- They sparkle, and that makes me want to watch them forever.
Although it may sound silly as an inspirational quote, the reality is that it sums up this anime pretty well. While you may not find great life lessons or cultural facts to be learned from this show, you'll definitely find some sparkle in it (lots of it, in fact), so if that's your thing, then Uta no Prince-sama 2 is definitely for you.
Having gone from being 1000% about "real love" to being 2000% about it, things definitely get more intense. From the extra sparkle to the excessive and awkward use of Engrish (in both songs and dialogues), the protagonist's eyes have become even creepier, the school even prettier, the lines even cheesier and the guys even more flamboyant. Besides all these "intensifications", new guys also join the picture and range from "professionals" to wannabes (along with the odd prince).
However, if you've seen the first season, then you probably know that, no matter how many boys join the cast, Shining Saotome will always be the man. Seriously, he's still the best thing about this show and probably will continue to be for all the seasons to come.
But rather than write an essay about all the redeeming qualities of this wonderful character, I will instead point out some of the strengths and weaknesses this second season had so that you may decide whether you actually want to watch it or not.
If you're a fan of the overall look and style of this show as well as the art and animation, then I have good news for you. These have definitely improved and the characters no longer look like they're convulsing during the dance sequences. This doesn't save them from continuing to look completely ridiculous, but hey, that applies to more than one aspect of this anime.
Although no girl is silly enough to believe that they can be surrounded by almost a dozen males all fighting for her attention, UtaPri 2 takes the "unbelievable" to the next level. From adding princes mentioned above to settings and outfits that are even more lavish and extravagant than those in the first season, this show loses what little credibility it had beforehand. While I have seen my fair share of schools that are simply too pretty to be real in shows like Ouran Koukou Host Club, Vampire Knight, and Diabolik Lovers (notice how only reverse harems take place in fancy schools?), the academy in UtaPri 2 is on another level altogether. As if that wasn't enough, the protagonists also engage in spontaneous tea drinking in the foyer and have thousands of roses delivered to their love interest's dorm room, because, hey, isn't that what all high schoolers and college students do?
Every single time when I thought that this anime couldn't get any more ridiculous, it always managed to prove me wrong. This inevitably made it pretty addicting, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. In many ways, UtaPri 2 is "so bad it's good".
From an opening that sounds like it's trying way too hard to be cool and edgy to an ending that pretty much sounds exactly the same as the one used in the first season, the songs are just as bubbly and forgettable as all the ones used before. Additionally, the main characters now all come with their own songs too, which sound... Cringeworthy. Although some of the songs were okay (and I know that they were performed by experienced seiyuu who underwent rigorous singing training), most of these character songs sounded outright bad and again made this show almost too embarrassing to watch.
My biggest problem with this anime, however, is the Engrish. Although I know that actual JPOP songs throw in some Engrish about 90% of the time, UtaPri 2 songs not only use it 100% of the time, but also happen to do it pretty terribly. From phrases like "believe heart" and "release sing" to "let's peace", "let's song", and, my personal favorite — "we love song", the use of terrible grammar is just another aspect which makes this anime unintentionally hilarious. I mean, would it really have killed them to hire an English language consultant? While I understand that a lot of the budget for this anime must have gone to fancy special effects, artists, animators, and famous voice actors, I feel like they could have set apart a bit of money to save themselves from total international embarrassment. Or simply not have used this much Engrish to begin with. (Seriously though, is that how Japanese kids talk these days? I really hope not).
Besides the songs, some seiyuu also sounded pretty questionable when acting out regular dialogues. While I have no problem with male voice actors sounding ridiculously childish or ridiculously manly, I simply couldn't stand Cecil's weird voice. Although I've often found some female voices in anime to sound annoying, this has never happened with male voices to me before, so this was another aspect in which UtaPri 2 managed to surprise me (albeit in a negative way, too).
Furthermore, (though I don't know whether this was due to his annoying voice or his general lack of personality), Cecil just pretty much sucked as a character. Despite supposedly being "foreign", he doesn't happen to have an obvious accent when speaking Japanese. Instead, he speaks incredibly slowly and his slurred speech combined with excruciatingly long pauses make him sound like he's mentally impaired rather than simply from a foreign land. As if that wasn't enough, he also happens to tag along to literally every single "event" or "happening" in the show and just adds unnecessary dialogue, weirdness and ridiculousness to it (though I've kind of learned to take the latter as a good thing).
Nevertheless, Cecil is neither the first nor the last unnecessary character in this anime. While it could be argued that he added a teeny tiny bit to the plot progression and development of the series, the same cannot be said about all the other new characters (e.g. the members of Quartet Night and Heavens).
When Quartet Night was first introduced, its four new guys seemed just as flashy and flamboyant as all the others and it looked like they had potential to become interesting characters. As the story went on, however, they were essentially forgotten and were always seen lurking in the background complaining about everyone and everything else. Near the end of the series, one of them finally did something "important" (which could have easily been accomplished by any regular member of Starish), and which also happened to remind us that they were actually, well, there.
As the creators of the anime remembered the existence of Quartet Night, they tried to give them some minimal (and rather rushed) character development in the last two episodes, but of course this pretty much failed. Why keep introducing new characters if you're never going to develop them or use them for anything else?
The epitome of undeveloped characters, however, are definitely the members of "Heavens". They're repeatedly labeled as "cool" and "amazing", but this is always hard to believe since they're never shown doing anything other than bragging. (Ok, so they do sing one song at the end, but that's about it). Mind you, I was initially excited about this new idol unit / group / band / whatever because it meant hearing another one of my favorite seiyuu in one of my not-so-favorite anime, but given the excessive amount of characters in this 13-episode series, he only got to say about 5 lines, at most.
Nevertheless, I did keep my focus and attention on this show throughout its 13 episode run (unlike when I was watching SAO, Clannad, and other boring crap which constantly had me looking at my phone).
Whether it's because of its explosion of color and flamboyance or for its sheer ridiculousness and lack of credibility, this anime is oddly addicting and is therefore far from being blatantly bad. Sometimes bizarre, sometimes crazy, and almost always grammatically inaccurate, the second season of Uta no Prince-Sama is one worth watching if not for its fickle plot and too-many characters, then at least for its beautiful art, its rather decent animation, and, to use the finest internet lingo of our day and age, — "for the lolz". While you won't come out of watching this anime feeling more enlightened, I guarantee that you'll at least come out feeling oddly entertained and strangely amused.
