SoundClip's Anime Review

Anime Review: Uta no Prince-sama

Genre: Shoujo, Romance, Comedy

# of Episodes: 13

# of Seasons: ?

Uta no Prince-sama (commonly referred to as UtaPri) is the story of a girl who wants to become a composer. (Nanami Haruka) She is late the day of the entrance exam, and (surprise, surprise!) two guys help her to get in to take the test. She (of course) passes the test with flying colors, and is admitted to Saotome Gakuen, an extremely prestigious academy known for turning out idols and composers of a high level. Once in the school she goes through many little trials, meeting the six other main characters of the series. (Ittoki Otoya, Hijirikawa Masato, Shinomiya Natsuki, Ichinose Tokiya, Jinguji Ren, and Kurusu Syo)

From left: Saotome Gakuen, Nanami Haruka

 

So the first day an assignment is given for music writing and lyrics from one person in the idol group and one person in the composer group, and some initial rules are laid out. First they are told they will have to choose a partner for the graduation audition (because they are in a school which is connected to an agency), but they don’t have to do it for a while. And second, guys and girls are not allowed to fall in love. Oh! How yaoi fangirls will love the non-specificity. After all this is a show with 6 attractive (they are all going to be idols) guys in even numbers. Just saying.

  

From left: Ittoki Otoya, Ichinose Tokiya, Jinguji Ren,
Hijirikawa Masato, Shinomiya Natsuki, Kurusu Syo

Anyway, she meets all the guys at different times and, obviously because this is shoujo, manages to change all of them in one way or another for the better. At one point or another all the boys sing with her and we get to know a little about them.  Of course this leads to a problem; all of them want her for their graduation partner. (*gasp* SHOCKER!) And, again of course, she just CAN’T choose, because they all mean so much to her. (Oh, and they all seem to want to be with her as well) After a bout of near confessions in the form of “I love……. your music” from all the boys they go on to form a boy band! Oh yeah! Bringing it back!

The Band's Name: Starish

After they form this band some drama ensues, because one of its members is already famous, but everyone gets over it and moves on with life. Right? Wrong! Because now the headmaster of the school (and the head of the talent agency) basically kicks Nanami off writing the songs for the band (as a way to  test her, but we’re not supposed to know that because this isn’t a typical anime or anything).  Anyhow there’s some crying and running away and singing and everything turns out well. The boys debut with her song and everybody is happy. The end of season 1.

My overall impression of this anime is hmmm. Worth consideration. I probably will be watching the second season (which airs in April 2013) because I don’t just stop watching things, but I’m sure it will end up a typical anime. I do give this show props for good introductions, though. It doesn’t just hurl characters at you all in one episode, despite the fact that it is a fairly short season. It slowly introduces them in ways that will be remembered after their initial ‘I’m this person’ introductions. And even though I gave it shit for being SUCH a shoujo anime, it’s still fairly interesting to see the progress of the characters. (Also, watch out regular shoujo fangirls because this is seriously recommended for crazy yaoi fangirls to make up pairings)

Overall Score:

7 out of 10

For interesting characters in a typical anime format.