Some unsorted thoughts I had watching the first episode:

• I don’t remember Aqua being so edge-lord-y. At least I wasn’t annoyed by him in the first season but here I (slightly) am.
• How old is this Himekawa character? With the stubble, he looks like 30-somethings are often depicted in anime, and I’m uncomfortable with him trying to get close to Kana.
• I liked how they conveyed the impact the “good acting” had on others during the rehearsal. I thought that was a visually stunning and elegant way to bring that plot point across. Too bad that they had to go and have the characters talk about it extensively as well. It’s show and tell. But I can excuse it somewhat as it is at least relevant to their motivations, but eh… I just wish they would not spell everything out and trust in the viewer’s emotional intelligence to pick up on it anyway.
• Not a fan of OP and ED songs. Both were absolute bangers in season 1, so I was hoping season 2 would deliver as well.

I liked the first half of the show a lot more than the latter. The direction it took towards the end took out all the originality of the early episodes and turned it into just generic idol drama.

That gives me hope. Honestly, if not for the OP I would have dropped it midway through.

I don’t have any particular thoughts on her voice though. She sounded a bit “robotic” but it’s about what I’d expect here. I guess her voice will shift slowly toward the more natural spectrum as she grows more human over time. The same for her expression. At least that’s what I would do if I had a say in the production.

On the other hand, the biggest localization scandal (for lack of a better word) didn’t happen at the translation, it happened when failed YA authors were allowed to rewrite the work, which will still probably be a problem. So it might not do very much good either.

I think this is an important point. If this can take the translator’s ego out of the equation it would be a clear win. But then, they would probably insert it back again in the revision stage. My best case scenario would be that with the AI doing the heavy lifting there is enough human workforce going around so that those type of translators who rewrite the story find themself jobless.

Incredible last episode. The OST for the epic moment was the best I’ve heard this season and I give this episode a full 10/10. With the overall series getting a 9/10. I would have also loved to see a 14th episode with just comfy everything is alright vibes to cap it off.

Holy wow… MC is hard to watch. OP is by Tokino Sora so I want it to become a hit, but I don’t know if I can warm up to that type of MC.

In the context of my work, translations done by LLMs are working great so far and have no problem grasping context. And that is with general models and not specialized ones for the task which I assume this will be. So I will give it a chance instead of outright jumping on the AI hate train.

Google translation

Not the same thing. Not even close.