Let me be up front about something: I didn't enjoy the first season of KamiErabi. Its three cardinal sins were poor writing, characters who made no sense, and rigid CGI. So the prospect of a second season—which was confirmed pretty early on into the first season's airing—wasn't exactly something I was thrilled about. A sentiment among viewers who were undoubtedly trying to stay optimistic that I saw when looking through discussions about the upcoming second season was that everyone should trust in Yokō Tarō's vision—Yokō Tarō, against all odds, being credited for the series' concept. But among other things, the first season said that bullying is okay because it builds character. How could my expectations for this series possibly be anywhere but in the dirt? And my expectations, as it turns out, were appropriately placed. The key issues of the first season of KamiErabi persist well into the second, letting it absolutely fall apart as it hastily attempts (and fails) to wrap itself up.

Let's back up a bit: KamiErabi GOD.app season two takes place twelve years after the events of the first season. In fact, those same events are now being treated as a mass hallucination. But somehow, a hallucination also resulted in some people (the people who were playing the game to become god and were there at the time) being unable to age. Those people, who are looked down on by society because reasons, are referred to as “semi permanents.”

Whether it's the story itself, trying to explain people's roles and motivations, the rules behind their powers, or even their version of the invention of the smartphone, KamiErabi is absolutely allergic to explaining anything satisfactorily and in a way that makes logical sense. Sure, it'll often try to make a half-baked excuse, but rarely do those excuses pass the sniff test. Oftentimes the excuse will boil down to being something along the lines of, “because god is almighty” but at the same time, there's a lot of conflict centered on how all powerful god isn't. See what I mean?

More often than not, things just happen when they're convenient and that's it. But the key word I used there was “often,” as in, “not always.” There's other times when KamiErabi just leaves loose story threads dangling in front of the audience's eyes, doomed to never be explained because KamiErabi can't be bothered to explain itself. This feels like a show that wants so badly to be deep—to be picked apart for thought-provoking messages that anime essayists will fawn over for years to come. But the writing—let alone the messaging—is completely shallow and nonsensical. I've stepped in puddles with more depth than this anime.

The lack of quality in the writing is at its most apparent in season two's ending. Without completely spoiling it, I can tell you that it feels like it wants so hard to be saying something profound. But after sifting through thick layers of vaguely religious gibberish, one of the things that ends up coming out instead is some boomer-core “smartphones bad“ take that would've felt antiquated a decade ago—let alone in 2024. And that, combined with the way smartphones are handled elsewhere in the end of the show (which is to say: that they're used at all), is why I have a hard time believing that's what this anime was consciously going for—my theory is that it only landed there by mistake, after failing to tie up all the loose ends as neatly as possible. Maybe they were instead going for something on the power technology—smartphones in particular—have over us and stumbled really, really hard.

This messy writing bleeds over into the characters as well, whose actions and decisions often feel completely arbitrary—more reliant on the question of whether or not it might seem dramatic and cool rather than does it make sense, either for the character or narratively. Predictably, this leaves you with characters who, at best, you feel like you don't understand. But at worst, all this does is make you constantly feel lost trying to keep up with why things are happening. We're not really given any substantial reasons to care about any of these characters—sure, like with the rest of the writing, there's some simple attempts made in this direction, but they never amount to anything substantial. Or rather, they can't, because this anime is so afraid to explain why anything happens the way it does.

And finally, there's the third of the aforementioned cardinal sins: the visuals. I've seen worse CGI in anime, but I've definitely seen better, too. In my review of season one, I called the CGI, “remarkably stiff—even robotic at times.” And I actually think it got marginally worse in season two. More often I found myself struck by how rough this anime's visuals looked, and how more than before it looked like there weren't enough in-between frames or something similar. But however it happened, I think the visuals of season two somehow manage to be a downgrade from their already poor state.

The only highlights to be had here are in the soundtrack, and in the voice acting. And by “soundtrack” I want to clarify that I'm strictly referring to the background music, and not the opening and ending theme. As for voice acting, Misaki Kuno as Eko, in particular, really knocks it out of the park.

In case it wasn't obvious, I think this anime fails on just about every imaginable front. But it never finds any saving grace in looping around and becoming so-bad-it's good. It's a show that tries way too hard to be thought-provoking, but lacks any actual substance and doesn't even itself seem sure of what it wants to say. It's a thoroughly unfun to watch, from start to finish.