B-Project: Zecchou*Emotion

Since the reviews available for this season are very mixed, I've decided to throw in my opinion too. When I watched the first season, Kodou Ambitions, I actually really enjoyed it but ended up rating it a 5 because of how confusing everything became with the whole Sumisora vs Yashamaru thing suddenly blowing up in the last couple episodes of what I thought was gonna be an average idol show. So yeah, this season was better than the first although not by much. Story 3/10 The story is weaker than last season. Episodes are all over the place, although there does seem to at least be a sort ofemphasis on the relationships that each of the groups formed before their initial debut, and before B-Project was formed. Then there was the stuff I wanted to be explained to make up for my confusion from the last season with Sumisora and Yashamaru, which was a plotline I definitely could have done without. It didn't add substance to the show and it felt like instead of making some angsty backstory to give Yashamaru a motive for being a creep, it should have given him more of a mentor role to the boys and Sumisora. It's an idol show so I didn't need a cruel antagonist tormenting the guys, I feel like the antagonist of idol shows tends to be more just their path to fame, problems that arise from that publicity and so on. Instead, this anime seemed to prefer making some morally grey antagonist for you to hate, only for things to wrap up pretty quickly after dragging it out for over half the show. Art 9/10 I really liked the art. I'm not so sure about the live show animations, but for the most part things looked really nice, and I've always like the use of bright colours in idol shows so it was aesthetically pleasing to behold. Sound 9/10 The music was pretty decent too - the OP was probably my favourite but there are some good songs sprinkled throughout the episodes. I wasn't a big fan of the 'new song' that they perform at their New Year Eve concert in the last episode, but hey each to their own. Character 5/10 I'll be totally honest here now, I still can't tell you all of the names of said idols I have watched for two seasons now. There isn't enough time for the anime to spend much time on each of them individually, and on top of that they add another four. That's 14 idols. 14 names. And on top of that they all belong to different idol groups. I tried so hard to remember who was who, and trying to remember all of the groups - it's been a while since I watched the first season. However, at the end of this season I could at least pinpoint the members of each group which is a miracle. The thing is, I'm not bad at remembering a million names (I can thank shows with a million characters in them like Fairy Tail for that), but none of the characters in B-Project really stand out. In a sense it feels like each of them is just there to satisfy a viewer's specific 'type' and as long as they appear to fit into this stereotype then that's fine and we don't need to worry about character development. As a result the main characters aren't memorable. I get it, they're super pretty and have nice voices and that's all you really need in an idol show, but adding even more characters seemed like a mistake. We got even less time with the boys from the last season and when they've only got one or two lines (if they're even that lucky) per scene, there's no time at all for them to be well developed characters. The dialogue is literally just there to move the story along which we've already established isn't that riveting. Sumisora is probably the most interesting character. She gets the most character development which I can appreciate, but she barely gets to have any scenes with the boys that feel meaningful. Sure you can argue that the scenes in which she feels down and then the boys magically appear and make her problems go away are 'meaningful' but she never talks to any of them really. I wanted to be able to cheer for her and B-Project as a unit that were super close and had each other's backs, but it was the excess amount of main characters that really continues to let this show down. Enjoyment 6/10 I did enjoy some parts of it. I appreciated the light humour, and even some of the more heartfelt moments between specific guys were nice. I do feel like I enjoyed mostly because it didn't pull any more stunts towards the end like last season, and I was on guard for that anyway. If you're patient I think you could maybe find some enjoyment in watching this season. Personally I'm not coming out of this as a diehard B-Pro fan, but I have a higher opinion of it than I did at the end of the first season, so give it a try. OVERALL 6/10 I think I've said it all now. The story wasn't that great, but the art and music were. I did enjoy it, but I can barely remember the names of any of the idols asides from Goushi, my favourite since last season - and I had to look up his name ^^;;; If there does happen to be a third season I really hope it focuses more on letting viewers actually get to know the characters more. I hope this helped.