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This is one of the most thought provoking pieces of media I have ever seen. Right from the start the characters are so intriguing and there's already such a good air of mystery and as it goes on it just never gets less interesting. You never wanna stop reading (the physical release not separating chapters definitely helps this lol) yet at the same time you HAVE to because you need to let everything sink in. There is SO much the author wants to convey and so many genuinely important and worthwhile messages to the reader which are not forcibly thrown into the story but rather ... conveyed through actually well written characters with amazing development. At the same time there's so many aspects of the story that keep you thinking about it after you finish it, whether that be the extremely profound thematic stuff or intentional mysteries that aren't entirely cleared up. Oh and obviously the art is unreal levels of amazing.
Can be beautiful, disgusting, funny or horrifying, but most of all very very tragic and profound. It has some very heavy content & isn't exactly for everyone (watch out if you have s.a. trauma) but in my opinion this truly is easily a 10/10.

The game's main strength seems to be a beautiful world with an incredible atmosphere, complemented by a patient story. Yet somehow, despite being set in an incredibly cool nearly abandoned futuristic world overrun with greenery, this anime FAILS TO CREATE ATMOSPHERE. There's amazing music from the game, but it only plays for like 10 seconds?? There's unreal levels of amazing artwork yet they literally skim past the shots in (not exaggerated) less than TWO seconds each??? By failing to use silence & create the atmosphere the story leans on, it horrendously eats shit because the plot & its characters are not yet interesting enough to ... hold their own. Video games often use gameplay as the incentive to get you to continue playing stories that take a while to get going, so when you lack gameplay & fail to create an alternative, in this case atmosphere (which should have been ABSURDLY easy if the writers had any semblance of patience or tonal consistency), you find out WHY the story was told through a video game.
With how incredible the game this is based on seems to be just out of the world shown, I'm making the educated guess that it would be extremely stupid to get spoiled on the game by watching this anime so I'll instead drop this & instead play the game eventually.

While I never rate things I've only watched this little episodes of, I"m almost 100% certain this entire anime will continue in the same way - boring CGI action with characters you don't care about bc of a poorly set-up world full of wasted potential.
"Final" score (before I actually watch this after playing the game) probably like a 3.5.

"Imagine if one were to insert a corny philosophical quote here meant to imply the intelligence of a silly anime about high schoolers... what would it's merit be?"
- some random Austrian guy, {book the writer has probably touched in their life}

Spoiler warning by the way.

It's certainly not perfect, but I seem to be in the minority since I find it to be an improvement over season 1.

Right off the bat I think it immediately makes you invested & interested in the second season, simply off of the first season's very good plottwist (about Ayanokoji basically secretly being a horrible person). It makes you ... intrigued towards what kind of things he's gonna get up to now, while at the same time painting everything he does in a different light - whereas in season 1 I figured he was just an overqualified loser trying to do good, now it becomes very obvious when and how he's trying to manipulate people. This makes him a much more fun main character to watch, not just because it's entertaining to see him get up to morally questionable things, but also because it gets the viewer to think themselves. Not just about what he's trying to do this time, but even whether he's a good person or not. He might be a horrible person who sees those around him as tools & nothing more, but if, in manipulating someone, he actually makes them a happier person?
Anyways that brings me to Kei, who is probably the other highlight of the season. For a 13 episode season I'm quite surprised that they were able to give her this substantial of an arc. She goes from being willing to do anything to stay popular to quite literally being willing to have her life ruined (and get tortured) to protect Ayanokoji. On top of this it's actually surprisingly subtle, especially since this is coming from the same anime that had a literal unironic beach episode last season. Kei doesn't really change over one single episode nor does she have some dumb "hmm this Ayanokoji guy is really changing how I feel about myself in contrast to how those around me view me!"-moment (though in the last episode she does kinda say this but at least that's after her arc is finished). I also do wanna say that I completely disagree with people calling her a one-note character since she clearly has realistic character traits that make her stand out from the rest of the semi-npc classmates. She's resilient in her goals, doesn't break under pressure, and most importantly she's much more perceptive than basically anyone else in the show except Ayanokoji. Especially that last one makes her very easy to like since she simply calls out Kikyo & Ayanokoji's "acts" out without anyone else's help.
On top of this I'd like to add that the ending is genuinely amazing, probably legit top 5 endings of all time for me. It's so simplistic, simply a butterfly that Kei is trying to catch, after which it flies past some of the main characters. It then cuts back to Kei catching the butterfly, but seemingly realizing that catching it never really amounted to anything & releasing it. I think the butterfly is a metaphor for one's goals, and although it flies past the main characters (notably not Ayanokoji though) who haven't achieved their goals yet, Kei has already done so (becoming popular), but she then realizes that it never did help her. Instead, she turns around to find Ayanokoji, someone who actually will have an impact on her.
Now back to Ayanokoji, I've got to say his ending monologue kinda caught me off guard again. I've seen some people say that he essentially just reiterates the same thing as in season 1, but I personally didn't feel the same way. Throughout the entire season Ayanokoji's been shown to be just a little bit more thoughtful than the last season & now that he actually has some people who consider him a friend, I personally though it would result in him saying something along the lines of confusion as to why he feels differently about them. But when he gives the monologue again not only does it completely deny that theory, it also makes him much more of a bad person than before. He's not just doing what's required for his plan to work, he really is just willing to let others suffer & manipulate peoples deepest feelings just for his own gain. I would like to see him have that arc in a later season though since it'd be pretty lame if he just stayed the same character the entire story (though I have bad feeling he will since it's an anime lmao).
I also think it is pretty impressive that the show is able to have the main character be literally perfect at everything he does, while still being an entertaining show. Of course he still has the option of having an arc surrounding his mental state, but for 2 seasons now the show has been consistently entertaining imo while Ayanokoji hasn't changed at all, which many pieces of media would find very hard to do with a perfect character like that (ahem ahem Lycoris Recoil).

As I said though the show is definitely not perfect though. It suffers from a lot of classic unnecessary anime dialogue (since Japanese writers in general seem to have been late on the "show don't tell" memo) & although it's luckily significantly less than last season, there still is a bit of very cringe fan service. Same thing with the philosophical quotes, the show doesn't try as hard to seem "intelligent" as the last season, but it still is a little prominent unfortunately.
Also, some of the side characters like the comically short white-haired girl with the cane & the pink haired girl from season 1 were still completely uninteresting, even if they didn't have that much screentime. I especially did not need a completely useless subplot about pink haired girl still trying to get with Ayanokoji. Kikyo was still pretty corny in this season, I didn't particularly have a problem with the writing itself (in fact I did really like that she gets outsmarted extremely easily by both sides to show she really isn't all that), but I just don't really like the concept of her character in general since I found both her as a character, and the way the NPCs around her completely accept her pretty unrealistic. Finally I do still think Horikita is a bit too edgy of a character sometimes & the animation isn't exactly as vibrant as in the first season (though I didn't have as much of a problem with that as most people).

For some smaller positive notes, I think that although it could've helped to come earlier, episode 13 added a lot of depth to Ryuen as a character & even if he was a bit of a comically evil villain up to this point, he still functioned pretty well in the story since he did pose a legitimate threat to anyone that wasn't Ayanokoji. I also enjoyed some of the side characters like Hirata, Ichinose & the grey haired guy with glasses, they seemed like quite realistic characters & most of class D in general is much more entertaining now that they're actually working together (especially with Horikita actually doing her best more & more to stop being an asshole). As a last thing I watched it in English and the voice acting was pretty great, especially Ayanokoji's VA & Ryuen's (extremely common Eric Vale W). Also they apparently had Christopher R. Sabat for like a singular line as the White Room's teacher last season?? So yeah I'm hoping he gets more to do lmao.

So yeah, despite a few flaws that make it completely understandable for a lot of people to not really like it, I personally still think it's pretty great. The shows premise itself is pretty silly & you're not exactly supposed to take it too seriously, even if the dumb quotes & all that make you think it wants that. As long as you go into it with an open mind & don't expect amazingly thoughtful dialogue I think you'd definitely enjoy this season, especially if you already liked the first.

Overall I'd give this second season a somewhat generous 8/10.

Lyroris Recoil is basically the anime version of an "action packed summer blockbuster starring Dwayne Johnson". Let me explain.

Everything about this anime is meant to be exactly what the average anime watcher wants to see, just like how the 7 thousand identical Dwayne Johnson blockbusters are simply made to earn money off of NPC's, and then be forgotten about immediately afterwards.
Lycoris Recoil truly has everything: amazing animation, very good op & ed songs, good voice acting, cute girls for people who care about that, a fantastic art style, big actions sequences... except it forgets the most important thing when WRITING a story. Writing. ...

First of all, Chisato is contender for the worst written main character I could possibly think of. Now I have not watched Rent a Girlfriend whose MC I have heard unspeakable things about, but from what I've seen myself, Chisato is bottom 3 MC's. The thing is, I don't actually dislike her - how could you even? The problem is not that she's annoying, or stupid, or anything like that. The problem, is that Chisato is LITERALLY perfect, which is the easiest way to assure your main character will never, ever, EVER be interesting from a writing perspective. Chisato is smart, funny, loyal, kind, understanding, never gets angry, is the greatest in the world at what she does, she's accepting of others, unwavering, and I could go on. By writing a character to be this infallible & morally perfect queen, you completely lose any opportunity to do anything with her as a character. And so, instead of getting her own arc, the writers seemed to aim to make Chisato a static character, instead having her role in the story be to assist Takina in her arc - which brings me to the next point:

If you're gonna make Chisato entire reason to exist in the story to develop Takina's character why doesn't Takina actually change????? After Takina's little character arc from episode 1-3 (which was actually pretty good), Takina simply... stops developing as a character? The worst part is that they seriously had so much potential here too. Takina spends the entire season being told by Chisato that she should live life for herself & stop caring so much about what DA thinks of her. And so, Takina finally "completes her character arc" by...
"courageously" leaving her teammates who literally do not need her... to go save her friend from certain death (as if she wouldn't have done so otherwise)... and then doing the exact same thing again in the episode right after.... both times, only after getting approval from her commanding officer..... WHAT???? This is seriously some of the worst fumbling of a character arc I've ever seen, did no one read over this twice and realize how stupid this is?
Personally, I truly think this story could have been massively boosted up to something like a 7 if they Chisato actually ended up dying in the last episode. Aside from how stupid it is that the entire plotline is just unceremoniously dropped & has no effect on the characters at all, it's again just massively wasted potential. If Chisato had died in the final episode (let's say Takina failed to catch her in the final episode or something), not only would it have been a legitimately sad moment, it would have also been able to perfectly end Takina's character arc, as after Chisato's death, she could decide to follow in her footsteps and stop pursuing her DA work to stay at the LycoReco café.

The show isn't all bad though. Of course mainly, it's absurdly hard-carried by the amazing art style & the great animation. Aside from that, I also found myself really enjoying Majima. Although I think he should have been set up more clearly as the main villain rather than Mr. Yoshi, he still functions really well as it. His personality is very entertaining to watch & his crazy mentality of "balancing" the power in the world is equally silly as the show's premise itself, which makes it pretty fun. If there ends up being a season 2 i would really like to see more of him, especially if they could make his mentality a believable ideology by using some kind of backstory or something, I genuinely think he could be an amazing villain. Also, his Daredevil-powers were much more interesting than Chisato's simple bullet-dodging, so that also helped.
Finally, although I had my problems with Mr. Yoshi, I did think that his relationship with Mika was very interesting. I liked how much they were able to convey with just a few passing lines & I actually think his end was very well executed (pun intended).

There are definitely some more smaller problems I have with stuff like the other side characters but a lot of that is probably also personal preference. Overall, although this anime is certainly watchable because of the amazing artstyle, I can't recommend it to everyone. If you watch media without a critical view, or simply want to watch an easy to digest plot with cool action, you'll likely enjoy this anime. But if you go in expecting well written characters or a tight plot, Lycoris Recoil will most likely disappoint you, as it did me.

Final rating: something like a 4.5/10