Anime Review: Anyway I'm Falling In Love With You Season 2

The first season of “Anyway I’m Falling In Love With You” was a series that was trying to balance the protagonists lives in the present (technically 2030) with them attempting to come to terms with their dreams in their past, and how the (unnamed) COVID pandemic was impacting them. The second season instead puts a bit more focus on these characters reconciling in the present day.

There’s an interesting thing about the second season where the show takes the perspective that sometimes putting your focus on “following your dreams” to the point it defines your identity can be toxic. Now, I was a little concerned that this could go in the direction of cheering on late stage capitalism – that what really matters is how much money you make, and if your dream isn’t making money, then it’s not great. Thankfully, that’s not the direction the show goes. Instead, there’s more of a focus on the idea that if you let your dream consume your identity, or your relationship with other people, then if it doesn’t work out, you’re going to be in a bad way.

The various male love interests of "Anyway I'm Falling In Love With You"

This comes to the fore with Mizuno and Kizuki. Mizuno can’t get published, and falls into depression. The same falls onto Kizuki where he refuses to take time off to recover after an injury because Mizuno is depressed, and aggravates the injury such that he’s sidelined for the rest of college, saddling him with similar depression.

Then, on top of that, there’s all the other boys of their group who are angsting over being in love with Mizuno – except for Airu, who is in love with Kizuki (I knew my gaydar was working!) They have their own tension related to whether they want to keep holding these torches, or to ultimately move on with their lives and maintain platonic relationships with Mizuno and Kizuki.

Probably my gripe with this season, outside of the idea that maybe a Reverse Harem Polycule ending would have been more interesting, is that most of the drama feels like it’s born of people not talking to each other, and also not talking to therapists. This leads to a few situations where characters are in a psychological funk in their college flashbacks until suddenly they’re not. For some of them, like Shugo, we see the thing that breaks them out of the situation. For others we really don’t.

That said, it is somewhat amusing that of the characters, Airu is the most well adjusted, as his flashback arc is based around his own tension over being in the closet and his unrequited feelings for Kizuki. We do see him confess to Kizuki, and him ultimately be let down kinda easy, but when we see him in the present, he’s living in London with his boyfriend and he’s out to the whole group.

This actually kinda relates to the other issues – this show is just too goddamn chaste. Yes, it takes some time with thirst trap shots of the guys, and yes characters kiss. We even have Shin trying to deal with his depression at his rejection by having empty sex, but it’s all very PG. Not PG-13, PG. We know Shin’s having empty sex because we see a woman leaving his apartment while he’s still in bed, and Mizuno comments about the number of partners.

Even for the manga that Mizuno is drawing on her own, what she’s working on is a pretty basic Shojo series. The series doesn’t really entertain the idea that maybe she’s into BL, and is maybe drawing some more spicy stuff on the side. There’s too much of a sense that she has to be shown as a pure shojo heroine for her to have sexual thoughts about her friend circle – which also ultimately ruins a lot of the tension over whether she’ll ultimately stay with Kizuki after he ghosts her in a depressive funk following his injury.

Fanservice works best when the characters in the story react to it. This is even more the case when a character is basically trying to provide fanservice for the benefit of another character. If a prospective romantic interest is posing in a sexy manner in an attempt to come on to their interest, and their target isn’t entertaining the idea of at least becoming Friends With Benefits later, then it feels like you’re actively undercutting the chemistry of the other character relationships, which seems counter-intuitive when you’re writing a reverse harem story.

Ultimately, for a series like this, the response I’d want would be to come away wanting to read the manga so I get more of the story, or wanting to look at fanfic to see some alternative ships. This is not the case here. I came away feeling like I didn’t need any more of the story, and not seeing an alternative ship that I’d be interested in seeing. I didn’t feel like I wasted my time, but I have no desire to watch this again in the foreseeable future.

Anyway I’m Falling In Love With You Season 2 is available for streaming on: