When I first watched season one I immediately rated it a nine. However a few weeks before the release of S2 I decided to give it a rewatch and honestly I would probably rate it a six now. It had many flaws that I didn't really care about in my first watch but when I rewatched it, it was almost painfully bad at times.
After rewatching S1 and reading some of the comments here on MDL about S2 my expectations were low.
That being said, this time, probably once again, I didn't really think it through when I rated it a nine, because I had fun and that is the most important thing in my mind. That doesn't mean that it deserves it or that I won't criticize it in what will follow, so here we go:

What I liked:
- Production quality: Everyone knows what a good production quality means and you can see it here. It is expensive and it shows.

- The games: If you ask me they were much better than in S1. First of all, the characters that appeared in the games were extremely interesting. Besides that, the games were much more suspenseful, difficult and not as predictable comparing with S1. Lastly they were much more violent.

- Chishiya: Okay, I will be honest. This guy should have been the main character and he is caring this show on his smart brain cells. He is so fun to watch and Murakami Nijiro's performance is on point. He is intelligent, flawed and has the best lines in the entire series. He is just a pleasure to watch and I believe that without him the series would be half as memorable.

- Manga feeling: First things first, I haven't actually read the manga, but the series does give you a manga-feeling. The action scenes, the way the characters act and look and some specific scenes are like they came out from manga pages, something that is probably one of the biggest advantages this drama has.

- New characters: Even though our old fav characters like Kuina and An are still there and they have kept their awesomeness, new interesting characters appeared like Kyuuma or Akane.

- Easy to watch: Look, some of the episodes were very long (with the longest being 1h and 20m), but generally the series was very easy to watch. Yes, there were some draggy scenes and some boring moments, but I didn’t feel the urge to see how long it is left from the episodes.

- The ending: As probably all sane people that were planning to watch season two, I was very concerned -and I mean very- about the ending. Will it be nonsensical? Will I want to break my screen?
The ending surpassed all of my expectations and it was the perfect way for the final episode to end. It was so mind-blowingly good that I had to rate the show a nine. It was also unexpected -at least comparing to what I had in mind-.


Things I found mediocre:
- Philosophical aspect: In this season there were many philosophical questions regarding the meaning of life, justice, the ''price'' of humans etc. Even though I liked that they added these existential questions, sometimes it felt a bit forced especially since it wasn't that evident in the first season.

- Main leads: I know, I will get killed for saying this, but the main leads were just boring to watch. They were so uninteresting comparing to the rest of the characters and their plot armour was so huge that even with a nuclear disaster they would survive.

- Nonsensical stuff: I know it is based on a manga and to be honest I didn't really care because I had fun watching, but the amount of disbelief I had to live through was just unimaginable. I think that they could have handled it a bit better to make it more suspenseful and ''realistic'' before the grand finale.

What I disliked:
- Acting of the two mains (and some other characters):
I had a huge problem with the acting of the two main leads, especially with Yamazaki Kento. He was overacting most of the times and no matter how much I tried to feel for his character his expressions were so ridiculous that I had the urge to laugh than actually care about him. Tsuchiya Tao also wasn't that great and her way of talking in some scenes felt like she was pressuring herself to sound in a specific way.
Let me be clear about something here. I know that in many Jdramas actors tend to overact, but there is a difference between good overacting and bad overacting.
Even though this is based on a manga (so I can get the need to overact) the only character that was overacting badly was Yamazaki Kento (and another character that barely appeared). Acting is acting and to be able to succeed in this type of acting you must know how to pull it off in moderation, something that our main lead obviously did not know.
They both had their good moments though (thankfully) and most of the times their acting was bearable.

- "Romance": Once again it is ruining the show and it is just not there, I am sorry. I saw no chemistry between the mains even though it was obvious that their affection was building from season one.

- Emotional moments: this series is about death games and people will die, they will get hurt (physically or emotionally) and they will question their existense and values. Even though there were some scenes that made me emotional (which I won't mention because of spoilers) the majority of them didn't work. They even used sad music as background and managed to make it feel bland. The fact that some of these scenes lasted longer than what they should have, reduced the emotional impact to zero. Funny thing is that I felt so much more when it came to some new characters comparing to what I felt for the main leads.


All in all, I had fun watching this season and -even though this is an unpopular opinion- I believe it was much better than season one especially when it came to characters, pacing and games.