Uta no Prince-sama Love Legend Star – Season Review
Future dream love and more to you too, Utapri.
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I made it through the fall season pretty much anime-less due to school being really needy, but now I can finally catch up right as winter starts. Hooray! |
An accurate portrayal of what has happened to this series. …Okay it’s not THAT bad
Apparently Haruka is the only composer in existence (and only viable female option to male idol groups apparently), but at least she has a job and lots of work I guess. It’s just kind of too bad that she didn’t have a huge role in a few of the episodes aside from just being an observer. I guess it was her song that brought back HEAVENS in the end, but man, she didn’t even really have a role in the character’s development over the course of the anime. UtaPri has really moved away from being about the otome stuff and more about the work side of things. But I guess Haruka is music-sexual forever for the time being, so at least her life is fulfilling for her.
This explains so much about why the eligible bachelor count has gotten so ridiculously high
Meanwhile, QUARTET NIGHT decided to move in together and do their own sit-com type thing. I’m pretty glad that the drama between the group didn’t end with a punch line, like Reiji actually leaving and causing all of the concern just because he to buy groceries or something. Instead, the group actually had a heartfelt moment and they actually did something that looks like it will further their careers. It was pretty shallow considering that all of this happened in a single episode, and the fighting was pretty shallow to begin with, but it was something. Plus it addressed the obvious question of why they worked as a group in the first place. So at least QUARTET NIGHT got something this season, aside from popping up to give advice whenever it was convenient for the plot.
And then they went on a road trip and weren’t relevant for the rest of the season
Aside from the QUARTET NIGHT thing, what STARISH and HEAVENS were up to was interesting. I was wondering how they were going to go about introducing the 7 (fairly) new characters while still trying to give the original 7 screen time. They already cut back the numbers by banishing QUARTET NIGHT out on a group tour, and I guess pushing one member of the remaining groups together is an interesting way of dealing with the rest of the characters. …Plus now the fujoshi have more interesting ideas on how to ship the characters with each other.
Tokiya and Eiji was an interesting pairing, and I guess by getting the “I’m more talented than everyone else so everyone else needs to try harder” feelings out of the way early, things make more sense. If this episode happened say, midway through the season, it would kind of be ignoring all of the progress the rest of the characters have had over their episodes. As for the episode itself, and Tokiya, I feel like this was an interesting side of his character to see. I feel like it’s been a while since anyone has mentioned HAYATO or that side of Tokiya’s life. …Though Eiji is kind of boring. He makes an interesting companion to his brother and father, since his personality is the complete opposite of both, but on his own, he’s just kind of… flat on his own I guess. But he had interesting chemistry with Tokiya I guess.
Cecil’s episode was kind of similar with taking Cecil’s character in an interesting direction, since he actually kind of learned to give people space. I still don’t have a clear understanding of Shion’s character, but oh well. Nagi kind of got the shaft too, since the Natsuki episode was really about Satsuki (even though I could have sworn that they solved everything about this issue seasons ago).
Then there was Syo and totally not Mahiro from Zetsuen no Tempest Yamato. It seems like Hyuuga-sensei having a brother came out of nowhere, but I guess it makes the relationships between characters more interesting. By this point, the show has completely forgotten about Syo being a tsundere in favour for his whole obsession with Hyuuga and manliness, but it would admittedly be kind of hard to include tsundere when he never really even interacts with Haruka anymore. No one interacts with Haruka anymore, really.
Minus the Ren and Van episode, I guess, where Van suddenly decided to confess even though he and Haruka have shared maybe 10 minutes of screen time total. I guess Ren’s whole thing is his flirty-ness (or I guess dedication to Haruka since he’s a one-woman man now), so it makes sense that his episode actually revolved around her? Interestingly, Van seemed to be one of the few members of HEAVEN’s who actually had a slightly more developed character, since the episode focused equally on their issues. …Or so I’d like to say, but Shion had equal issues with Cecil in their episode, and all I could take away was that the guy liked his group a lot.
Then Evangelion happened.
Yeah, I dunno what happened to Otoya’s character episode(s), but it was actually pretty funny in a totally unintentional way. Flames and despair aren’t really normal for Utapri, and Otoya losing his will to smile was definitely unexpected. But hey, this was probably the most interesting character development that happened all season, since everything else was either recycling plot points from the first season (which was actually kind of a nice call back since this show seems to have forgotten a lot of what it started with in terms of characterization), or other plot points that have been used to death, like Syo and his manly battles or whatever. I guess it’s also good on Eichi’s part that him breaking Otoya into running away wasn’t with malicious intentions. He’s just… obsessed with soul shaking music. Or something. It seemed pretty evil during the process, but I guess the guy was just sincerely interested in Otoya.
But hey, after the whole Otoya disaster at the end, at least it wasn’t STARISH with the issues for the final concert for once. Maybe whatever happened to Raging will have big effects on this series in the future, but it just seemed like more of the last minute drama that always seems to happen in Utapri. Overall, the concert was pretty interesting, and having Utapri end without exposing STARISH’s final song the entire time in the ED was something new. …That CG though. It wasn’t horrible, but it was kind of jarring. But hey, at least it looked better than most of the times when the animators tried to hand animate the characters singing in that last episode.
But yaaay STARISH wins, I guess
“The Doujins Are Practically Writing Themselves!” Section
This season was kind of underwhelming since there were way too many characters, and Haruka just kind of disappeared into the background until someone needed music. Oh god, the cash cow milking isn’t even close to being done though, since apparently there’s yet another Utapri anime in the works if the message at the end is true. Is it even selling well anymore? Why is there more?? Much like the games, all of the projects that have come afterwards just… don’t capture what I liked about the original. Plus there are just way too many characters now to properly do anything with them. If they wanted to just focus on one group of idols for the next anime (like HEAVENS, who are still SO one dimensional as characters), that might improve things, but it was just really hard to care about everything that happened this season because of how short and relatively inconsequential the character developments were. But maybe this was just my weariness of this series in general, since it seems to never end. It was a nice distraction though when I wanted to see something light and silly, but I’d still say that the first season of Utapri is the best one still.
Though this one made me weirdly thirsty for Shining.
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.
