The first season of Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro was a surprise in several ways. The depiction of fetish bullying was impressive in its craftsmanship, if not emotionally repelling. Beyond portraying particular pornographic material, the show embraced an earnest emotional core and explored some surprisingly deep artistic concepts. The series became unexpectedly inviting if you allowed yourself to be embraced by it., an unusual shift for a show that initially appeared to be based on trolling anyone who tried to engage with it.

Having settled into that kind of entertaining groove, the seemingly inevitable follow-up, 2nd Attack, can mostly dispense with the fetish-porn pretenses and deliver on a feeling that might have been most unexpected from Miss Nagatoro at its outset: Sincerity. It makes sense, as the sincerity of Nagatoro and Senpai's relationship was the most accessible element for audiences despite the layers of kink. Centering the new season around their relationship does necessitate some noticeable walk-back; Nagatoro and Senpai seemed sure of their feelings for each other through the first season's climax, despite not officially dating.

Nagatoro trades in her bodice-ripping bullying for more of a mutually flustered will-they-won't-they affair. The anime seems reasonably aware of its backtracking, as virtually every character in the series regularly vocalizes the audience's internal intonation of "Wait, aren't you two dating already?" Given the hormonal hemming and hawing typical of high-school kids, particularly a nebbish like Senpai and an inexperienced projector like Nagatoro, the couple's stalled launch could be believable. Still, if you're here for actual-factual progress on the part of the courtship, you may leave disappointed. While there are plenty of blushy-crush blow-ups between the pair, they still take the entire season to go on a "real" date or work their way up to a simple hug. Perhaps that's a knowing jab at the intricacies of showing "normal" affection since Nagatoro was stepping on Senpai and having him do pet play in the first season. Navigating the complexities of romance can be truly labyrinthine.

Moving past the show's saucier sensibilities also means there isn't any room for the metatextual artistic heights that Miss Nagatoro reached at the end of its first season. Even the art club president, played by Nana Mizuki, is less of an ambiguous embodiment of the intention of sexualized art and more a vector for jokes about her obliviously providing performance-art fanservice. These are still extremely good jokes, mind you. Even if Miss Nagatoro has lost a lot of its hard-top edge, it can still hit a bullseye of a punchline and temper it with an understanding of hormonal teenage mating rituals. Indeed, the true density of 2nd Attack focuses on portraying the growth of our lead characters propelled by their ever-so-slowly growing closeness.

A strong demonstration in this season can be seen in some seemingly simple setups, such as Senpai choosing to wear contacts instead of glasses. It's not just a one-off innuendo-laden sketch of Nagatoro inserting the glasses for Senpai, as he remains unbespectacled through the rest of the season. Points of progress like this are noted throughout the run, such as Senpai realizing he does not know Nagatoro's first name, leading him to learn more about it, her family, and her past. It culminates in a judo tournament where the two cheer each other on. For Nagatoro's part, that judo revelation indicates some origins of her preference for staying within an established comfort zone, such as a relationship built on calculated flirt-bullying where she's still waiting for the guy to make the next big move. The judo storyline in particular is where a lot of payoff for the characters comes through, as it results in a shuffling of priorities and positions that directly feeds into necessitating the big date ask-out for the final episodes.

It's nice on a pure storytelling front since it means that even if the possible progression of Senpai and Nagatoro's relationship is but a pretense at this point, both of them come out feeling more like actual characters than the cipher and effed-up fantasy objects they represented when it all began. There seems to be some retroactive writing at play here, as we understand that Nagatoro lacks much critical experience with courtship and intimacy. This winds up being more narratively satisfying, as it leads to the question of how much of her previous advances were a cover for those shortcomings, and how her friends and family instigated their forms of playful bullying over it. That's perhaps a denser analysis of Nagatoro's personality than might be asked, even from the show, that last season dared to question what art was. But darn it. It is still there. Nagatoro used to be nothing but a face in a CG set for extremely particular perverts. She's now a character written with multitudes that can be analyzed within the context of stories and relationships. The fact that the series has become more of a "standard" rom-com should count for something.

Banking as the anime now is on your appreciation of the characters and their dynamic. They hardly brought their A-game for that whole "anime" side of things. Miss Nagatoro was never exactly the prettiest bully in the schoolyard, as it looks more flat and stiff this go-around. Nagatoro devolves into noodle-limbed caricature or outright featureless black blob more often, and the rolling back of the whole bully-fetish angle means we're hardly getting any close-ups or framings of screwed-up sexual tension. The base character action remains effectively evocative, as Nagatoro is still a face-game machine. They keep up Senpai's glasses-pushing nervous tic even after he stops wearing glasses, turning it into an amusing running gag. The show's not above adding new bits of weirdness, like introducing the Club President's cousin and her propensity for Naruto-running. It generally gets the job done and makes you go "aww" when its two central dorks start blushing and panicking around each other, which is all we can ask at this stage.

It is thus enough to say, "If you liked the first season of Miss Nagatoro, you'll like the second," but not quite in the same way you might expect. What you have here is essentially a solid rom-com that relies on your pre-existing enthusiasm for the two main characters, tempered by the lasting effects of their established dynamic. It isn't one where you can jump in and immediately understand this kind of relationship teasing, especially when you aren't familiar with the intense teasing of Nagatoro and Senpai's outlandish dom/sub arrangement which came before. But for those who fell in love with these two in that first season, it is entertaining to watch them fall in love with each other here.