To Love Ru Darkness 2nd is the second season based on the manga series. It serves as the finale of the series with its fourteen episode season, plus four more OVAs. The aesthetics has changed yet again, with character proportions being softer and more rounded. The season starts off pretty much as a direct continuation of the last. The situation hasn’t changed at all except that Momo is continually pushing forward her plan to build a harem for Rito. As a part of that, she has started pushing several characters forward to at least acknowledge their feelings, if not actually try to confess to Rito. It eases you back into the season with a typical clumsy day of Rito but quickly becomes serious against with the arc involving Mea and her goal on Earth.
There is steady progress being made on all objectives. The main theme of the season seems to be that everything is laid on the table and there are no more secrets anymore. Once everyone has revealed what they were trying to hide, or at the very least informed everyone of their intentions, they’ll gain acceptance.
That isn’t to say that the journey will be a pleasant one as there are plenty of painful moments, both for the characters and as the viewers while watching it unfold. Mea goes through an existential crisis due to her conflicting objective as a weapon and as a normal human being friends with Nana. Naturally, she likes living her life here. This is just another excuse for Rito to show his one and only distinctive feature (apart from his superhero level clumsiness) by being kind and have Nana warm up to him even more. As suspected, Mea is emotionally unstable and she shows these moments a lot more frequently this season. It is up to everyone else to try and mellow her out.
Mea’s master was always in the shadows and directing things in the background. The first season didn’t reveal too much about them but in this season we quickly get new information, from their appearance to their name. However, Mea’s master’s appearance isn’t too much to be excited about. It’s actually fairly underwhelming as their character archetype is too similar to several others, not bringing much to the table. Plus, you’ll know that they’ll change their tune once they interact with Rito and others for a little while. Like everything else in the season, it’s melodramatic.
While Momo is still dead set in her harem plan for Rito, it becomes more and more obvious that she is the forward one. Rito does what he does best to everyone except her and when others start to realize their fondness for Rito, Momo should be ecstatic. Only that Momo gets a bit jealous and envious, it’s somewhat sad to see her like this. The heavy fan service elements remain. Pretty much all scenes will have a fan service element to them, which means that it is way too much and frequent. The characters will be going through a serious conversation and then the fan service will take over, whether it makes sense or not. The worst ones are where there is clearly no need for it but it is placed there just because. The scene and its dialogue was already hard to take seriously, being quite cheesy, but adding the fan service on top means it drops to being terrible and pointless.
Adding to the above is that there are a lot of moments where it feels like filler. The main reason for this is that it is the same type of events happening again and again. Rito and another character will be interacting before Rito will accidentally do some ecchi things to the girl. The girl gets angry but secretly improves their feelings with Rito. Lala’s inventions or Oshizu’s psychic abilities has a high chance of being the reason for Rito’s accidents. It’s on a constant basis and there are really only so many scenarios it can do this for before it gets stale.
This was always going to be the case but with such a huge cast, the anime tries to cover a bit of everyone. Naturally, some characters will get more screen time than others. Momo, Mea and Yami gets the lion’s share, since they are the main characters, but supporting characters such as Rin and Kotegawa get a surprisingly large focus as well. Lala is always in the background but it is nice to see that she gets some focus in several scenes.
The season finale expands on what the Darkness subtitle meant, although it was mentioned and teased many times prior to it. It goes completely off the rails though, and is like a distillation of what the series was about into its purest form. However, it resolves it in a strangely fitting way and while the ending is an ending, it leaves several things to be desired and doesn’t wrap up everything.
Then there are the OVAs, which are a continuation of the season, with more slice of life type of activities. It’s basically more of the same, and has an open ended ending, with no resolution at all. Just like the season finale, it leaves it at status quo and considering the source material has ended with no sequel series, it’s kind of disappointing that we don’t see the ultimate fate of the characters.
Overall, To Love Ru Darkness 2nd has a little bit more focus than the first season. It resolves the tension between Yami and Mea, but does little in Momo’s plan. Rito just continues his normal daily life of falling into sexual positions with all the girls and everyone’s feelings keeps running around in circles. The non-ending is definitely a downer, and while the characters have grown just a tiny bit over the course of the season, it’s not enough and sad to see them just continue on as they had always been.
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