Uta no Prince-sama Maji LOVE 2000% – 07

The fanfics are basically writing themselves at this point.

As I figured, they’re leaving Tokiya for last and it’s Natsuki/Satsuki’s turn for an episode. Surprisingly though, there weren’t as many wacky antics as I was expecting.

Like I said, this episode was way more serious than I expected. I mean, it’s centred around Natsuki, the guy who is obsessed with some chicken thing and who’s absolute favourite past time is ignoring Syo’s personal space. I was expecting a lot of bromance to be honest. However, they brought in a lot of stuff from the games and so much so that it feels like they’ve taken more out of the games for this episode than any other one. For one thing, they fully explained the backstory about Satsuki and how Natsuki’s teacher pretty much ripped off a small child and made his life miserable. Also, they kind of added his insecurities about how everyone (most Syo) seems to be progressing without him (which I vaguely remember being a large part of Debut). The only major plot point they didn’t seem to have is Natsuki accepting Satsuki, but I imagine that’s just in case if there’s UtaPri 3000% or more in the future. Taking away the Natsuki/Satsuki thing is basically taking away him being interesting as a character.

“Er, Shinomiya-san, your dazzling aura is making it really difficult to take pictures”

So overall though, this kind of seriousness worked. Natsuki seem to always be portrayed as a comic relief character, so this showed a different side to him. When he’s not hugging cute things or attracting the local wildlife, he does have his own insecurities about becoming stronger. Which makes sense if you think about how tough Satsuki acts whenever he appears. Also, this episode also proved that Natsuki can be as eye catching as the other guys. I mean, just look at Cecil’s reaction. …Though that seems to be Cecil’s facial reaction to all of the guys when they preform. I’m not entirely sure why Natsuki felt the need to sing during the lipstick commercial (…and it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t trying to sell lipstick for men OTL), but whatever works I guess.

Haruka also felt a bit more involved than usual in this. …Though maybe that’s because she was risking her fingers (which are important for her to play piano/compose) where normally she either trips herself into danger or provides moral support. She went out on a limb for Natsuki and I guess that was what won Satsuki over. …To be honest, it didn’t feel that convincing to me, but I’ll take it since it was Haruka being competent for once. I think she probably could have counted on Satsuki to do the job on his own though since he was doing it to protect Natsuki. Unless the director tried to make a move on him, I doubt Satsuki would have thrown around the set in a blind rage or anything like that. Though I guess giving himself a different image for once was good for Natsuki to grow on his own. Plus Satsuki kind of sort of trusts Haruka now, so that’s progress.

…I always feel like I say the same 2 things about Cecil, but then I realized that he does the exact same thing in pretty much every episode. He walks in, talks to whoever’s episode it is, learns something and then we see a little bit of growth. At this point, this is pretty much the only thing we have to remind us that this show actually has a plot I guess. Plus with him always around, we also get to see Camus. Though he has his own song now, so I imagine we’ll see an accumulation of this growth at some point in the form of a music number. Will they give us 2 insert songs? That’s some favouritism if they do since Otoya’s two songs don’t really count since one of them was taken from the games. Though Cecil obviously has favouritism already since he’s actually doing things every episode where all of the other guys don’t do much unless it’s their episode.

What else can I say? This felt a bit light with the reasoning behind things (“you refused to let me close a door! I guess I’ll trust you” and sunglasses solve everything), but it was quite a good character development episode. For Natsuki at least, because we all know that Cecil isn’t going to do much until it’s absolutely necessary, Haruka is just there to fix plot problems, and nobody else does much except for hanging around outside their episode. Seeing what will come after Tokiya’s episode should be interesting though. In 1000%, Tokiya’s problems took up like, 3 episodes, but I don’t think he’s having the same kind of issues now, so I wonder how they’ll spend all of that extra time.

I swear, 90% of the special effects budget goes towards sparkles.

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.