Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate

Title:Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate
Love, Election, & Chocolate
恋と選挙とチョコレート (Japanese)
Overall:Watch
Keywords: , , , , , , , ,
Notables: NAKAMURA Eriko
NAKAMURA Yuuichi
R1 License - Sentai Filmworks (ADV)
R1 License - Subtitled Only
Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate follows the protagonist Yūki Ōjima, who attends Takafuji Private Academy a large school with over 6,000 students. Yūki is a member of the Food Research Club along with seven others, including his childhood friend Chisato Sumiyoshi. The members leisurely spend their time in the club not doing much activities. When the election of the next student council president comes up, the front runner Satsuki Shinonome proposes that clubs that have no merit should be sorted out and abolished. The Food Research Club seeks advice from the current student council president Yakumo Mōri, who suggests Yūki run in the election as an opposing candidate.
(Synopsis courtesy of ANN)

12 episodes

2:24min Series PV - YouTube Video
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Watch 8 7 7 6 5 6 Ggultra2764 [series:2594#1552]
Love, Election and Chocolate is pretty much another anime based off a dating sim game with our male lead Yuki being surrounded with several girls he interacts with in his school club. To a good extent, the anime essentially milks the typical cliches and archetypes of dating sims, harems and high school-based anime, which include even a student council that has more authority over school issues than the staff to go along with its "election" premise.

It does have some refreshing story elements to its dating sim roots. Yuki isn't made into a hapless lead dealing with unwanted attention from the girls surrounding him as he is a level headed guy trying to get a handle on all the situations surrounding him in the school as he runs for student council president and has clear thoughts on the feelings he has for the girls surrounding him within the club or around the school. While the anime has some fan service and double-entendre moments, they don't pop up often nor do they get in the way of developments with the show's plot. The first half also has some potential with its election plot as Yuki tries to gain support for his electoral run and understand the ropes of being a student council leader.

The series quality starts to degrade in the show's second half when elements to the show's dating sim roots start to rear their ugly head. The sub-plot that Yuki is dragged into involving hostilities between two characters got decent focus and genuine drama out of the affair. However, Love Election and Chocolate's attempts at adding romantic developments in its second half are rather underwhelming as they are rather unconvincing and poorly mixed into the ongoing developments Yuki has with the election. The election bits even degrade in quality as well when things get way too overly serious over the stakes of the election when things such as secret groups, conspiracies and scandals get added to the mix with such students treating the election as if they were trying to win a campaign to run a country. It's perhaps the poorest example I've seen of the "Absurdly Powerful Student Council" trope getting milked from an anime to date.

Visual quality for this is a bit on the plain side for a 2012 side. There are sharp details and bright colors incorporated for character designs and scenery to compliment the cheerful mood the anime wants to give off. However, nothing with it particularly stuck out in comparison to other impressively visual titles animated from that time such as Eureka Seven AO and Fate/Zero 2.

Much like many other dating sim knockoffs I've come across, I'm rather indifferent towards Love, Election and Chocolate. Despite having some decent elements to its premise, the series still mostly milks off story cliches and character archetypes typical of the genre and the election story gets rather ridiculous in its second half when it tries to act like its making a statement about politics. Unless you're a sap for dating sims, I'd pass on this.

Last updated Sunday, January 11 2015. Created Sunday, January 11 2015.
Unevaluated Stretch [series:2594#628]
(One episode watched):

Something about a club where the members do little more than feast on snacks, apparently. Here is yet another fanservice driven show, this one much more raunchy than Nakaimo ("I'm waiting for the moment when you eat my yaoi stick"). And this is clearly a somewhat censored TV version. The non-sex jokes, however, are pretty lame. As usual the emphasis is on well endowed girls rather than ones with well developed personalities. At least the girls here aren't shamelessly throwing themselves at Yuuki. Yet someone nearly got killed in the first scene, which makes little sense given the nonsensical tone of the remainder of the episode. This show seems to be about blank slate characters who only want to keep stuffing their faces with chocolate, which begs the question, 'why should I care'?

Last updated Monday, July 09 2012. Created Monday, July 09 2012.

Other Sites
NameURL
Official website of the franchise http://www.koichoco.com/
Official Website (japanese) at TBS http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/koichoco/

Community Anime Reviews

anime mikomi org