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Now in Japan
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Saturday, 31 March 2007 00:00 |
 After an enjoyable enough first episode, I've finally managed to track down the rest of Tsuyokiss - so it's time for another trip into Sunao's efforts to get her theatre club off the ground, and as ever Erika's having plenty of fun making her work for her seal of approval. Does Sunao have an endless pool of determination, or will she finally give in and spoil Erika's fun..?
2 - I HATE the Student Council!!
Back in elementary school, when Sunao was having trouble persuading her class to do a play for the school cultural festival, classmate Leo came to her rescue and did the persuading for her. Now Leo's back - still calling her "Daikon" (radish-head) - and Sunao doesn't know quite what to make of him. She's also going to need more than a good speech by Leo to get the Student Council to agree to her Theatre Club, too. Her latest scheme: instead of a Theatre Club, she's going to try for a Theatre Fan Club, but her efforts to promote her idea soon run foul of Student Council rule-enforcer, Kurogane...
3 - Crash! Physical Education Martial Arts Festival!!
Most schools settle for a sports festival - Ryummei has an Athletics and Martial Arts Festival, and Student Council President Erika has decided to have a little fun with this one. With Erika and Sunao being on different teams for the festival, the idea's simple: if Sunao's team can beat Erika's, she'll get approval for her theatre club. Only problem is, with the only rule for the festival being "there are no rules", Erika and her sidekicks are making use of every possible underhand tactic to make sure they win...
4 - A Summer of Coconuts
After seeing a play with Shizuka, Sunao's gripped with dramatic fever - and since the play was a solo act, she becomes determined to be able to act it out herself. It's not like she doesn't have the spare time, since it's the summer break. She finds herself getting drawn into the problems of one of the Student Council, though - Nagomi Yashi, who's having a hard time dealing with the new man in her mother's life. As luck would have it, the play Sunao's working on turns out to be very relevant to what Nagomi's going through...
The fashion show to choose Ryuumei's next school uniform is.. different. Let's just say none of them would ever make it into production - and only the boys would be voting. A fun little fanservice diversion.
The girls of Tsuyokiss just get better and better. While I'm still finding it hard to warm to Erika - probably the only girl in the series with nothing going for her - Kurogane became an almost instant favourite of mine - any katana-wielding girls are right up my alley, to be honest, and Kurogane's one of the more forthright ones you'll see. Nagomi's equally good, and gets a decent amount of backstory and character development thrown in for good measure - quite surprising in a show as shallow as Tsuyokiss, and definitely not what I'd been expecting. Sunao herself is still pretty much two-dimensional - she's so obsessed with her drama that there's no opportunity for her to really develop, but given the nature of the show that's not something that really bothers me.
At heart, it's really a challenge-of-the-week show, where Sunao will either directly face off with Erika (episode 3 here) or persuade one of the other Student Council members to back her (episodes 2 & 4) - rinse, repeat for the rest of the series, with a possible romantic detour with Leo to come at some point. Originality? Not a bit of it - but face it, we're all just watching for a show full of tsundere females, and neither plot nor originality really matter. Enjoyable? Absolutely, in that shallow / guilty pleasure way you feel when you know the series has no artistic merit, but you're just going to enjoy it for what it is: simple fun. Well worth watching. |
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