I'll keep this brief. Kyoto Animation has been through hell, and yet their animation and composition remain some of the best in the industry, doubly so for slice of life series and the like. They are a studio comprised of incredibly talented artists and animators, and it shows. Let none accuse them of not knowing what they're doing in that department. And yet, I can only list a handful of their many series I like without qualification, and the first series of Dragon Maid was one of them. Somewhere this show lost its charm for me, and a big part of that is a matter of the way in which season 2 was directed. Season one did much more to "interpret" the manga, not exactly "adapt" it, but here we have more straight adaptation with the occasional rearrangement of chapters. This is not inherently bad, but for me, this approach, which puts greater emphasis on gags and gives less screen time to character development (NOT exposition dumps or internal monologues, moments on screen where characters express their emotions through actions and interactions), left me a bit cold. We have plenty of wonderful character moments towards the later part of the season, the second half of episode 10 and the first half of episode 12 are both brilliant, for instance, but it feels a bit buried in gags and so many uncomfortable boob jokes and even more uncomfortable shota.
It's not a bad show, still, but exposition dumps do not good a good story make, and neither do introspective music played over cliche situations. Takemoto Yasuhiro did it better, and that is a hill I'm willing to die on.
