It’s odd what gets a second series. So much excellent anime fails to reach a conclusion, ending with just one series and a story with huge potential left hanging forever. On the other hand, something like this, which has very little to justify a second run, returns for more of the same. The main group of characters basically arrive as fully formed tropes at the beginning of the first season, and little has changed about any of them by the end of the second. Haruna is still a tsundere, Seraphim is still being mean to Ayumu, and Eucliwood’s silent cuteness starts to wear thin. They are all still secretly in love with Ayumu, and he’s as clueless as he was at the start.

Luckily, whilst there might be little in the way of character development, there are a few good plot developments that keep things interesting, and in the absence of having much of interest to do with the main three girls the writers instead focus on some that are either new or had less of a role the first time round. That helped to alleviate the boredom I felt with Ayumu’s housemates being mean to him as usual.

The best addition to this series is a character I can’t say much about, because it will spoil a very effective surprise, but while she remains a mystery she’s a lot of fun, and when her identity is revealed it’s a great moment. I can’t even name her, because that is part of the mystery, but she is a girl whose appearance is deceptive, and who Ayuma regularly finds drunk in a classroom. She becomes a confidante for him, and despite being a funny drunk it’s a new relationship that really helps him, while it lasts.

As is typical for this kind of anime, just about every female character fancies Ayumu, including Kyoko who returns for an entertaining rematch, but there is just one whose attraction to Ayumu makes for an interesting storyline with some real development of feelings, and that person is Sarasvati, a fairly minor character in the first season who really comes to the fore here. She was previously the only girl who was entirely dismissive of Ayumu, but that changes early in the second season when she sees him naked. What starts as lusting after his butt gradually develops into romantic feelings, and there’s a fairly emotional subplot with Ayumu promising to come to one of Sarasvati’s concerts and then struggling to fulfil his promise. Don’t expect the dopey guy to actually pick himself a girlfriend, because it isn’t that sort of an anime, but sometimes the journey can be fun even when we don’t see a destination.

The series starts very strongly with a huge embarrassment for Ayumu, when his magical garment girl costume is revealed to the whole school, and then he ends up naked in front of everyone. That leads to something of a celebrity status for him, and there is some attempt to explore the impact his popularity has on his friendship with Orito, who has to come to terms with suddenly being friends with a cool kid instead of a loser. Most of the rest of the series meanders along, with occasional moments of drama that are quite effective, and humour that misfires more than it raises a smile. There are two OVA episodes included on the DVD set. The first is at the start, and feels like a disposable holdover from the first season, complete with the old opening and ending sequences. The second is at the end, and is a fun episode with the main characters competing to see who can sell the most in a flea market (depressingly, that comes down to who can attract the most perverts), and then some shenanigans with invisibility. The 12 episodes in total feel like plenty enough. It was watchable and often moderately fun, but it rarely made me care, and like Eucliwood I have nothing more to say.   RP