WW (Week 7): Unexpected Sweetness in Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate

Hello all, and welcome back to another disgusting installation of Weaboo Wednesday. The reason why I haven't been writing lately is because I have been binge watching a romcom anime that goes by the name of Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, or its shortened form, KoiChoco. It's been an entry in the backlog that I had been longing to get around, and I finally finished last weekend. What I expected was a boring and unoriginal high school romcom, but instead I got something that was more engaging than that.

Story
KoiChoco starts off with quite an interesting hook. A high school student (who is spy by night) has captured evidence of an underground deal between (what we can presume to be) two different school organizations. However she is found out and is run over by a car, and the driver gets out to destroy the evidence, leaving the spy in a coma.

We're taken away from this intro to find out that the focus on the story is, in reality, a group of students in a Food Research Club. Everything and anything that happens in this club is eating and testing out snacks, which means that it is simply a group of friends having fun together. The club is one of many at Takafuji Private Academy, an institution that boasts over 6,000 students and is largely ran by a school government compromised of students. The main conflict rides in when a new presidential election for the school is called, and it is discovered that the leading candidate plans to shut down the Food Research Club. Yuki Ojima, our MC-kun, then runs in to save the day, and reluctantly accepting the position of candidate that is forced onto him by the club.

The rest of the anime (anything that was described above happens during the first few episodes) describes the election and campaigning process, while Yuki grows closer to each respective heroine, helping each one with their problems. The struggles with running such a large student body surface, and MC-kun finds himself having more and more problems as the date of the election nears. Eventually Yuki finds out about the incident, and endangers himself, his close ones, and the election.

For the short 12 episode span KoiChoco had, there was a large amount of great storytelling. The entire time I was watching the anime I felt saddened that such an interesting plot was being condensed into a measly 12 episodes. I think the show would have been better with a longer run, but then again, a lot of things would have been.

Negatives included some cliche and cringey scenes, but those are natural. At times it felt very loose and elements of the story didn't come together completely. I understand that the large character cast was a way of staying faithful to the source material, however it did make for some unnecessary complications. Asides from that, very solid and interesting story coming out of KoiChoco.

Characters
It is hard to create originality in characters, seeing as most things possible have already been done. However, you can still make unoriginal characters interesting with backstory. You have seen all of the characters in KoiChoco in one form or another, but it is their histories that make them multi-dimensional and far from plain.

Let's take MC-kun for example. Yuki Ojima is your standard overbearingly kind high school boy, surrounded by female companions who each have their own reasons for trying to get with him. Sure, we have our straight-out-of-the-factory character, but he's actually got a troubled past. I don't want to say anything in fear of spoiling (even though this diminishes my point), but trust me that he does turn out to be an interesting guy.

But it is impossible to give every character the depth and backstory that they need, and there are really only two or three characters who get that. The rest of the characters remained relatively flat, but were still likable nonetheless.

Sound
The opening theme is addictive and upbeat, and I've quickly come to love it (I'll most likely play the hell out of it on repeat for a while until it becomes dreary). As for the ending theme, nothing wrong there, pretty average stuff. Didn't really notice an amazing soundtrack with profound presence, and therefore there's not too much to say about the music or the sound effects.

There are no annoying voice actors in KoiChoco, and I can as far as to say that all the characters were casted extremely well and the voice actors did an awesome job.

Art/Animation
To add on to the already solid foundation of an anime KoiChoco is, the art and animation are slightly above average. Everything looked natural and there was no choppy animation (everything was reasonably fluid). Aniplex worked with a lighter pastel set of colours in this adaptation, and I thought that it paired well with the overall tone of KoiChoco.

Personal Enjoyment
There were no fatal flaws or anything, but KoiChoco doesn't really go the distance to become a heavenly anime. This can be attributed to its short run, but a lack of sophisticated and complicated plot is the main reason why. I am not saying that the story is simple or anything, it just isn't on that next level.

However the reason why I liked KoiChoco so much was because everything about it spoke to me, and it was a very enjoyable watch. I came in expecting nothing but a run-of-the-mill romcom filled with random panty shots, but instead I found a small gem. While no masterpiece, KoiChoco definitely deserves more praise than it currently gets.

Thanks for the laughs and great times KoiChoco. I'll send you off with a wonderful 7.7/10.0.

KoiChoco on MyAnimeList