Minami-ke Okawari
Title: Minami-ke Okawari Genre: Comedy, Slice of Life Rating: 6.8/10
Review: The second season of Minami-ke had some pretty big changes. The first, and easiest to notice, is the art style. They seemed to add a little more budget to the art and take away from the story. Now, as a comedy slice of life there wasn’t much of a story to begin with. It seems as though the writers moved toward a strong slice of life and less comedy. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t he Minami-ke I remember. There were some funny moments, just nothing that memorable. In fact, most of the second season is a blur to me. They all kind of meshed together at some point I think. One element that didn’t change were the characters. I don’t believe any new ones were introduced in the second season. Sine every character had their running gags that didn’t really bode well for new laughs. The jokes started to get old and I couldn’t tell why a second season was made. As I said though, I feel the creators wanted to move away from comedy a little and turn it into a slice of life. With that in mind I will say the series wasn’t all bad. The three sisters did varies activities together and kept things at a constant pace. I did notice that in season two a lot of their friends seemed to be over every day. I am not against it, but just as in season one I would say season two didn’t have “three main characters”. Sure the sisters probably had the most screen time, but the others weren’t too far off. The new slice of life Minami-ke had sweet, funny, and sad moments that gave you a closer look into their relationship.
As mention above the art style was the biggest change. You could tell right away (especially if you watched them back-to-back) that they put a lot more effort into the design. I can’t say I was for the change though. For one, Chiaki’s hair had strange red tints at the bottom. Not really sure what that was about? I guess they were going for a … dirty strawberry blonde look? Who knows. It felt that most of the changes were unnecessary for the character designs. I actually preferred the simplistic style of season one.
The soundtrack was the same standard as the first season. It wasn’t bad, but nothing special either.
Final statements: Season two moved the anime from comedy to slice of life. Not bad, but not as good as it’s prequel. The art was a pointless change that could have done without. I consider season two a low priority watch.