Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love 2000%

Although ST☆RISH had a successful debut as a group and Haruka Nanami as a composer, they still have daunting tasks ahead of them. One of the challenges for ST☆RISH is to be able to stand on the same level and compete with other singing groups like them. While Haruka has to make more songs as quickly as possible. One sure way of getting to the top according to Shining Saotome was winning the UtaPri Award. The members have to get as much exposure and positive feedback both as individual performers and as a group before the awards night. To help them with the new tasks, they need to take the Master Course and learn from their seniors, the QUARTET NIGHT. The rest they have to do themselves. It could be stage appearances, advertisements or movies.

QUARTET NIGHT

ST☆RISH with Cecil (middle) and Haruka

The biggest challenge for them however is a mysterious guy named Aijima Cecil. The rest of ST☆RISH was annoyed when they found out that Cecil and Haruka have met before. Cecil was more than happy to claim that Haruka is his beloved princess and that he was responsible for giving Haruka the idea to form ST☆RISH instead of choosing one from among the six. No matter how much they want to get rid of Cecil though, he's always around to help and sometimes to annoy Syo, Natsuki, Tokiya, Otoya, Masato, and Ren. Perhaps Cecil also holds the key to achieving the UtaPri Award against the more favored upcoming group  HE★VENS.

HE★VENS

Like the first season of the series, there are episodes dedicated to each ST☆RISH member. Each of them also have individual songs composed by Haruka. The humor has improved and is easy to appreciate in part because the characters are already familiar to the viewers (that's if you've watched Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love 1000%).

There is more focus on romance than in season one. The boys all had different reasons for liking Haruka and season two has done a better job explaining why. Some of them might have liked her at first sight but I like how the series showed the growth of Haruka's friendship with the boys.The flow of the story is better because there is no need for introductions, only follow-ups of the previous individual stories. Cecil was introduced in the previous installment so they only thing left to do is how to make him a part of the group. As expected there were conflicts but soon enough his inclusion to the group was done smoothly.

Although at another school-like setting (Master Course) and in a cliche environment where the girl lives under the same roof with the boys, a one-on-one battle with another group is a more interesting twist than in the previous season. The method might be predictable, but there's no better way to test ST☆RISH's power than a contest with another singing group like them. 

Like season one, the songs are the best part of this series. They not only spoke of ST☆RISH's love for Haruka but of themselves as well, what better way to get to know the characters better than by their music. The songs from season one were fantastic so I expected that season two would be better. I was not disappointed at all. Add to that the beautiful animation and some new characters, this 13-episode series is oozing with romance, manliness, and surely wouldn't be out of tune for those who loved Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love 1000%.

From left: Syo, Natsuki, Cecil, Tokiya, Otoya, Masato, Ren

Rating: 9 out of 10