Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary (小市民シリーズ) season 2 is the 12 episode slice of live drama continuation based on the Shoshimin novel series by Yonezawa Honobu. The anime aired during the Spring of 2025.
For a recap of the first season, you can see the review of that here. The story picks up about 5 months after the end of the first season. Yuki and Jogoro are still avoiding each other, doing their best to live ordinary lives. Both are dating other people and Yuki's boyfriend, underclassman Urino Takahiko. He is a juniour member of the schools newspaper club and has ambitions greater than the publications is set up for. He convinces the head of the club, Kengo, to allow him to do an article on a series of recent arson attacks. Urino, who's older brother is a firefighter for the city, believes he can crack the case and uncover the identity of the arsonist. His plan stretches across the months, gaining him attention among his classmates, the caution of faculty and Jogoro's inquisitive interest. The climax of the investigation leads Jogoro and Yuki burying the hatchet and resuming their strange partnership.
The second half of the story deals with parallel hit and run incidents. Jogoro is struck by a car on Chritmas Eve, setting him up with a prolonged stay at the hospital. The incident reminds him of a similar situation three years earlier that lead to he and Yuki becoming...friends? As he takes a trip down memory lane and goes over the series of events that lead him to figure out who the culprit was in the first case, Yuki is working diligently to uncover who hit her friend. The truth of the incident is far stranger than they could have imagined, leading the sins of the past to return with a vengeance for blood.
The original season of Shoshimin has some issues with its pacing and story telling. It was difficult to become invested in the story when you didn't understand the characters. When what should be a juvenile Sherlock Holmes turns out to be little more than mundane problem solving for extraordinary problems, the viewer can lose focus and interest. The first season does a lot of work to make the viewer understand its two lead characters, slowly setting up their personalities against the backdrop of pointless problem solving. The final arc of that story however was more exciting as it included an amount of danger. All of the groundwork laid out in the first season pays off in the second season where we don't have to re-acquaint ourselves with the main characters. In fact, the first of the two arc, has a new character as the primary focal point, with Jogoro and Yuki playing background roles.
The two arcs that cover the second season deal with uncovering legitimate crimes and do it in a creative and engaging way. The story is more dynamic, especially with more people becoming involved without directly being included by Jogoro. The second arc does a fantastic job of incorporating the origin story of our duo with the present day mystery they are trying to solve. Also...it doesn't hurt that the mystery is about who ran over Jogoro and fled the scene, something a bit more enthralling for the audience than discovering methods for efficiently making hot cocoa. As with the first season, the artwork and direction is cinematic in its quality and greatly appreciated. This is an anime made for film snobs. Sadly, this is the last we will see of this world and unfortunately the original novels have not been made available in English. Time to watch Hyouka...
The series is available on Crunchyroll.
Posts
