Anime: Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate

• Although the first scene of Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate makes it look like a serious anime, it quickly reveals to be nothing more than your typical garbage anime adaptation of a visual novel that is most likely also garbage. Generic protagonist with a generic character design who somehow manages to make all of the girls horny for him, stereotypical female characters with childish personalities, dumb excuses for fan-service, failed attempts at comedy… And despite that, I’m still going to write a review to explain in detail why this anime is terrible.
  The premise
  The protagonist and his friends are all members of the “food research club”, a useless club where they do nothing but eat food at the expense of their high school’s budget. Enters a girl whom I will refer to as “serious girl”, because who cares about the names of stereotypes. Serious girl is a candidate in the election for the next student council presidency, and she wants to reform the high school and disband all of the useless clubs including the “food research club”. To save his club, the protagonist has no choice but to run as a candidate for the election and win it. But as it turns out, the electoral campaign is just a bad excuse for the usual visual novel crap of learning about various girls’ backgrounds and traumas.
  High school politics
  The whole high school politics thing is completely ridiculous and unbelievable. After a few episodes we are told that the high school is actually its own little nation composed exclusively of students, with the student council being its government, and as such there are elections, electoral campaigns, budgets, manifestos, reforms, bribes, conspiracies and even spies… Goddamn it, this is high school, a place where people aren’t older than 18. On top of that most of the characters don’t act mature at all, they act like children rather than people who are supposed to participate in politics. In such conditions, how can you take this seriously? And yes, it is supposed to be serious, at least most of the time. There are even murder attempts and abductions for political motives. There are some moments where it tries to be satirical, but it just ends up being unfunny.
  In their electoral campaign, the “food research club” gets advice from the current student council president. He explains them how campaigning works, which could have been interesting. But it turns out that to win an election you just need pretty girls politely asking guys to vote for you, along with cosplaying and yaoi role-playing in front of horny girls. Media apparatus? Why would we need that?
  Standard visual novel stuff
  This is what the show is actually about. After a few episodes the show starts diving into the girls’ personal problems and traumas, one girl at the time. The vast majority of adaptations of visual novels do that, as they try to glue together all the character-specific arcs (“routes”) in one story. Every character-specific arc finishes when said character’s personal problems have been fixed by the intervention of the protagonist, after some boring flashback involving childhood traumas, childhood promises and the like. But the problem is that since the series is only 12 episodes long, character-specific arcs are rushed. Hard to care about characters when their character arcs are wrapped up in less than two episodes. Hard to care about characters who barely even appear on the screen before the time for their character arc has come.
  As in any visual novel, the “comedy” is childish. It is irritating rather than funny. There are also dumb excuses for fan-service like showing panties and thighs (le funny camera angle has arrived), groping boobs and... sniffing armpits.
  The characters are all stereotypes
  … stereotypes such as the “kuudere”, the “tsundere” childhood friend, the serious girl, the not very serious teacher who drinks a lot of beer (how uncharacteristic!), the energetic (energetic meaning annoying) short girl, the gay dude who is constantly sexually harassing the protagonist, et cetera. Yes, the only gay character is a sexual harasser who can’t help but remind that he’s gay (“yaoi sticks”, “I’ll take the bottom" [emphasis on “bottom”, in case you didn’t get the allusion]) and wants to have sexual intercourse with the protagonist every five minutes: “You were so cool I almost came”, “his body already belongs to me”… bruv calm down your hormones. Seriously, there are “jokes” like these in almost every episode, sometimes several times. It’s not fucking funny. It’s just sexual harassment on top of being homophobic since it’s picturing gay people as harassers.
  The characters’ motivations? They are dumb. The whole anime is about preventing a useless club from disbandment, so that the club members can keep hanging out and eating food in the club room, when they could be hanging out in the cafeteria or after school like everyone else! How is the viewer supposed to root for them when they have such stupid motives? And why would the teacher help them?
  By the way there are also too many characters to remember about. There are eight members in the “food research club” and two of them are clones of each other. Not only this, most characters all look the same, with hair color and haircut being the only way to tell them apart.
  The serious girl may be the only decent female character – by decent I mean not utter shit – since she has a reasonable objective, and is not childish or overly cute. But she alone can’t save the show.
  Average visual novel protagonist
  The protagonist has a generic character design seen hundreds of times in recent anime and visual novels. Take any visual novel made in the last ten years, there’s a 90% chance that it’s the same character design. What about his personality then? He’s a visual novel protagonist, what do you expect? He has no charisma, no personality, he is lazy and passive. He does practically nothing on his own, most of the time he is forced by other people to do things. Despite that, all of the girls around him – his teacher included – want his dong, but of course he doesn’t do anything about it. He helps cute girls because he wants to bang them and says that he likes bumping into pretty girls, but he doesn’t notice his childhood friend who is basically throwing herself at him. In short, he is a terrible protagonist that you can only hate.
  The romance
  This anime is an adaptation of a visual novel of the dating simulator type and as such, its main purpose is romance (and the H-scenes, of course!). Since the characters are utter garbage, it comes as no surprise that the romance between these characters is also of low quality. The worst thing is that the plot-writers didn’t even pick the best – or should I say “least worst” – girl and went for the psychologically deranged one instead.
  Not saved by the production value
  Though there aren’t any big face inconsistencies or things like that, the animation isn’t great. I have already mentioned how generic the character designs are. The art-style is not ugly but pretty unoriginal. It reminds me of Katawa Shoujo, you know, that visual novel where you bang disabled girls. The backgrounds look like your typical soulless visual novel backgrounds, but less detailed. Some don’t look good and are very basic. Ugly CGI is also used for cars, machines and moving objects.
  On the sound department, it’s even worse. The background music is standard visual novel stuff. It is not very well placed, and doesn’t always fit the situation. The voice-acting is exaggerated. Most female characters have irritating high-pitched voices, making them even more annoying. The opening is generic and deserves to be skipped.
  Verdict
  This is a very bad anime series. The story is standard dating simulator bull-crap mixed with high school politics that you can’t possibly take seriously. The characters are stereotypical and annoying, the protagonist in particular. The romance, which is supposed to be the main purpose of this type of anime, is also of low quality. The sound and animation are very meh. This series is not even entertaining. It belongs to the trash can.

As its title suggests, Koi To Senkyo to Chocolate is a series about everything ranging from love to elections to chocolate- though not in that order. This is a harem-based elections comedy with a bit more focus on the harem aspect than former shows in the genre including Seitokai Yakuindomo and Seitokai no Ichizon; though Yakuindomo has great dialogue/humor that is hard to match. It's a really wacky setting, a school with more students than the population of many rural towns housing ridiculous clubs including the food research club, which uses its funding to (not surprisingly) feed its members. Our protagonist is 'coerced' into saving the club by running for student council president. Who will we happen to meet along the way? And what dark secrets about the school will he uncover?

The plot of this series is unique in that it is literally the reverse of Campione; only until late in the series does stuff actually begin to happen. Once the production staff actually got their act together, this became a fairly interesting watch with a fair amount of character development and the slightest hint of a dark plot. I agree with one of the recommendations for this series; if you're willing to sit through five or so boring episodes this show does indeed fit very well with other shows such as Mashiro-iro Symphony and Fortune Arterial. If these names bring up more favorable than negative feelings, then you ought to give this one a try. Otherwise, this probably isn't for you.

Animation:
The animation is up to current standards. Colors are vibrant, some of the nighttime backgrounds look outstanding, and the overall production is good. Character models are distinct and cater to varying tastes including loli professors and a mysterious cat girl. The most outrageous scenes involve the school meeting hall/election chamber, which literally rivals small stadiums and is complete with high tech screens; this truly is a school for rich people. I do also question how Brock... er... current Student Chair Mouri can see anything given that he walks around seemingly blind all the time- he does have eyes (confirmed in a few, fleeting moments).

This is an ecchi harem so do expect girls to make a lot of advances on the protagonist. This is (thankfully) not an action based harem so no magical attack spamming here. This is replaced by some mysterious elements involving tazers and hit and runs- which involves a bit of blood though the camera spares you the details.

Sound:
The series starts with a crisp, calmer-than-usual OP and finishes with an even more calming piece by no other than Ceui. These gave the series an overall calm overtune- which seemed to be a better fit for the first half of the show. The only really memorable BGM piece is the playful theme of Shinonome.

The VA cast is an interesting mix of relative newcomers and veterans. I'm amazed at the calming voice of Yuu Asakawa given her brash performance in Majikoi. I wasn't particularly impressed by any other role.

Story:
This is not your typical, simple linear story (cough... Hagure) nor is it a confused, meandering mess (cough... Campione). While it is somewhat slow at first, this series has a definite clear direction. Buried under a simple harem is multiple stories about overcoming one's past, and a story about (somewhat dubious) political sabotage.

The story is fairly arc based after the first few episodes, which are wasted on overdone background development. After this plateau of boredom completes, the story begins to pick up a bit as Yuuki works through each of the primary heroines. After each of the four girls has had a dedicated episode, the story soon boils to a huge climax in the second to last episode followed by an "afterthought" climax in the last episode. As some have pointed out, this felt a tad rushed, and (as is the tradition for this genre) leaves a pretty open ended (though fair) conclusion.

While the story isn't particularly realistic, other than Morishita's mysterious "aural" perceptions and some of the inner workings of the three main political parties, the majority of my questions and early plot holes are explained in a satisfactory manner in the later episodes. Overall the storyline is pretty engaging and flows well. My only complaint is the sleep-inducing, overly-long introduction.

Character:
While each primary heroine does get a dedicated episode for development, their overall air time differs tremendously. The show highly favors Shinonome and Chisato so obviously you can expect our hero's attention to match accordingly. Quite a few of the recent harems ended up as flops for me due to their inability to go beyond cookie-cutter characters. I was glad to see some actual depth to some of the heroines (though quite irregular overall).

Development-wise, this is one of the better shows to watch for character relationships. Some (not all) of the girls don't actually magically fall for the dude. On the flip side, this series does fall victim to introducing totally unnecessary supporting characters who don't add anything substantial to the series (including a dangerously Yaoi-leaning dude). Even if they are just for the people who have played the game or read the manga, their airtime would be better served by some of the more underdeveloped heroines.

Value:
Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate is an uneven watch. It took me days to get past the first few episodes but then I ended up chaining the last six or so episodes. It's probably one of the better harems in the current batch but by no means a standout. There was just enough politics and relationship troubles to make it interesting but not enough of it to merit a rewatch or a higher score, and some of the more comical characters totally killed any suspense from the darker elements of the plot. If you're bitterly tired of the recent flops in the harem genre one viable solution is to have some Chocolate.

Warning! Regerdless of what the first third of the pilot episode is going to make you think or feel, this anime is still a done to death goofball school comedy and absolutely nothing else. That first scene is just a troll to bait the unsuspected into watching a shitty show. And if you don’t believe me, just look who made it.

THE STAFF
- Animation and directing is done by a branch of Studio AIC, specialized in making nothing but trolling fan service shows like this one. Their previous projects include My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute (Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai) and We Don’t Have Many Friends (Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai) which fooled thousands of superficial viewers to believe they were a lot more than just idealized otaku culture pattering for worthless lumps of flesh called NEETs. They weren’t, ok? If you are part of that group just take it like a man and admit it.
- The anime is the adaptation of a date sim, which means lame excuses for you to bang chicks and nothing to take seriously. It begins by making you believe it will be a political thriller.

SCRIPT
Some news reporter girl is trying to take pictures of some shady operation taking place in a dark place, only to be discovered and be silenced in a most inhuman way. And it appears to have something to do with political elections, where lots of party leaders are planning to take control of everything and are willing to do anything it takes to take out the competition. Oh my God, this is going to be amazing! … Or so I thought for ten seconds.

Turns out the elections are taking place in just a school and has to do just with clubs rather than country-wide parties that plan to overthrow the previous government and establish a new world order or something. So you get the literature club being rough with the ping pong club, which is keeping an eye on the music club, which is worried of the sewing club, which is …. Oh, you get what I mean, it’s just a handful of teenagers trying to play it politicians.

The funny part is that they are presented as extremely powerful, like they have full control of the city they are living in and can affect the lives of thousands of people. They also act as if they can hire thugs to kill anyone who stands in their way and have the teachers, the police, the army, and for all we care the whole crime syndicate in their pockets. Other than that, they still haven’t got past the age they have zits and still need to study for tomorrow’s chemistry test. Scary isn’t it?

Of course all that have very little to do with the actual plot. So far I have only been describing the backdrop of the story which indeed sounds like it’s going to be something epic, or whatever misinterpreted word you would use for this sort of a set up.

CAST
After you have been hyped so much to expect great stuff to happen, the camera takes us to ponder upon the life of the protagonist. And we … get … shit … Because the truth is now revealed and the whole show is just a retarded ecchi school comedy around overused stereotypes with zero characterization and a plot that is taken out of the book of erogame clichés … In fact, it actually is taken from an erogame since it is based on one. YEEEEAH!
“Get out of bed my childhood friend next door. Kyaaa, morning wood! An insight to the daily problems of the average teenager.”
“We are members of the chocolate club, but one of us doesn’t even like chocolate. What a tragedy!”
“I am your teacher but I am busy getting drunk all day that trying to teach. What a scandal!”
“Oh, I bumped on a girl and saw her censored underwear. How hardcore!”
“We are in a major crisis! The student council wants to close us down so I must go against them even when I don’t want to! This saga is going to change the shape of the cosmos!”
“The world needs the chocolate club or it will blow up! What else can be said about a club where the only thing we do all day is eating sweets and offer sexual foreplay?”

And this is all you get for the rest of the show. The cardboard of a protagonist walking around the city and bumping on girls, talking with them about very serious political issues and then returns to his club to eat sweets and be molested by the gay guy in there. THAT IS ALL! Towards the end of the show they attempt to make things more serious and even then they fail hard for making state-sized scandals to be scrubed off as if they were just a couple of students skipped a few classes. There are absolutely no memorable characters and there are so many of them you will have a hard time to even remember their names. You will only refer to them as the literature leader, or the chocolate hater. They are boring, they are shallow, they aren’t even sexy!

LEGACY
All you get from this show is a troll and then some tired erotic jokes. Interesting if you are a NEET who does nothing but playing porn games all day but completely trash if you demand something other than bullshit.

PRODUCTION VALUES
Oh, I forgot to mention something about those. They are not bad, nice colours, the girls all look the same, censorship sucks, the songs are forgettable trash. But seriously, who cares about that if the show is bonkers?