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Student Council’s Discretion Level 2: The Complete Second Season (anime review)

Posted by :Patches On : May 12, 2015
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Category: Reviews

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Student Council’s Discretion Level 2: The Complete Second Seasonreview provided by Katie

Title: Student Council’s Discretion Level 2: The Complete Second Season

Director: Kenichi Imaizumi

Studio: AIC

Author: Reiko Yoshida

U.S. Distributor: Sentai Filmworks, Section 23

U.S. Release Date: May 26, 2015

Format and Length: Blu-ray / 10 Episodes + 1 OVA / 275 Minutes

Genre: Comedy, Parody, School, Harem

Industry Age Rating: 14 and up

Overall Personal Rating: C+

Similar Series or Titles to Check Out: Student Council’s Discretion

Synopsis:

Sure, sometimes you have to think outside the box, but Hekiyo Academy’s Student Council may go a step further and rewrite their entire universe! At least, that’s what could happen as the second season gets underway and the Council decides that their anime might need a little spicing up. Should they introduce new characters? Add a boy’s-love subplot? Or should they just continue to do what worked previously and spend most of their time chattering between themselves while working towards odd goals that might turn out to have been a little misguided in retrospect?
The answer is “yes” to all of the above and more: class barriers and the fourth wall come tumbling down as a supporting character literally takes up the challenge of moving up to main character status. The plot thickens with the mystery of a missing cake. The boundaries of love between step-siblings get pushed just a few steps beyond what’s socially comfortable and of course there just has to be a hot springs episode. Join 5 student council members in search of an author as the storyline runs amok!

Commentary:

The second season of Student Council’s Discretion continues where the first season left off… No, not really. It’s still a bit crazy and episodic, but that’s about it. In Student Council’s Discretion Level 2: The Complete Second Season, it changes a bit. They still have the standard banter over the white table, in a large room that seems filled with junk. Mafuyu still fantasizes about BL and video games too much. Chizuru is still an evil dominatrix and is overprotective and manipulating of Kurimu, Minatsu still kicks butt, and Kurimu is still the grade school high school girl. And of course Ken Sugisaki is still the pervert who wants a harem. It’s still as random, story less and episodic as ever. What makes this season different? It’s not the same pointlessness of its predecessor, but rather it now focuses more on the developing relationships of everyone else to Sugisaki.

Uncharacteristically, the new season begins on a more serious note, the background story of our male protagonist. This back story was necessary to understand the warped ways of our perverted hero, and how he got to be the hentai loving, harem craving, will do anything for a girl, kind of guy. Mainly the story does focus more on him at this point forwards. Not to say that the other characters are neglected and forgotten. They continue to develop well, and more importantly, their relationships also blossom. Some fans will be happy to see this, others will not. It depends all on the focus you want the story to take. The comedy is there still, but is seemed to fall a little flat at times. A few of the downfalls includes how slow this season starts. When you have so few episodes, it’s not a good thing to take half of them to get back on a roll again, and it never quite reached the level of the first season. Another thing that was missing was the countless number of references and parodies of other animes, found in the original, were very much lacking in the second season. Most of the time they seemed to just parody themselves instead. One of the things that made the first season so endearing was the well played parodies. Also there are a lot more ‘serious moments’, when all joking is cast aside for some serious development. These dramatic interludes are a change from the norm, but I’m not sure yet how well received they will be. I think they had a hard time changing gears from funny to serious, and sometimes the drama just was not executed well. The first season relied more on comedy and character dynamics to entertain, and it worked quite well. Student Council’s Discretion Level 2: The Complete Second Season failed to find this same dynamic, injecting drama into a place that it’s hard to make work right. Even with the addition of new characters, it was unable to recapture its previous glory. That being said, if you are a fan of the first season, this one is worth watching. Just don’t expect the same level of entertainment you got from the first season.

There were some changes for the better. The animation was crisper and more detailed this time around. Yet again though, your scenery is mostly limited to the council room, and school. If you are good at picking up on voice actors, you will notice that a couple of cast changes from the first season. Another thing they did do that caught my interest was the ever changing ending animations. I do get tired of the same old closing credits that recycle thru nearly all series. I often find myself hitting that skip button to get passed it after the second or third time, unless the music was something special, which more time than not, it won’t be. The different ending themes helped to keep my interest enough that I did not skip them.

Extras:

Student Council’s Discretion Level 2: The Complete Second Season includes clean opening and closing animations and Sentai Filmworks trailers as special features. Student Council’s Discretion Level 2: The Complete Second Season has Japanese with English Subtitles as the only language option.

Overall Grade: C+

All in all, Student Council’s Discretion Level 2 is a cute series and if you enjoyed the first season then I recommend this one.

Student Council’s Discretion Season 1 Complete Collection (anime review)

Posted by :Patches On : March 28, 2015
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Category: Reviews

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Student Council’s Discretion season 1review provided by Katie and Andrew

Title: Student Council’s Discretion Blu-ray Season 1 Complete Collection

Director: Takuya Sato

Studio: Studio Deen

Author: Jukki Hanada

U.S. Distributor: Sentai Filmworks, Section 23

U.S. Release Date: March 24, 2015

Format and Length: Blu-ray / 12 Episodes / 300 Minutes

Genre: Comedy, Parody, School, Harem

Industry Age Rating: 14 and up

Overall Personal Rating: B-

Other Titles to Check Out: Lucky Star, Ebiten, Haganai, Haganai Next, and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

“Mukyu.”

Synopsis:

At Hekiyo Academy, the Student Council members are elected via the usual popularity contests, and since most teenagers think more with hormones than brains, those seats are filled by the school’s most beautiful girls. But one student is chosen based on academic scores. Besides being the council’s only male member, one of Ken Sugisaki’s main assignments is writing stories informing the student body what the student council actually does. To do that he’ll have to manipulate the truth just a bit, and given that Ken’s an obsessive fan of dating sims who fantasizes about his fellow council members as his “harem”, things tend to get even more out of hand. Plus, exactly who’s going to be the leading lady is up for debate, as immature Kurimu, tomboyish Minatsu, twisted Chizuru, and “boy’s love” obsessed Mafuyu are all trying to add their own particular spins to everything. If that’s not enough, the journalism club has it out for all of them.

Commentary:

Dragging the otaku culture, kicking and screaming the whole way, Student Council’s Discretion Blu-ray Season 1 Complete Collection, brings more anime memes and parodies than you can possible count. Just in the opening sequence of the first episode, they have over ten references before they show the opening. With some touching on the obscure, they can make things a bit difficult, so it does help to know what they are referencing for a lot of it to make any sense. This series will probably be more entertaining to those who are familiar with otaku culture.

Student Council’s Discretion Blu-ray Season 1 Complete Collection follows Ken Sugisaki and the rest of the student council (aka harem) on their daily activities of conducting the student government. That just sounds like some fun stuff doesn’t it? The catch is that they really don’t do anything meaningful, often each doing their own thing, as the meetings hardly go as planned, if even planned at all. The Student council president, Kurimu Sakurano, the resident loli, leads in the randomness with sheer determination and cuteness. Ken Sugisaki, Vice President, has one thing on his mind and being a teenage male, you can easily imagine what that is. So what is this series about? Nothing really. No, seriously. It’s episodic and random. It’s very Seinfeldish, if you will. No central plot, or conceptual story line, loveable characters that are a bit cliché, and random humor, that is sometimes a little misplaced. On a few occasions their jokes did fall flat, but that was mostly on the more obscure references they made. At those times, it felt like I was with a group of people that I had never met and they had a lot of inside jokes, that you had to of been for a while there to get.

The characters were developed a bit, but since they are all standard archetypes, everyone quickly fell into those clichés and not much development was done beyond that. At some point, they even made it a butt of some of the jokes. Another thing that seemed odd is in the first half of the series, you could count on one hand how many locations they interacted in. By the end you probably had to use both hands, so the scenery did not change often. Considering that humor was the main concept, background scenery was also not built up or changed often. The background was decently detailed, and the club room seemed to have a lot going on in it. They had to fill the space with something I suppose. The opening theme was a bit catchy, and the ending theme was ok. Background music was non-existent. The focus was mostly on the humor, and it did not detract from the series.

Extras:

Student Council’s Discretion included clean opening and closing animations and Sentai Filmworks trailers as special features. This series was released with Japanese with English Subtitles as the only language option.

Overall Grade: B-

This series is not for those who are new to anime, or those who have to have a completely coherent story from beginning to end. It’s not there. I found it easiest to watch a couple at a time, as watching too many episodes at once got tiring and I would lose interest. Enjoy it for what it is. Overall it was a decent series, if you are watching it for the parody and humor.