The second season of White Album is again at thirteen episodes long and concludes the story. It starts off straight after the first season, and if you were hoping for improved storytelling, then your expectations was too high. It is still as disjointed and confusing as well, jumping between the different characters. It mostly follows Toya, and his interactions with several female friends / romantic interests / goddesses. It’s not always about him though and that’s where you will be confused at scenes that seem irrelevant.
Toya and Yuki is still supposedly a couple, although their relationship is muddy. Yuki’s job as an idol prevents her from being with Toya too much since she doesn’t have much time herself. At least in this season, the pair are seeing each other again and actually communicating, instead of just thinking about the other and avoiding each other’s phone calls. Toya’s dad also suddenly became a lot more important with quite a bit of focus on him in the earlier part of the season. Again, it’s hard to tell since the anime does such a poor job at everything. All we know is that Toya and his dad has a bad relationship, and somehow one of Toya’s female friends is wrapped into all of this.
The season also places a heavy focus on Rina and Yuki. While they seem to be genuine friends, they are also rivals at the same agency. While Rina’s brother is the one calling the shots, he seems to favor Yuki a lot more. He thinks Yuki holds promise and does a lot of things to prioritize her, which can be confusing in the scheme of things on why he is neglecting Rina despite her still being extremely popular. This is made even more confusing when Rina holds no bitterness, and continues to support Yuki by truly looking out for her.
Just like at the end of the first season, Toya is not presented in a good light. His has relationships, or at least hints of one, with many of the characters, and yet never really gets serious with any of them. He doesn’t think or reflect what he is doing, and takes a more passive approach which is why the character is so unlikable. If he consciously two or three or four timed the characters, then it’s a clearer picture but at this stage, you’re not sure what story the anime is trying to tell because everything is so confusing and poorly explained.
Toya is just too selfish and it’s hard to see why he is so sought after by all the other characters (apart from being a visual novel / anime protagonist). He hurts pretty much everyone, whether intentionally or not, but we don’t really get to see what makes him so attractive in the first place.
Whether it is poor writing, or context is skipped during the adaptation from the visual novel, or this is just how it is, the lack of intent or explanation is present on all characters. We see one character being effectively blackmailed by another, who is clearly a terrible person, but they end up being so submissive and as the viewer, you have no clue why the situation had gotten this bad. The only good thing about the anime is the music that plays at certain points.
There are many scenes where it feels very coincidental and at times unclear, on how and why all of the characters seem to know each other or are linked to each other, in unexpected ways. They end up just turning up in one episode as if it was assumed all along. As expected, the ending is not great either. It does reveal what all the “goddess” business that Toya was going on about but due to the lack of build up and lack of caring of the characters, it was never going to be satisfactory.
Overall, if you liked the first season of White Album, then you’ll like the second season. Conversely, if you didn’t like the first season then the second season will in no way change your mind. The storytelling is subpar, the scenes are disjointed and the characters aren’t great. It had potential, focusing on a complex relationship between a normal person and an idol, but it feels too distracted, and the characters having too many coincidences linking them together.
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