Friday Cards & Box Promos

Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate
	Chisato Sumiyoshi (01-001) Cost: 4 Source: 1 AP: 40 DP: 30 When your character named 「Chisato Sumiyoshi」 approaches and is put into your trash, when another one of your characters named 「Chisato Sumiyoshi」 approaches, it gets +20/+20 until end of turn and then stand it. It may approach one additional time this turn. Types: School Uniform
Thoughts and comments
These days in Precious Memories, the cards that can approach more than once each turn are usually the strongest, which tells me the Chisato deck is going to be the KoiChoco deck to beat.

Card of the Day

Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate
	Satsuki Shinonome (01-062) Cost: 4 Source: 2 AP: 30 DP: 30 When this card approaches or blocks, choose 1 of your opponent’s characters. That character gets -10/-10 until end of turn. [Approach/Both]: {1} Draw 1 card. This card gets +10/+10 until end of turn. Types: School Uniform / Glasses
Thoughts and comments
It’s always valuable to have an ability that you can dump your 1 source cards into for card draw. I think this will be stronger on defense so that you can choose the character you’re blocking for the -10/-10 target because you can’t guarantee that your opponent will cooperate and block with the character you want (or block at all for that matter).

Friday Cards of the Day

Girls und Panzer
	Miho Nishizumi (01-001) Cost: 4 Source: 2 AP: 20 DP: 20 When you play this card, the cost of the next <Way of the Tank> character you play this turn is -4. [Main/Both]: {REST} Choose 1 of your <Way of the Tank> characters. Until end of turn, that character gets +X/+Y where X is this character’s AP and Y is this character’s DP. Types: School Uniform / Way of the Tank
Thoughts and comments
The first ability is good, but 4 cost is too much for a 20/20 body. While there might be some way to take advantage of the second ability, I don’t know what that might be. Not useless, but certainly not good. but you’ll need a perfect hand to pull it off. The second ability means this card is going into your support area and I’m not the biggest fan of support cards that cost 4. Giving +20/+20 or more to one of your characters is nothing to scoff at, but a well-prepared defender ought to be able to handle it.

Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate
	Chisato Sumiyoshi & Satsuki Shinonome (01-017) Cost: 5 Source: 1 AP: 40 DP: 50 When this character approaches and deals damage to your opponent, draw 2 cards. When this character approaches and your opponent plays a character, you may ready a character. Types: School Uniform
Thoughts and comments
Good size for the cost and a good first ability and a decent second ability. Nothing really to complain about.

Koi to Senkyou to Chocolate (review)

Final impression – cleverly endearing; never a dull moment (7/10)

Summer 2012 (12 episodes) (title literal translation – Love, Election and Chocolate)

When the food research club finds out that it’s going to be shut down amid sweeping reforms and budget cuts, they resolve to protect it at any cost.

Out of the many, many high school romance comedies I’ve watched, the student council is a frequently recurring plot element.  Usually they just sit on the sidelines to be used when necessary, but occasionally they happen to be the primary antagonist or sometimes the entire story is centered around the activities of the student council.

However, I’ve never seen an anime where the entire central premise was about the student council election and that’s the primary way in which KoiChoco distinguishes itself.  All the drama and underhanded dealings that are associated with real elections get played up in one unexpected development after another and protagonist Oojima constantly faces the dilemma of getting himself dirty, caving to the advice of his campaign advisor or sticking to his morals and hoping his good-natured intentions don’t backfire.

It does well, but there’s more than a few instances where KoiChoco feels like it’s trying way too hard.  Chisato in particular is wearing a pretty big “childhood friend character,” sign and all five potential love interests of this anime based on a dating sim have some overly gnarly wounds in their backstories.  But for the most part the story knows when to be lighthearted and when to be serious to create the right amount of tension and even enough misdirection to keep things unpredictably interesting—even going as far as to occasionally poke fun at its own genre.

With a good cast of voice actors, a fitting soundtrack, a couple of fresh ideas and a nice balance of playfulness and sincerity, KoiChoco is one of the better representatives of romantic comedies.  And of course, any series that makes a reference to Madoka is cool by me.