This week’s final episode of Koichoco had Yuuki running around answering pay phones on election day as the time to give his speech nearly comes and goes. At the same time, the mystery of the photos Kana took in the opening minutes of the series is solved. Yuuki manages to rescue Chisato before eventually giving something vaguely resembling an election speech. He wins the election, the Food Research Club is saved and everyone seems happy,
The first half of this episode was something I could only call “Run Yuuki Run.” Yuuki runs around the city answering pay phones as Yuina tries to ensure that he is not able to give his final campaign speech. At least we were spared the avant garde animation and multiple death scenes, but I digress. Yuuki, by virtue of the 2nd pay phone being in an absurd location spends the rest of the episode with a cut on his face and with a torn up shirt, which leads to the downfall of Yuina’s entire plan.
Yuuki’s wonderful ability to run into random girls and gain their sympathy kicked in, those girls let Satsuki know his general condition which let to everything unraveling. This is especially curious after Yuina appreciated the fact that he didn’t tell Mifuyu what was happening. Maybe it was a bit too much to ask her to not use the pay phone that was on the other side of a fence topped by barbed wire, but that was entirely central to this episode.
As this was all happening, Yuina also paid a visit to Kana where she put up surprisingly little resistance to conveniently ignore Kana’s suggestion that there was a second copy of the pictures she took on the night she was hit by the car. Ultimately, they showed a backroom deal between the Katahira faction and General Affairs in one of two pieces of corruption for the latter in this episode. There was also among the pictures a preposterous one that miraculously manages to capture Yuina’s face as the driver of the car though the car’s side mirror. This also allowed the Public Safety Commission to show of its previously unknown power to arrest people because attempting to kill someone on campus is merely an internal affair to be dealt with by the student government.
That other bit of corruption by General Affairs involved the club that was running the media coverage for the election. The ASP had been using poor Shiohama as two club members to get more funding, which is why Shiohama was seen wearing both boy’s and girl’s uniforms in the series. Obviously, the question of which gender Shiohama is was left an open question, but that’s an entirely different story. General Affairs then called in its favor to run a fake corruption story on Yuuki as he was running around. That only seemed to be the final confirmation that every institution in this series was corrupted or incompetent.
As for the election speech itself, Yuuki delivered half of an introductory sentence before running out of time. The remarkable thing is that they kept the entire student body in an arena for 29 minutes without anything going on. After a bit of contrivance with Satsuki and then Mouri allowing Yuuki to speak, he proceeds to give a proper campaign speech. The theme, of “I Was Corrupted, But Now I’ve Changed” seemed a bit curious, but his appeals and naive idealism carried him far enough to win the election.
Also, the love and chocolate aspects of the title were thrown together in two parts. As Yuuki saved Chisato, he all but proposed marriage to her before being smacked down. The very nature of running for office means having to belong to more than one person, but seemingly only Chisato seemed to know this out of anyone. Then, in the epilogue portion to conclude the series, they both share the same piece of chocolate in front of Chisato’s family grave.
Now briefly for some final thoughts on this series. It was a bit of a train wreck to say the least. There were many plot elements that were too ridiculous for me to take this seriously even before the terrible pacing of the show is taken into account. There are just so many topics I can target for ridicule. Among the most obvious that come to mind for me are the armpit sniffing, the disappearance of Satsuki’s campaign after he primary speech, the very fact that there was a teacher drinking on campus, the very odd moods that were set when Daiki was killed by the truck and Chisato was tased, the completely unexplained power Michiru had to read people and most of all the spies. I probably would have been kinder on this series had it not gotten worse week-after-week-after-week, but it’s been really noticeable since the resolution of Hazuki and Satsuki’s troubles. By then it had already reverted back to the worst aspects of the harem genre and it couldn’t even be creative in wrapping things up. (58.98/100)
Lower Mid-Table 