The first season of We Never Learn ended with an announcement for a second season. With the manga being based around college preparation and studying for that, I did definitely have a sense that whether or not the manga was actually done at this point, whatever the second season ended on was going to have some degree of finality – with how the anime was paced, I couldn’t really see a way to wrap here without getting into graduation. Without too many spoilers before the cut, it does get to graduation, and in hindsight, I think the ending kind of works well.

Second Verse, Same As The First

The series continues Yuiga’s efforts to tutor his classmates Rizu Ogata and Fumino Furuhashi in Humanities and STEM (respectively), two subjects that are not their strongest suits (their strong subjects go the other way – Ogata’s better at math and science, Furuhashi is better at Humanities), and also to tutor his childhood friend Uruka Takemoto, a star athlete, in English. Season 1 also introduced an additional supporting member, ronin (in the “Maison Ikkoku” sense) Asumi Kominami, a former student from the same high school who was taking the same college prep exam classes that the rest of our protagonists are – and supervising them all is their teacher, former figure skater, and general hardass (and kind of slob) Mafuyu Kirisu.

Season 2 basically covers the second half of our main 4 characters last year before graduation, studying for their tests before we get to the School Culture Festival and graduation at the end of the year. The plot of this season is generally less focused on studying related predicaments and Yuiga helping to teach his friends, and more on harem comedy hijinks, with a lot more fanservice.

That said, the fanservice here is generally at the same type as last season – Yuiga doesn’t initiate situations where he has romantic or intimate contact with his love interests. Instead, those situations are initiated by them – with the comedy coming from either their reactions as they hype themselves up to do the thing followed by Yuiga’s reactions, or them doing the thing somewhat unintentionally and Yuiga somewhat over-reacting because of both of his crush and his suspicious about other character’s crushes. Again, no accidental groping, no peeping, no intentional or unintentional sexual harassment. The male gaze is still present, but it’s somewhat tempered.

We Never Learn Doesn’t Learn

That said, one of the Sitcom Scenarios from season 1 is back here, and with a vengeance, and one which I didn’t get into in-depth. Specifically, a recurring bit in this season is based around Yuiga getting stuffed into a mascot outfit and having to have interactions with his possible romantic interests where he’s aware he’s having those interactions with them and they don’t.

As mentioned earlier, Yuiga does nothing untoward, nor do they ask him to do anything lewd without knowing it’s him. In one scenario he ends up working as a masseuse, and he just does massages. They’re not sexy massages, they’re generally not played for fanservice, they’re just massages, and the comedy comes from the reaction, once one of the love interests suspects, of acting as they’d just had an indirect kiss.

All of that said, this is a show that does end with an anime original ending, and also one where the show doesn’t exactly pick a “winner”, along with theoretically setting up a sequel series if the mangaka decides to do a sequel manga or continue the series with the characters in college.

I did really enjoy this show, and I’m glad I finished this, and I am considering adding the manga to my ever-growing to-read list.

We Never Learn Season 2 is, as with season 1, available for streaming on Crunchyroll. The manga is currently ongoing and is available from RightStuf and Amazon.com (in print and Kindle editions).