Suffice it to say that season 1 of MF Ghost, the newest series by Initial D creator Shūichi Shigeno, didn't exactly drive me wild. In a word, it was underwhelming. So, going into MF Ghost season 2, I was expecting another middle-of-the-road racing anime. And my expectations, as it turns out, were well placed. While it would've been nice to see this series pick up some much-needed speed, more than anything, all it did was put the brakes on.

Much more than the first season, MF Ghost season two is almost entirely spent in races. And while that's cool at times, more often than not, it makes the series feel repetitive—not to mention how little time it leaves to let the anticipation build and let us get to know more about the characters. And I hope you weren't interested in any of those secondary storylines introduced in the first season, because you won't get much progression in any of those whatsoever.

One of my key criticisms of the first season of MF Ghost was how it introduced a number of storylines happening in the background of Kanata's MF racing career. They felt disconnected not only from the central plot but even from each other. It might be easier to look past this lack of connective tissue if these storylines actually went somewhere—and maybe could argue that while they don't contribute to the story, they're meant more for developing the characters—but you rarely, if ever, get that, either. So they don't change anything and aren't connected to the main story. Therefore, one can't help but wonder: what's the point of having them here at all? This is a question that season two gets no closer to answering than season one. In fact, I think it's an even bigger problem in season two since so little time is spent outside of the races. As it currently stands, these additional storylines generally feel more like fluff meant to pad out the episodes than anything else.

The most obvious example of this in action is the incredibly forced romance between Ren and Kanata. It's the only one of the secondary storylines presented in the first season that sees a substantial amount of movement, even if it's not until the end of the series. But even then, it's hard to take this seriously when Ren's been “promoted” in this season from cardboard cutout to downright nonsensical—as though Shigeno isn't even trying to hide that he doesn't know who she is or what to do with her anymore. There's a scene toward the end involving her that borders on the downright absurd, and I think, is like a bizarre crystallization of just how exceptionally bad Shigeno is at writing women.

So, this is all to say that the writing feels markedly worse in the second season of MF Ghost. That poses the question: is there anything that feels markedly better? Not really. The visuals, voice acting, and soundtrack are still on par with the first season, which is to say that they're serviceable and okay. Still, nothing stands out as especially memorable, let alone spectacular—although the Eurobeat soundtrack serves as a constant and bitter reminder that you're not watching the much more over-the-top Initial D. Speaking of, there are a few more cameos from Initial D that might get its fans to crack a smile, so that's cute I guess.

But MF Ghost has never been quite so much about its stories as it has its racing, which admittedly, can be fun to watch—albeit still not as fun as the racing in Initial D. I say “can be” because like I said before: this season is mainly spent in races. And while there can be fun to be had here, it's not so fun to watch that it's easy to keep feeling like you're looking forward to more week after week after week after week after week. At some point, you reach a threshold where things start to feel monotonous, and you wonder how on earth the race is still going—how a show about fast cars can, ironically, be paced so slowly.

In case it needs to be said plainly, season three of MF Ghost has already been confirmed, and I'm not at all excited about it. The longer this series goes on, the worse it seems to get. This series is starting to drag, and I'm ready for it to reach the end of its road—which, incidentally, is in the process of happening in the manga, so at least there's that.