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If you found the first season average or worse, then you won't be able to find a betterment of the story or its characters.

Why does even a second story exist, I must argue loudly at first. Why would it have been bad to potentially end the first season with Lena ganing strength from this experience after her former Spearhead unit dying and instead taking the path to raise ranks and change the system from within.

Such an attempt has indeed take place, but it doesn't betters the overall logical component of the story looking at the Republic part. I truly don't even want to continue with ... the part for the survivors of the Spearhead, what is reaching a ridiculous point and in me questioning me continuing watching this anime. But after the first season I feel to see it to the end to give a thorough review.

The mecha animation got partly better and the art design is still of high-quality, but that doesn't let one to ignore the many visible flaws. It truly could be compared to the story-wise pathetic last arc of the second season of Code Geass up to this point. They even had the creativity to add the must-be loli characters as usual for this kind of animation. It is sad that it took inspiration from some historic events and turned out this way. For that I highly have to criticized the black uniform introduced with Lena, it is a non-sensitive way of handing the matter and as I said in my review for the first season. They exist a certain inspiration in Japan for those events, but they way thought about may not be agreeable to most.

In Japan exists a certain fascination with Nazi Germany or with militarism in total, what you can see portrayed in some animes or mangas.

After reading the synopsis I was intrigued, how this work of art will try on implementing the clear inspirations it took from some historical events. There, I already made one mistake of not seeing the Seinen Genre attached to the information page.

Instead I came to find the scenario with a young 'Alba' girl as protagonist where the depths can only be found in her design, that should attract the eye but doesn't blind from the empty hull, she represents. Daughter to the ... former Supreme Commander, rescued by a "86er", she seems to be the only soul in the military machinery seeing the Processors or 86er as more than just 'pigs'. The 86er represent the non 'Alba' minorities that were forced to fight against 'the Legion', an autonomous enemy army trying to destroy the Republic, where this scenario take place.

In its core, the story may look interesting if one ignores the main flaw in all this. It is a children story trying to please while relying on what it clearly tries to thematize. The adults are shown as naive beings, incapable of seeing their doom and believing to avoid any damage by letting those minorities fight for them. On the other side, our main character "Lena" is one of the few shown with a clear mind and human heart. Added to that, the unit she "handles as their commander is the Spearhead Unit made up by children soldiers, of which "Shin" or called Undertaker/Reaper gets a more special role.

We are tried to show the two parallels between peace and war through Lena and Shin. And since our perfect girl almost does not have any friends, she befriends her unit and goes further than just disagreeing with their treatment or feeling pity, but treats them like human being after initial difficulties. In this matter, one may say that this may have been an anti-war work of art, if the characters would have a stronger core. Apart from what we hear and see from our main characters, it doesn't reaches a point giving them real depths in a way letting us truly emphasize with the characters. Instead we receive a pathetic kind of romance between our Shin and Lena, while showing death as unavoidable. For the 86er it may be indeed the case, but looking at the historic events tried to be thematised here, I feel to strongly disagree to that. We don't see a real struggle for life despite some lines as 'not wanting to die' or being shown the 86er as just children. Instead the characters fighting the war feel like accepting the unavoidable without showing real humanity - becoming empty hulls.

I wouldn't rank this anime as a disaster or very bad. Yet it may be worthwhile to watch for a younger audience, but that won't change that it can only be summarized as bad. The only good thing in it was the CGI/Art for most parts and the ending, which gave it a good close to the story if they authors didn't have to be insane and having to continue the story in horrible second season, which I don't want to discuss here for now.