Haruka is in for more than she realizes when she is accepted into a performing arts boarding academy.
What They Say:
Haruka enters the prestigious performing arts school, the Saotome Academy, with dreams of becoming a composer. Her ultimate goal is to write a song for her favorite idol, Hayato, but to get there, she’ll have to deal with various challenges, which include being surrounded by princes of song!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the game and manga of the same name, Uta no Prince-sama serves as our first introduction to the Nico Nico service. While we’re certainly not a fan of how the main service acts, the comments and the really childish nature of a lot of it, the actual simulcast service side of it is pretty decent since you can turn off comments and not enable scrolling on the side with comments. I don’t watch anime at conventions with fans because most are silly, rude and obnoxious in group settings. I can’t imagine that being different on a worldwide scale when put into this context, so we’ll be ignoring that. With the show itself, the player is decent though I miss the option to turn off subtitles themselves, and it has a good clean interface that works well and lead to no problems during playback.
The series is animated by one of my favorite studios out there now, A-1 Pictures, and looks to do the whole reverse harem angle to good effect here. We’re introduced to X, a young woman that’s attending Saotome Academy where it’s all about the performing arts. It’s an awkward start once things get rolling for Haruka as she’s late due to helping a child, and that has the security side of the academy calling her out as not being good material here. But the male students that are there smooth things over for her and in turn wow her a bit, leaving her almost a little starstruck in a way with how handsome they are and how helpful they are. It’s just enough help to get her in to take the exam to see if she’s truly the right caliber for this particular academy.
The academy is certainly a prestigious one with a great location, lots of interesting design elements and one that stands out so strongly with the animation and the character designs that it almost feels too rich in its design. But it has some amusing color to it as well because it is a performing arts school, which we see at the entrance ceremony, with the headmaster leaping in from above with a wild mask on his face and a whole lot of scenery eating. It’s comically over the top in all regards here when it comes to him and the staff in their introductions, but it also fits in a way to how you’d normally see things like this done on, say, a Disney Channel TV show involving kids this age. And strangely enough, that’s not a half bad analogy to make to this as you can see this being adapted into a live action US TV form very easily.
Like most first episodes involving special academy’s like this, it’s all about the introduction to the setting and the base characters. Haruka has her best friend in Tomo, a very outgoing but not overly so young woman who helps to nudge her into being more open herself. There’s a variety of young men that she comes across, such as the two that she met on the day of the entrance exams, as well as others that populate the school in different positions of social status and influence. A couple of them are sons of powerful men in the corporate world and then there are others that are more common in a sense, but plenty in between as well. Tomo knows who everyone is of course, being that kind of busybody, but what she says is true in that there are many “princes” to be had in this academy that can keep them busy.
Some emotional context is drawn into the show as well with Haruka since as the lead she has to be the one to connect us to everything because of her being an average person in a sense. There’s a defining moment in her recent past that helps as we see the influence of music, and one performer in particular, has had in her life which is why she’s applied here for her schooling. Though it’s a bit much in its own way, it is the way someone that age can see things when it comes to how others influence them, powerfully so at times, and it’s wonderfully animated as the music sings to her in a way so many people can never actually feel. It’s a very good moment for really cementing why she wanted to be here and just how much she can be moved by performance and one performer in particular.
In Summary:
Uta no Prince-sama wasn’t a show that I thought I’d get into, especially with its PSP game origins, but there’s something really hypnotic about the show. I absolutely adore the animation and designs, though Haruka’s eyes are creepily dead looking, and there’s a richness to the academy interiors that’s almost overpowering because of the colors and detail to it all. The opening episode gives us a straightforward setup with plenty of hints as to what’s to come and you can tell how over the top it’s going to go, but it’s also something expected when it comes to an academy that’s all about the performing arts. While it may be richly detailed and almost opulent in some ways, it’s also a world that feels very lived in and real because of it. The opening episode has really surprised me by how much it captured my attention in a way, because there’s so much to look at here and be interested in. The story itself doesn’t have much to offer at this point, no grand hook really, but it offers more than enough to ensure you come back to check it out again to see where they’re going to go with it now that the basics are done with.
Grade: B+
Simulcast By: Nico Nico
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
