Now this was a tear-fest! An entire episode dedicated to the general elections. There were just so many heightened emotions as everyone got announced and had to make an acceptance speech. The creators stuffed in as much emotion as possible here. That’s the advantage of having a big cast: you really can pull off episodes like this and make it very interesting to watch. With a main cast of five people this would never have been possible.
Chieri was probably the only one who went a little over the top. It’s okay with being over the top, and I know that she was very emotionally distressed there, but to have her make the speech as if she were having an orgasm… that’s not really the right way to do it. The point that the creators wanted to make with her: that she accepted her own position for the sake of standing in the spotlights despite feeling bad about it. It would have worked so much better with a bit more subtlety on it.
Beyond that though, this really had the amount of happiness and emotion. The main characters who really were glad to have made it rocked (number one and number two, after all of the build up together worked really well). But also the small scenes with some of the minor characters worked. Characters who may in the past have had only a few moments were developed here. Everyone acted so differently here, a great way to flesh them out.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)
Hey psgels, I pretty much agree with all of your thoughts on this episode. But, there was one note I wanted to make concerning Chieri’s speech. It turns out that it was a reference to an acceptance speech made by an actual AKB48 member that was very similar in nature to Chieri’s. Her name is Yokoyama Yui and you can see the video for yourself here if you are interested (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFM0UlvfuvQ). So, it may have been over the top, but as a reference for AKB48 fans it works.
That was an awesome episode, with every elected girl getting a moment and everything. Way to put a lot of character development in one ep. I’m glad psgels is still covering this show ^^