Amagami SS+ – 01 Review

What she calls a “fight” is a regular school-event of electing a student to waste his time with rather meaningless administrative work. But this girl is a complete nutcase anyway which excuses her dramatic methods and shallow characterization. She’s also evil because wanting to stand in the spotlight and not being a main-character makes you so.

Amagami SS+ 01 -Elections Are About The Candidates Beating The Shit Out Of Each Other

While New Prince of Tennis is just a reheated turd of a series that was far longer than it deserved to be, this series actually has a reasonable goal to achieve: It wants to be the sequel of a generic harem-series – which was already finished. Because, you see, the bland unlikeable wimp of a main-character made his choice as to who’s the (un)lucky one who deserves being his girlfriend. So it might be interesting to ask what this series is about then. It’s still Amagami SS so it still has the same stupid “characters” (you know, faces without a real personality, that kind of “character”) but a second season gives a chance to fix some issues. That was of course my opinion. Amagami SS+ doesn’t fix anything that’s wrong with the first series (meaning something like 99% of it). Indeed it somehow manages to ignore the part where you assume that having a second season means there’s some kind of development. Things have happened – but somehow this series makes it seem irrelevant. It’s sad but I have to say that Amagami SS+ is just as bad as the rest of the stuff that has been aired until now in the Winter Season. So stay the hell away from this, too.

Synopsis:
Let’s first remember the two important characters of this sequel’s first arc:
Junichi Tachibana
Wikipedia says about him this: “The lead male protagonist of the story. He has a hard time opening up to others due to a trauma two years ago when his date stood him up on Christmas Eve which left him heart broken. He also fears heights, as he feels uncomfortable when riding elevators.”. The series of course makes sure that the characters stays being a wimpy idiot. I mean, he’s traumatized by being stood up?! What kind of spineless worm is he supposed to be…? How the hell is such a stupid character-concept supposed to be the centre of a harem? But you know how it is with these bland main-characters in harem-series and I guess we should be thankful or something that this series tries to explain why Junichi is a total retard. It’s a stupid explanation but at least there is one. Most of the other harem-main-characters are seriously retarded just because.
But he made a choice of course in the first series. Now one girl is (supposed to be) his girlfriend. And that’s who he had chosen:
Tsukasa Ayatsuji
And Wikipedia says about her “Junichi’s class representative, who is both a hard worker and a person who is willing to take on any task that no one else will. While she acts kind and friendly, it is actually a facade that secretly hides the real her, who is manipulative and cunning.”. Right, so he chose the arrogant prick as girlfriend. Well, at least he was really stupid and didn’t uncharacteristically made a reasonable choice…

So, some months have passed and Junichi still spends his nights alone wishing Tsukasa would be his girlfriend because somehow Tsukasa just drags him around and Junichi has no idea what to do. Junichi actually is still occupied making sense of the fact that she is his girlfriend despite all the time that has passed since the end of the last series.
But another dramatic event is about to happen because Tsukasa enters the election for Student President or something – and she has a rival. A rival who’s ready to do anything, really anything, just to become responsible for doing time-wasting menial tasks as Student President. This rival also has a plan, a very evil plan and it involves Junichi who has just about the right amount of IQ (meaning 0) to be used as a pawn for her plans to eliminate her last rival Tsukasa. What she’s doing is first of all making Junichi her vice president just to gall Tsukasa (yeah, this evil girl takes this election VERY serious when it comes to her rivals but not serious enough to care about her voters or the future when she’s stuck with a total retard as vice-president). And then she calls Junichi to a place behind the school and also gets Tsukasa to come and makes her witness how she kisses Junichi. And yeah, that’s it, total drama and all that shit. Junichi makes a fool of himself… again. And all kinds of stupid drama can start next episode when dull characters try to sort out the mess they’ve created but stumble over their own retarded characterizations.

In what kind of world does becoming an important public figure cure shyness actually…? And who the hell would vote for such a shy girl to represent the students of the entire school?! ‘Making sense’ isn’t something this series has in abundance apparently…

Review:
It’s obvious that Amagami has the most suerpficial drama you could imagine. The story is ridiculous in its forced way to make it seem like simple things are important and dramatic. After the end of the first series it was obvious how it all ended with the bland main-wimp (finally) making the choice and the girl accepting since it was just a matter of who he would choose instead of whether the girls love him. Because that’s the deranged image these harem-series have of female characters. In their universe it’s all about girls futilely fighting over a guy until the guy who stumbles from pleasing one girl to the next (finally) makes a choice but nobody blames him for taking his bloody time with that. The main-character is treated as the center of the universe and everything is about him in the end, he receives attention although he doesn’t deserve it in any realistic way. In the end the girls just wait for him practically making sure that the guy doesn’t have to make an effort getting a girl to love him. Helping the girls means for the bland-character getting the same expected payback like pressing a light-switch. There’s never any doubt that things will work out as long as he keeps up appearances by favouring one girl over the others. And in the end this just makes the girls look… easy and therefore rather shallow characters.  That way the first series was really generic and had all the flaws and virtues of a harem-series (the latter is only seen by hard-core-fans, I assume).
So what happens in the second season? Character-development? Actual interest for the workings of a relationship? Serious consideration of introducing good slice-of-life? To make it short: no. The ending of the first season might as well never have happened for all the series is showing in terms of character-development. And it’s terrible. This series still clings to its harem-values despite the fact that the formula had run its course in the first series.
The characters receive the worst kind of character-development, that is to say: none. The worthless worm of a main-character despite spending months (!) having a relationship with that arrogant girl still can’t believe she’s his girlfriend. He practically gets dragged around by her behaving like the kind of idiot who probably would get ignored by everyone in the real world. But not in this series, here they actually notice him and pay attention to him. Why? I have no idea. As far as I remember he was a bland charactertype of the “No brains but golden heart”-variety, you know, the kind where a naïve idiot has the best intentions and the most retarded ideas to see them through. His ‘girlfriend’ meanwhile is arrogant and handles him like a kind of trophy she wants to drag around showing off to everyone. You never see her having any kind of intimate moments with him despite the fact that they’re supposed to be a couple. In fact they don’t seem like a couple at all. The character-dynamics in that regard are totally screwed up and if the series thinks they could ignore that point for some later plot-point where it’s twisted into a dramatic issue, then they are frigging wrong. Because they already are a couple and they should behave like that now, instead of making a stupid drama out of having a relationship, they should try to show how it works actually. The rest of the cast are obviously either walking plot-devices or a shallow waste of space.

Yeah, I can’t believe it either. Perhaps she should let someone check her brain or something…

Of course, the story is full of drama. And of course the story is also a big pile of horseshit. My god, this drama! I doubt anyone ever on this earth bothered to make such a big deal out of school-president-elections as this series does. The arrogant prick of a girlfriend the main-character has is one of the candidates and another girl has the guts to oppose her. Uuh, real serious shit, now that‘s the kind of story animes need. And this rival even has put together some kind of scheme to put down the girlfriend-character: She wants to charm the spineless worm of a main-character. Gee, how evil! And the worthless worm of course walks right into the trap – with the romantic notion that the girl actually feels something for him (what an idiot…). And somehow the girlfriend sees them kissing! What a cliffhanger! That’s the kind of cliffhanger where I don’t give a shit what happens  after is and only can think about how ridiculous the whole thing is. I mean, this drama is SO forced, it’s all exaggerated out of proportion. There are idiotic dialogue-moments like someone mentioning that the evil girls father is a politician or something. We barely know the girl but her father is a bigshot in policy which is supposed to explain why she’s a devious schemer and frigging evil. But you know what? She’s retarded as well – or the story is rather. Because her schemes are all about beating the shit out of this girlfriend-characters but let’s remember: This is an election. For being a student-council-president or something. I doubt the series will tell me why this evil girl takes this election SO serious. And no, having a father-complex is not an explanation for her vicious plot-point-creating. And worse than the stupid pseudo-intrigue will be the drama, I assume. Because the characters are bad and any kind of drama using them will be simply boring tiptoeing in circles until someone actually realizes after a few episodes that behaving reasonably like normal people and not like whiny drama-queens might be a good idea. Naturally the plot-development will also be hampered by the fact that the main-character has to be a retard. Like I said, he’s the kind with a golden heart – but no brain whatsoever. It’s a miracle he can remember to breathe when he’s asked to add one and one together. And of course that makes drama interesting, right?

Luckily the characters of this series are so shitty and one-dimensional that you don’t need to watch the first series to know what’s going on. This series sure has drama in abundance and a story so lame that you probably will ask yourself what all the fuss is about. If you’re a fan of stories talking about a wimp learning what having a relationship means and an evil girl having daddy-issues following her schizophrenic delusions of how a student-council-election should look like then this might be your cup of tea. Everyone else might see a lot of stupidity while watching this.

Episode-Rating: 3/10