Monday, August 27, 2012

Halfway Point: Koi to Senkyou to Chocolate

Huff puff huff puff

15+ series I'm reviewing? Really?

Also, bitches thought that I wasn't posting b/c I was lazy. YOU'RE WRONG. I finished up Halfway Point drafts of every series I've watched a month beforehand. Suck it down.

Photobucket
Bridge!
...Sunset!

Ooh, Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate. I can see this visual novel adaptation coming with its truckload of sweet scenes from a mile away. Does it deliver better than, say, Mashiro-iro Symphony did, though?

The graphics are damn clean. Sharp lines, good colors, great proportions, all around a very nice job done by AIC. The graphics style makes me nostalgic for Amagami, but they've also slightly narrowed the faces to suit the style of the original visual novel. Very nicely done, as expected from this studio.

The audio isn't anything special. It sounds nice, but nothing really stands out from the crowd and makes me either nostalgic and warm or excited and ready to see the series. The OP (INITIATIVE by Kawada Mami) has a nice piano beginning (except I don't like it as much as the beginning part in Check My Soul (Amagami SS+ plus OP by azusa), which serves as the musical leitmotif of the series, but the rest is kinda standard and thus pretty crappy. Sorry.

The plot, on the other hand, is relatively interesting.

Photobucket
HELLO THAR

The main story is as such: the protagonist is part of a candy-making club. With girls. Lots of girls. And a pretty-boy who also likes the main guy. They couldn't find a good trap, I guess. Anyways, the student council elections are coming and one of the more popular candidates has a troubling habit of being an asshole and disbanding a lot of clubs for money purposes, along with other unpopular reforms. To stop this, the sweets club decides to help the protagonist get elected to the position of student council president. However, the livelihoods of many girls seem to depend on this election...find out more on Fox 5 morning news.

Anyhoos, the pacing is decent and the girls aren't too retardedly stereotypical, so I like it. I especially like how most of the girls' routes are focused around the protagonist (ok, his name is Oujima Yuuki) winning the election, so unlike Amagami, Yuuki won't have to run around doing all these side-stories just to get one episode with each girl. This makes the series a lot cleaner and saves the studio from the trouble to trying to juggle the main story (the election) and that of the girl the main guy is gonna go out with at the same time during the last episodes. I guess that's one for the visual novel more than the adaptation, but still, good job.

Other than that, it seems a standard eroge fanservice series with tsukkomi humor, but I do like how the visual novel/anime adaptation does take quite some time to explain the workings of the election besides "get votes and win". The aniem has already introduced the idea of alliances, timing when you enter the election or do something to get attention (AKA to use the 'bump' as soon as possible), the rules behind the election, and so on and so forth. Acute attention to detail like this is what makes a series much more engaging nowadays, not just "herp derp girls + election == fanservice until episode 11 when everything gets down to the wire". Good shit.

Photobucket
That's good and all but...

Recommendation: It may be a standard series, but at least it's not Mashiro-iro Symphony. Try it out.

Photobucket
Eye of the Chisato

No comments:

Post a Comment