Friday, March 16, 2012

Amagami SS S2 - Tsukasa and Rihoko Arcs

Well the second season is here and because i loved the first series, i've decided to follow this one too. What different here is that they arent following the game anymore, the first season already covered everything in the games. The second important point is... they are already all couples (except for Rihoko) so its quite a challenge to keep the story going. How do they hold up? Lets find out.

Tsukasa Arc

Working backwards here they start with Tsukasa's arc. Very abridged summary, Tsukasa is running for school president and has selected Junichi to be her vice president. Whats in their way is a new girl with quite powerful connections due to her father and is catching up in the polls. to make things worse, she also selects Junichi as her VP to get under Tsukasa's skin, and even kisses him in front of her. Tsukasa gets a bit rattled, but does pull through and with encouragement from Junichi makes a emotional speech and wins the election.

Rihoko's arc

Continuing from last season, Junichi is now with the tea club and the older sempai's have left. Junichi's parents are away so he hasn't been eating properly. Rihoko decides to come over and cook for him, but along the way is hit on by a guy from their school with Junichi catching it all. Whats important here is that for the first time we hear her admit she has feelings for Junichi, but he was out of earshot and didnt hear, only getting the wrong idea due to the other guy being around rihoko. he comes over. After dinner and some fireworks (no they didnt bang, they were literally playing with fireworks) they admit they like each other and the implication is they are now together.

Impressions:

The Tsukasa arc was entertaining, but with only 2 episodes per girl, we dont really get much development. thats not necessarily a bad thing though as there really isn't much to develop. Like i said they already finished the story so its hard to come up with more stories for these characters. They went for the "jealousy angle" for the first arc. It works pretty well and its still unclear weather the new girl is actually interested in Junichi or if shes trying to get at Tsukasa. (She did seem more upset that Junichi is still with Tsukasa proclaiming she would make him hers so im guessing the former) the problem is if they try to use this for the other arcs as well. the story will get boring really fast.

The Rihoko arc is pretty average. It finished off the her story and officially made the two a couple. However, this should have happened last season. It didnt really feel like an extra set of episodes like the others and it did made it feel more connected to the main story, but it left Rihoko fans feeling like they are being shorted a set of extra episodes. The actually episode and writing are average at best. It left absolutely no impact on me and infact i had to rewatch the last couple of minutes to remember what even happened. I guess its because i knew they were going to wrap up the arc so there wasnt much surprise as to what direction the story was heading.
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