I only watched Lion King II because I taped it from TV. I watched it twice and still wondering if it's made by the same group that did the first movie.
It's quite a disappointment. The characters are not interesting any more. Their facial expression has too many changes in one second it's not natural. And I'm hoping it's just me, I found Kiara very annoying, probably because of her sometimes-nasal voice (that always gives me a fake-cry impression). Besides, unlike Simba, she wasn't given the chance to mature. She was the same spoiled little girl from the beginning to end. It's a good thing they want to have a princess instead of a prince, but it's easy to tell the plot is still highly underneath Kovu. It's strange to talk about character chemistry in an animated movie, but I found Lion King II lack the kind of chemistry the first one had. Probably the director's fault.
The plot did mature a lot, though. During a great length of the movie I thought Zira was to live. She's not really a villain, just some poor old thing stuck in the thoughts of revenge for too long. But I guess little kids won't understand it that way, so Kira dies at the end. Given a plot like this, it's pretty hard to screw up the characters due to lack of complicity, but they did.