English Dub Season Review: The Quintessential Quintuplets Season 2

Picking up where the first season left off, Quintessential Quintuplets continues the How I Met Your Mother style storytelling to uncover the identity of the protagonist’s bride. This is a mystery because all of the potential love interests are quintuplets, and so the bride looks like all of them. The first season mainly focused on Futaro, a high school brainiac and tutor for hire, being employed to teach the five Nakano sisters, Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki, as they are in danger of failing their classes. With his tutoring, they’re all able to become marginally better at school, as well as Futaro capturing a few of their hearts in the process.

While the first season introduced the characters and laid the foundation for the budding romance pentagon that all focuses in on Futaro, Season 2 continues to build on this and beginning major emotional conflicts as the sisters who have already fallen for Futaro begin to clash in heavy ways. Season 1 only had Ichika and Miku really gaining a liking for the guy, but being willing to keep their feelings hidden so as to keep the peace between everyone, while this season brings second sister Nino also in on the battle, having her fall hard and fast for him and forcing Ichika and Miku to ramp up their own efforts, which unfortunately only ends up making everyone look worse as a result. There’s also development on Futaro learning more about the sisters and being able to tell them apart even when all dressed the same, a clear sign that he is able to love them as individuals, while also putting focus on his secret past experience with one of them many years ago.

But besides all of that, the key differences between this and the first season are not to this one’s benefit. The art style is a notable downgrade, the pacing of adapting chapters quickens up to the point that it piles too many things at once, and the drama really only ends up hurting everyone involved in terms of being likeable. Not that I’m against characters being unlikeable, which is fine as long as I can understand their motives. It’s just that some characters, specifically Nino and Ichika, act in ways that I cannot wrap my mind around ending up in a way they would want, which only makes me shake my head as I watch them continue to essentially bang their heads against a wall. Not to mention that adapting this much throws off a good pace they had, but apparently they’re planning to throw the rest into a movie which…I can’t expect to go well at all. And knowing how it ends, it’s only going to make that feel worse.

I still enjoy this series overall and thankfully the actors of both languages bring in their A game for loveable characters in cute designs, but it’s not enough to really make up for how much this has descended from the good will of the first. I guess that might have to do with not needing to worry about selling copies of a manga that ended over a year ago, but that doesn’t mean you get to just drop the ball and expect no one to notice. Maybe they’ll surprise me with the movie and that will be a surprisingly satisfying ending that even diverts from the manga, but I don’t exactly have my hopes up there.