The Winter 2015 Anime Preview Guide

Shonen Hollywood Season 2

Nick Creamer

Rating: 3

It's nice to see these guys again. Shōnen Hollywood - Holly Stage for 50 picks up a little after where 49 left off, with the gang now accustomed to performing regular concerts at Hollywood Tokyo. This first episode is mostly about reintroducing the cast and establishing the new normal, as the boys hang out, practice, and hand out fliers in the day leading up to another performance. The one major element of conflict in this first episode concerns Makki's return to the team, as him taking three days off for a cold has left him out of step with the rest of the group. But that's resolved without much fuss, and the episode concludes by finally giving us the live performance it baited at the end of the summer season.

Holly Stage for 50 follows closely enough behind the first season that it might as well be a second half, and little has changed in the show's storytelling since last time. It's still content to spend great stretches of time on the mundane slice-of-life conversations of its stars (“Where do you think dust comes from?” asks Kira as the episode begins), it's still very good at using the personalities of its characters to create understated, natural-sounding conversations, and it's still tinged with a slight hint of melancholy. When Shōnen Hollywood says “these are the best days of our lives!”, there's a kind of sadness to it - the show always stands with one foot in dreams and one foot in the real world.

Not that this episode is particularly sad. In fact, the ending to this episode is downright celebratory, as we finally get to see Shōnen Hollywood performing before a cheering crowd. The episode even concludes with the whole gang rattling of those introductory speeches they felt so embarrassed about last season. There was a legitimate sense of triumph to seeing them finally get to use those canned speeches (“Let me be your lucky charm!”), aided greatly by the way the sound design filtered their voices to emulate an echoing concert hall. This first episode wasn't exactly reflective of the poignance or structural ambition of the first season's best episodes, but it did what it had to do - reintroduce the cast and bring the audience up to date with their journey. They'll have to introduce new conflicts to keep the show fresh from here out, but Shōnen Hollywood - Holly Stage for 50 is off to a respectable start.

Shōnen Hollywood - Holly Stage for 50 is available streaming on Funimation.com.