A somewhat unnecessary second season, in my opinion. If the story had ended with the movies, no one would have complained. Why is that? Because in the second season, the girls experiencing puberty syndrome don't have a direct relationship with Sakuta. Everything in the protagonist's life after the last movie seems to be resolved. He has a girlfriend, his sister is doing well, and he managed to save the life of his first love. Up until then, there wasn't much more to explore about the character; he'd already had his closure; there was no reason to give him a second closure. For this reason, this second season had the opportunity to give secondary characters a spotlight and give them their own closure.
We have characters we met this season who have always magically been linked to Sakuta, and if they were girls, they always ended up falling in love with the protagonist. At some point, it seems like you're watching a teenage fantasy about having a girlfriend but being able to flirt with other girls without any problems. Sakuta's disloyalty is disguised with a weak excuse like "it's all for Mai's sake." Sakuta is a terrible boyfriend, who ditches dates to go on dates with other girls. He accepts confessions instead of rejecting them and makes his girlfriend waste money because he has to meet with a student at Christmas.
The introduction of the miniskirted Santa Claus is just a rehash of the first arc. An invisible girl that only Sakuta can see, so original. On top of that, they're screwing up what they presented in the first season because now puberty syndromes are no longer about quantum physics, but about an entity that distributes them. Since Rio Futaba's character no longer appears as often and she was in charge of the convoluted explanations of quantum physics, they had to fill that gap with a rather flimsy explanation. Puberty syndromes this season are incomprehensible because there's no visual representation on screen. The first syndrome seen this season is "being able to read the room." This isn't a supernatural power; it's a social skill that any adult should have; they call it empathy. Since it's just an idol drama, you don't feel anything at all because it all seems more like a whim than a real syndrome. In the end, they resort to the same trick: Mai is in mortal danger because they don't know how to move the story forward. The first death sentence works, the second loses its impact. On top of that, since Sakuta doesn't have a direct relationship with those affected by the syndrome, he ends up feeling more like a busybody than a savior.
An anime that, unlike its fandom, didn't grow up and remain stuck in a teenage fantasy. All so that teenagers of this generation could immerse themselves in a story where they could be the worst person and still be loved.
