Can Haruka please six young men?
What They Say:
Haruka comes up with a plan regarding her six potential graduation audition partners, but it leads to the headmaster threatening… to flunk them all?!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the previous episode setting up things for the graduation audition and having several people approach her to varying degrees about partnering with her, Haruka is in a very difficult position of figuring out how to make everyone happy. She’s not really thinking of herself in a way because, as she puts it early on here, she’s only here at this point because of each of them. So she has to make sure that she acknowledges that and doesn’t hurt any of them. It’s a double edged sword because it means so much to her that the six of them did ask her, but it’s painful as well because she has to deal with disappointing some, if not all, of them by her choice. And for a young high school girl like Haruka who is fairly sensitive to begin with, it’ll eat away at her easily.
Haruka’s solution, egged on by her grandmother of all people, is the obvious one in the end as she decides instead to write a song that requires all six of them to sing together. It obviously makes the most sense and pleases the basic requirements while dealing with her feelings. While it’s not something that the guys would be all gung ho for, it is something that she’s able to win them over with in the end because of her honest approach to it all with her feelings. Considering their personalities, some much stronger than others, it’s not a slam dunk from the start though as they have to deal with their own desires which were borne from the way they wanted to partner with her, not with the others. There’s no surprises in who agrees to it easily enough and those who step back from the start, especially since they’re very much the types that want to stand out the most when on stage.
What becomes a welcome change to all of this though is that the principal jumps into the mix, almost literally, and lets them know that the whole idea just isn’t allowed and wants them to get proper partners so that the graduation auditions can get underway. But it’s the kind of impetus needed by the “gang of six” to really come together and do what they can to make Haruka’s plan become a reality. It’s good to see some pushback by the headmaster since rules are rules, but there’s something to be said about a school that’s all about performance, creativity and out of the box thinking really working this idea as much as possible. The characters aren’t a hundred percent behind the idea since they all want Haruka for themselves as well, but they can look at it as a proper path by each of them for getting closer to her.
In Summary:
As goofy as the show can be, and believe me it can be goofy with the variety of pretty boys here and how they act, this episode does start bringing things together and uses a fairly natural and obvious track to do it. While it would be interesting to see her going through and working with each of them until she can find the right one, disappointing some along the way, it’s better to cut right to the chase and focus on events in this way. With the group performance concept driving things now and something that’s definitely appropriate, Uta no Prince Sama has a bit of work to do in the remaining episodes but we get a good glimpse of it here and why it’ll work. The strength of the show continues to be all the pretty boys, their goofy personalities and some very appealing animation. And that does let it work, surprisingly enough, even with a paper thin plot as we get. It’s still not a favorite series by any stretch, but it’s pretty vapid entertainment that works on that level.
Grade: B
Streamed 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.
