Upon reflection, I think season 2 of Spice and Wolf is as good as season one. Overall, the anime copes fairly well with some major hurdles that the light novel presents it, and still comes out a winner in the end. It's got enough rough edges to hurt it substantially, but since I was mostly hoping to see some character and romantic development I am not disappointed. The show retains it's ability to keep you craving more at the end of each episode, and is even more emotionally moving that the first season was.
Brains Base does a slightly better job than Imagin did; the budget increase shows. But it's either not enough of an increase or the animators need to be smacked around a little bit. I (and many others) noticed quite a few instances of jarring off-model visuals. It can kind of ruin the appeal of a romantic scene when the faces of the characters are "off". This show is mostly talking heads anyway, so it really bothered me.
Mostly everything else was at least as good as the first season. The sound and music are still about the same, although they are starting to get repetitive. The OP and ED are still a notch above everything else I've heard this season, though I still personally prefer the ones from the first season. The voice acting was even better for Horo and Lawrence, and about as good as the first season for secondary characters (at least they don't all sound the same, thankfully).
Lawrence and Horo only became more memorable, and even the secondary characters improved. As far I'm concerned Mark, Dian, Amarti, and Abe/Fleur were a step above Chloe and Nora. They weren't that much better, but at least it was progress, and let's face it: we're watching the show for Horo and Lawrence.
Lawrence came into his own this season and is fast becoming one of my favorite male leads in anime. Horo became more interesting as well, although the story didn't really give her enough development to satisfy me. It feels like Hasekura is artificially dragging out her development just to write more novels. Thankfully, I'm still willing to read them because I felt more disappointed in her (in a personal sense) than in the way she was being developed. When that happens, I think the writing can't be all that bad after all.
There are two biggest problems this season are a side-effect of scripting for an adaptation of a light novel like Spice and Wolf: the pacing and the translation. The pacing of the anime's script was pretty poor this season. I dare say it's because they tried too hard to stick to the exact pace of the novel. An anime is not a book, and the concepts and dialog in Spice and Wolf are already tricky enough. Cramming all the challenging stuff into one episode and leaving the rest relatively slow and plodding is never a good idea. The second half of the season really suffered from this, and it was only my willingness to watch twice that got me through it.
I do have to hand it to the fansubbers, though. This is not an easy series to translate. There is a lot of verbal fencing going on that requires a decent knowledge of Japanese wordplay and/or idioms. I found myself frequenting forums to figure out what I was missing. And if I hadn't, the overall impact of the series would be deadened somewhat. For me, that's not a bad thing. It shows that a substantial care went into the source material. It means real fans can get more out of the series than casual viewers, though that isn't a good thing if you are in the latter camp. But not everyone can enjoy that.
Ultimately, compared to other anime this season Spice and Wolf II is still somewhere in the top 2 or 3 (it's still my favorite). It is something you can easily get involved in, and still be left craving for more. It won't win back all the fans of the first season, but to me it still managed to keep me at least as interested as the first season did. Not many anime have fared so well in their second season.
Animation: 7 (some jarring off-model issues)
Voice Acting: 8 (Amisuke is still carrying it)
Story: 7 (well-written, but kinda blaise parts of the story)
Adaptation: 7 (pacing issues galore, otherwise impressive)
Soundtrack: 7 (getting samey, but not distracting)
Emotional Involvement: 9 (and how!)
Overall Impression: 7 (still rough around the edges, but well above average)
Edit: I'm trying to honest here, and turned off my inner fanboy. Otherwise, I would have rated the series a 10, and what's the fun in that?
