(No Spoiler review) [All Episodes seen so far, update at end]
This is the second anime season of "K". If you haven't watched the first season, it'll make a lot more sense if you watch that first.
What the K franchise is about (and there's a movie Missing Kings which ties in the two seasons here) is a reconstruction of history from WWII, which led to superpowers being developed amongst certain factions of humans.
So this gets to the heart of what hierarchies are about, what feudalism was about, and how an organization changes depending on the leadership and the membership. You get a mix match of various different organizational ethics and ideals, such as the Yankee youth gangs that focus on comradeship and strength or the police forces that focus on Order and maintaining civic security and peace. There's also some modern or random stuff thrown in, since the feudal factions are split between 7 Kings, I think. So 7 overall factions, minus the internal factions.
The first season generally only focused on 3-4 of those factions. This series is hard to explain. It has action, yes, but it's not actually about action sequences. The first season was about leadership and duty, pretty much. Second season is a continuation of the events from the first season, so after watching episode 1, there's not much I can say about it other than that it looks good so far.
Updated to Ep 4 now. This starts off a little bit slow introducing the various characters, but it is a direct sequel to Missing Kings and Season 1 of K, so a lot of flash backs to previous events in Missing Kings, but if you didn't know what happened in Season 1 of K, you would be pretty easily lost by now. A couple of loose ends that people were wondering about, were tied up, including the really big "plot" device. Currently the episodes are setting up another plot arch and has focused more on cool flash action sequences, the visuals, and introducing the characters to people who are new. The fight choreography or setup is very flashy, with a lot of weapon twirling, special effects from powers, and so forth. Whether people will like that or not, no idea. Up to you.
To help people new to this series, the "Kings" are individuals given power by the Dresden slates found during WWII, those slabs of stone people see all the time under protection. Each King has its own special power, which they can then hand to loyal subordinates, like oaths of feudalism. I'm exposing some of the plot arcs of the first season, but either the reader already knows about this if they are a fan of K or the new viewer will have need of this critical world building information. Otherwise you're just seeing characters run around with cool powers, which I don't think encapsulates the complexity of K's world building.
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Now that the season has ended, I can give a more final rating and review. The overall plot arc has ended, so there won't be a need for another season for this story line. The ending was pretty absolute in terms of how many plot lines were tied up. Compared to the first season of K, this one is more action packed, more centered around the various powers and politics even of the world. It's also not constructed in the same way, so don't expect the "life and death drama vibe" of the first season of K.
Overall, I enjoyed the first season more, because the story was constructed using a more mysterious and interesting mechanic. This second season I'm reviewing here, ties things up very nicely and provides closure to some unresolved plot lines from before. The first season of K had the central themes of family and loyalty to clan or friends. The second season of K introduces a different theme, on top of the first one: the evolution of humanity using de-centralized chaos. I found myself in agree with that on principle, but the methods they used weren't something I could agree with. That was interesting on an intellectual level, it was hard to match that up with the previous vibe. So while K the first season got 5/5 from me, this one due to reductions, only got 4/5 or 8/10. Still good, but not quite as impactful as the previous story.
