Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love 2000% Episode 8--J-Pop=Poetry of the Gods

The ultimate artistic expression was right under our noses all along!

 
From the way this episode started out, I thought that we were getting a breather episode to watch the whole cast interact with each other before before we got back to the episodic stuff, but nope! This was Cecil's episode in disguise. I thought that they were going to save this stuff until a little bit later. So, uh, I guess Tokiya gets his episode later? That is, unless they're planning something else with him that also has to do with Cecil's storyline.

 
Speaking of getting a bad deal on screentime, what the heck have the senpai group been up to all this time? I still know basically nothing about them, and I was pretty excited to see them at the start of this episode because I thought that it might fill in their personalities a bit. No such luck. At this point, it seems like they really are here just for the extra eye candy.

 
Anyway, this episode focused on the plot point that we all saw coming since the second episode: Cecil realizes that he wants to be an idol. The way he goes about admitting this to Haruka is interesting, since at first I thought that it was a straight-up love confession, not an apology for wanting people other than her to be happy. (...When you unpack that statement it comes off as a little strange, but I get what they were going for, so I'll roll with it.) The usual UtaPri silliness comes in a bit later, when instead of just writing lyrics like everyone else, Cecil gets mugged by fireflies and receives lyrics straight from the goddesses of song instead. While I don't think I could ever accurately compare UtaPri to another anime, a lot of things after this point in the episode reminded me of AKB0048.


Image from Tumblr
I don't know how much the audiences for these two shows overlap, but bear with me for a minute. Cecil receives lyrics to a silly J-pop song from an unexplained deity of song, which is also how the AKB0048 girls get their material. The song is stated to be able to connect the people who hear it to a higher frame of mind, even though, again, it's really just a silly J-pop song. But the thing that sparked the comparison in my brain was the giant floating sparkly heart sequence similar to the stuff that we got at the end of the first season. When the members of Starish sing together, they trigger a Center Nova phenomenon.

Or it could just be what Otoya said.

Of course, the main difference between the two shows is that AKB0048 used a lot of worldbuilding to give context for the crazy idol stuff that was happening and backed it up with well-done character arcs. UtaPri has never had that kind of justification, and most likely never will. If something is as entertaining as it is fabulous, then UtaPri will go there regardless of logic and story reasoning. Despite this, I think it says a lot that I enjoy both shows equally, if for different reasons.

"Hey son, I heard that you're not a cat anymore. Would you like to rule our vaguely defined kingdom of music, Y/N"

Anyway, just when I started to wonder if the show would start focusing on the idol contest a bit more now that Cecil was over his misgivings, instead we get a conveniently timed letter from his dad the king, asking him if he wants the throne. Judging by his stern voice and the fact that UtaPri loves family drama, my guess is that Cecil's dad will not approve of his son giving up his royal title in favor of joining a boy band group with homoerotic undertones. If that's true, I might just have to make some popcorn for that argument.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.