Uta no Prince-sama Maji LOVE 2000% – 04

Step 1 to hugging someone: Stand under a waterfall

It looks like the assumption that each guy is getting his own episode is correct. Also, the senpai seem to have all but disappeared. I really hope Shining isn’t paying them anything for this.

…For a class that’s supposed to be teaching the guys about being idols, there sure is little to no schooling going on. I mean, so far it’s just been the guys all doing their own thing (under the explanation of trying for the Uta Pri award) and the whole Master Class has just been an excuse to introduce the senpai and make the characters all still live under one roof. Hell, the senpai aren’t even doing much. Minus Camus, who appears to have taken on the role of being Cecil’s manager of sorts, in which case, good for him for doing his job. It was Cecil who fixed Masato’s problem, not Ranmaru, the guy who’s actually supposed to be helping him. You can’t even really use the excuse that he won’t help the guys because he thinks they’re amateurs because Ranmaru wasn’t even in the damn episode. I would have accepted an assholish remark about them not being good enough and left it at that, but this entire episode, it was like he didn’t even exist. What’s the point of putting the guys in a training course if they could have learned all of this in the industry on their own? Or maybe we’re just not seeing all of the idol homework or whatever the senpai are supposed to be giving STARISH. Plus they kind of proved themselves as terrible teachers all the way back at episode 1.

And who knows what Haruka’s doing other than being in convenient places at convenient times. She wrote a bunch of songs the first episode, almost fell off a bridge, and now I guess the plot doesn’t really need her there anymore other than being a love interest for all of the guys. Hell, I only noticed this episode that she doesn’t seem to be doing anything productive at all (I admit to being distracted the last couple episodes due to the romance). I’ve grown to like Haruka over the course of the anime and games despite her ineptness, so I really do hope that they give her a more active role in the plot. …Or at least a half assed explanation that she’s too busy writing STARISH the bestest song evar to be given screentime or something.

“Haruka exists?!”

“Oh, whoa! We’ve had an actual female with us the entire time! LOL!”…Yeah I’m not entirely sure why they couldn’t have just brought in Haruka from the start. I supposed seeing Tokiya in drag (for no reason whatsoever) is kind of an okay trade off, but it seems kind of silly that they apparently all forgot that the girl they were mutually pining over existed. Or maybe it was a smart move on their part since she probably would have screwed up the lines and/or made them all feel really awkward when she declared her love for Masato. At least if Masato pretends that it’s Haruka in his head, the other guys don’t have to sit and watch it.

“We share a bond… A bond of drug induced hallucinations”

Speaking of Masato, this was obviously his episode. I don’t think it was nearly as good as Syo’s was though, and not just because the romance department was lacking. Syo seemed to learn a valuable life lesson (ish) in his episode, meanwhile, Masato just kind of… remembers advice that he had forgotten. Or maybe I’m just giving more credit to Syo’s episode since I connected more with that message and Syo didn’t have any cryptic advice to blatantly ignore. Masato even knew that his grandfather had given him advice about performance art being a team effort and he still decided to try to accomplish things on his own for no explained reason whatsoever. At least that wasn’t the entire lesson though. That last bit about the filling the stage with the actor’s dreams seemed pretty reasonable. If only Masato could have remembered those words of wisdom sooner. …Or maybe it was more of a case of the advice going in one ear and out the other since Masato didn’t seem to be struggling to figure out what the advice actually meant.

Why Tokiya? How else were they going to incorporate Miyano’s awesome falsetto and Tokiya’s crossdressing tendencies? (screencap from one my particularly weird playthroughs of UtaPri Music)

By the way, the ending song was bugging me since that part with all of them saying their initials, the guys all used their first names and then Masato and Cecil used the letter from their last names. …And then I noticed that they were spelling out STARISH. OTL …Which admittedly, makes a better name than STCRISM (I mean, how would you even begin to pronounce that?). Just how intentional was this? They’ve been using the name for the entire run of the anime, so I assume it’s pretty intentional.  Even though Cecil isn’t an official member during the last season. I mean, there’s no way that their initials would (kind of sort of) spell out STARISH without intentions, right?

This episode just kind of felt off. Don’t get me wrong, it had good parts to it and classic UtaPri humour, but at the same time, it felt like a lot of points were missed. It seems kind of… sad that absolutely everyone had forgotten that Haruka existed and she doesn’t appear to be doing anything productive. Plus the senpai were nowhere to be found and Masato’s problem was ultimately solved by the advice from a magical eastern cat-boy prince (which, if there wasn’t the whole plot point about the senpai, would be a normal sentence in any other UtaPri plot description). At least the ending was entertaining. The conversation with Haruka (and then Cecil) felt a little tacked on, but it’s all good entertainment. Cecil seems to be getting constant development as well, so let’s see where this is going.

Or in translation: “The plot won’t let me”

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.