White Album 2

Number of Episodes: 13

What Wikipaedia Anime News Network says: "Fall, when graduation is only half a year away.

Haruki Kitahara, the final member of the light music club that dissolved, plays his guitar by the window after school in preparation for the school festival. It was the one and only adventure of a good student who spent two diligent years on his studies.

But when a flowing piano melody and a voice as a clear as bell harmonize with his guitar… He goes from being alone, to being two, then three in the light music club, as the semester he dreamed of, no, hoped for, began."

tTPO says: Set 10 years after the original White Album series, this new series has nothing to do with the old series except that it a) takes place in the same fictional universe and some of the songs from the original series appear here, b) it is based on a visual novel and c) it involves awkward romance and drama.

Having said that, there is lots to like about the series. There is a great dramatic (almost Shakespearean) arc in the pacing peaking midway through the series with the music club concert, before which is the glorious honeymoon period, but after which...not so much. The story is much more direct and less complex than the original White Album, and the focus remains on the basic love triangle that is the heart of the series. This is a good thing and enables better character development within the 12 episodes. And with the main characters still at school the mistakes they make and decisions they make ring naiive and true. (Teenagers don't need that much help to make their lives more dramatic than they need to be so is it any wonder these things are set at school? Who am I kidding? Adults still make plenty of bad decisions!).

How About the Music?: The music that is the canvas for the series also very appropriate though as a guitar player even with a few days practice I am not sure the solo Haruki pulls out at the concert is going to sound as good as it does considering his level of general guitar ineptitude. And the programming of the backing tracks for the original song they play - given they only had 24 hours to write and rehearse this when did Iizuke get a chance to do this? Especially the cracking sequenced bass line? Whatever. I'm being picky.

White Album, Powder Snow and Sound of Destiny from the first series all feature contextually. The OP ("Todokanai Koi '13" by Rena Uehara) and main ED ("Sayonara no Koto" by Rena Uehara) are largely inoffensive bits of J-rock and J-pop respectively that are improved subjectively by the series they are associated with. 

So How Does it End? (Spoiler Free): There is much done right here (see my previous thought on the importance of having losers in any harem series), especially a couple of timely flashbacks - one in the second last episode and cleaver musical one at the very end - as well as a monologue from Setsuna that fill in whatever gaps were left with respect to the characters and their motivations. But there is a certain inevitability to the ending (despite its appropriateness) that takes away just a little from the drama and leaves a worse taste ("Er, that's it?") in my mouth than there should have been. 

As I write this though all is not lost. Apparently this is but one part of a bigger story with further plot 2 and 5 years down the track. This to me is also a good thing and I can only hope the rest of this gets animated.

Overall Grade: Good show, but in a way I find difficult to describe, somehow not quite as good as it could have been. B. (Though this may improve with the completion of the story.)