with these things, which just makes it all the sadder. The season takes a surprising turn for the finale and really hammers home the fact that people move on, and sometimes to better and grander things. Considering the scale, you can't blame the characters for their decisions and while it is painful and feels like a betrayal, they are only doing what any rational person would do. It is this angle that makes the ending stand out and make you sad to say goodbye to the characters.
With that said, there are some pacing issues since the anime seems to chop and change abruptly multiple times, with time skips, flashbacks and character angles. It can get confusing as to what is happening relative to the current story arc. Overall, Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend ♭ is a nice follow up second season where the plot progresses significantly and takes on a completely unexpected (but logical) direction. There are some editing issues but it packs in quite a number of emotional punches and makes the characters very endearing.
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