Ao no Orchestra Season 2

Blue Orchestra, the 2nd String — Not quite the desired effect out of another "warranted" performance, sad to say...

Back when it came out in Spring 2023, mangaka Makoto Akui's award-winning manga Ao no Orchestra a.k.a Blue Orchestra, was a feast not for the eyes but at least in terms of the ears and the feel, especially if you come from a musical background and are able to see yourself in the shoes of its settings and characters. And while it's not in the realm of series like Kono Oto Tomare: Sounds of Life (which preceded it back in 2019), it did just enough to pique ... the interest in the behind-the-scenes drama of what goes on in orchestras and the like, so for any otaku fan who's also a musical nut, there's something worth enjoying about this coming-of-age musical drama series that has both the love and care that regarded Shogakukan's coveted Manga Awards, representing the Shonen category in 2023 (back when Season 1 came out in the Fall of that year).

Season 2, however...feels like a transactional give-and-take, not just that the anime is catching up to the manga that's facing a limbo of its own, but that everything just slows down to a crawl. The end result, however, BOTH excels and hurts the pacing of the season overall.

With Season 2 continuing the adaptation from Volume 7 of the manga, with the moment riding off one of the source material's most important (and IMO iconic) moments with the Regular Concert, Hajime Aono and the rest of the Umimaku High School Orchestra Club now ascend even higher than where they were, with the entire prequel season being the culmination of what's to come for the club and its members. However, this was easier said than done with the outgoing 3rd Year Senpais led by concertmaster Sou Harada, relinquishing their responsibilities to the 2nd Years, of which one name would become the most divisive of them all: Yusuke Sakuma. The expected next-in-line concertmaster to lead the Orchestra Club, but with the reputation that he's notorious for breaking the very foundation of the good soil that Harada has already put in place, not just between the section leaders of the various orchestral instruments. Of course, this causes the central quad-clique between Hajime, Ritsuko Akane, Nao Saeki, and Haru Kozakura to question their beliefs about putting somebody like Sakuma in charge, though this lesson is really learned the hard way hearing from the supporting cast's point of view, like with 2nd violin leader Shizuka Tachibana, whose grievances in the club, coupled with family expectations, can cause one to go berserk if not handled well. Even then so, conductor Ayukawa Hiroaki expects nothing but the finest and best performance from the Orchestra Club, which, if you add in the nonsense that was Sakuma, makes for quite the fiery drama that sets in for the 1st half of the sequel. Believe me, it's fiercer than Hajime's family drama of the rift between him and his prodigal talented-but-disloyal father Ryuuji.

The sequel's 2nd half with the World Junior Orchestra Competition is a rather long arc, and though its development is still yet to be fully fleshed out in the manga (meaning a Season 3 for this show would take years to be realized), what the anime has in mind showing its foundations is stable from the start. Again, new characters do make their appearances, as Hajime and the rest who chose this line of profession in the hopes of going pro for their future careers hit quite the bump that both the outside pressure and external influence will either flesh out or withhold one's potential to not just represent Japan but find their own voice as well in a sea of talented players from all around the country. This is the crux point where playing in the club vs. playing in the junior orchestra makes quite the difference for the central 4 MCs to see where they stand and decide their progress from there, and though we've only seen the bare foundations (as Season 2 presented us here with), it's enough to prove that there's still talent brewing behind the scenes of how far Hajime and the others can go to maturing not just as instrumental players but as their own human selves too.

The coming-of-age drama really shines a lot in Season 2 here, for better or for worse. Hajime is still the same young man he is until the sequel season truly broke him apart and put him back together again, realizing that he must leave the vestige of being Ryuuji's son and develop himself into an orchestral player that he can be proud of. Saeki remains pretty much the same, idolizing Hajime from near and afar, though these two boys have pretty much become frenemies, supporting and rivalling against his half-brother. The girls too also stepped up their game this season, with Haru plucking her courage to go further and step beyond her comfort zone; her idea of her romantic crush for Hajime is to step together with him on the same stage and prove that she's not the same wimpy girl who's afraid of the things that would unsettle her. Akane, however, between the love triangle that is Hajime, Haru, and her, her skills may not have improved a whole lot, but her tenacity to get better has, even to the point that she "made her mark" on Hajime (which is AS CLOSE as you could get to romance in the series). Sure, for all the good ones to be favoured, the bad ones like Sakuma stick out like a sore thumb that "life is not a bed of roses" to be discovered as well. There's balance to be maintained, as it is in an orchestra, right?

Sadly, the overall production remains the exact same as it was in Season 1, though at this juncture, it's not hard to regard the show as a B- or C-tier project of sorts, despite studio Lerche director Seiji Kishi being at the helm and series composer Yuuko Kakihara now being on her own to handle the scriptwriting for the sequel. In fact, you could say that Season 2 offered close to nothing in terms of improvement, and it really shows that not much effort went into elevation mode, as is with the continuous wonky 3DCG (which has gotten better as the series progresses) that Nippon Animation has produced for about 2 years now. Despite that, simplicity is best when key moments need the oomph, and the show has continued to impress, though decidedly with little incentive to go on.

The music still remains the core beat of the series, though the OST leaves a tiny margin for brushing that up, which, unfortunately, goes unnoticed at all. The new theme songs aren't bad, though Galileo Galilei's OP and ChoQMay's ED are somewhat of a downgrade when compared to Season 1, which they were already a high bar to surpass (in terms of music composition).

I don't really want to say that the show suddenly turned a 180 from good to bad, but where Season 1 hits the sweet spot where it could've been just a 1-season done-it-all feature, Season 2 felt like the stopgap season that acts pretty much as a setup for the manga's plot to come. Bear in mind that the manga suffered a hiatus, and the anime essentially adapted close to (but not almost) the serialization of its most recent volumes, so things are still in order here. Still, though, there's a lot to love about the series overall, though Season 2 here...can be an exercise in patience to get through.

The blues of Ao no Orchestra a.k.a Blue Orchestra, are truly turning one's head blue...at least for now.