Welcome to another one of these Hallo Hallo Cafe reviews, wherein we take a look at the show that runs after Amachan on TV5 back in 2015.
We’ve now hit the big 2 point 0 here so without further ado, let’s begin this review shall we?
Episode 19
No team introductions on this one as Angel just blitzes the hell out of it and then someone makes a joke about Shaider being a shy robot. There’s one problem though, Shaider isn’t a robot, he’s…I don’t even know what he is. Nice try, Monica.
Enough about nitpicking, because we’re going to get another janken based challenge and as per Hallo Hallo Café fashion, pies are going to be involved. Since this is a show ran after a Japanese show, we play by Japanese janken rules.
This time, we’re playing by acchi-muite-poi rules. The winner of the janken portion of the game gets to then have the opponent face the same direction he/she’s pointing to. If you lost, your goal in this section of the game is to NOT look at the direction the winner is pointing to or else you get punished and in the case of this episode, get pied in the face.
If you want to learn more about acchi-muite-poi rules, click here.
The girl who gets to tell that stupid Shaider joke wins the game by the way.
I think HHE has just given up on getting any unique prizes or haven’t got anything on their sleeves this time because this episode’s Hallo Hallo Panalo prize is…vouchers for Cool Japan Shop. At least we get to see Paulo Kurosawa’s face for a few seconds.
The ending saved the show for me because it was just one swerve after another. Let me explain, since Monica was the winner, Yachang and Angel were setting her up to be pied in the face only for Angel to betray her boss by smacking the pie, which was intended for Monica, in Yachang’s face.
That’s not all, it seems that Yachang is still determined to have his pie land on Monica’s face but then with the power of misdirection, he aimed for Angel’s face…and failed.
Rating: 3/5
Positives: Acchi-muite-poi rules on a supposedly regular janken game, the show’s ending and the swerves that took place.
Negatives: It’s another janken game, HHE not being prepared for Hallo Hallo Panalo, Monica’s stupid Shaider joke, and can someone please have a new ad for Cool Japan Festival 2015?! We’ve have seen the same AKB48 Team 8 video over and over again.
Episode 20 aka So It Has Come to This, A Hallo Hallo Café Clip Show
Okay okay, why did you say it’s a clip show you ask. The reason I said that this episode is a clip show because there’s no challenge that was made on this episode and instead they showed clips of previous challenges to not only pad out the episode but to tally who was the monthly winner among the Kawaii5 girls.
If you’ve been watching the first 19 episodes on YouTube, or have been reading these reviews, it’s obvious that our friend Alice is the winner for the month of October 5 to November 5, 2015. The monthly winner gets to pick from the prizes offered in each Hallo Hallo Panalo segment for that month. So yes, Alice can pick out anything from vouchers for Movie Stars Café to one of those Pilot Firxion pens.
Speaking of this episode’s Hallo Hallo Panalo, I didn’t even bother watching that segment because it’s just a repeat of the previous episode’s HHC segment.
The clip show ends with Alice making a wish as if it’s her birthday and then gets a chocolatey surprise when a Kaaway 5 member rises up from the makeshift table and splats the cake on her face.
It’s not the swerve ending that made me keep being interested in this episode, it’s Alice’s wishes that made me hop on to Google and do some “research”.
Her wishes were basically for Amachan and Hallo Hallo Café to gain high ratings, and for Kawaii5 to stay together and if there’s one thing reading recaps of the Wrestling Observer or that one Saturday Night Live book taught me about television, is that ratings matter for a show’s survival.
I’ll be using the AGB Nielsen ratings provided by pep.ph back in 2015 for the sake of comparison.
Let’s see where we are at this point. Take note that both shows are being aired at both morning and evening timeslots so there’s two ratings per each day. I don’t know if this is some WWE-type marketing strategy or whatnot but I won’t be combining the ratings for each slot here.
| Show | October 5, 2015 (AM) | October 5, 2015 (PM) | November 5, 2015 (AM) | November 5, 2015 (PM) |
| Amachan | 2.2% | 2.2% | 2.6% | 1.8% |
| Hallo Hallo Cafe | 2.2% | 2.6% | 2.2% | 1.3% |
As you can see on this table, at the beginning of the show, they get better ratings during the evening timeslot (and to my surprise, Hallo Hallo Café usurped the show it’s promoting on the first night they’re on repeat airing) and then by the end of both shows’ first month on TV5, they’re doing better in the morning timeslot.
We all know back then, and we all know by now that these two shows won’t beat whatever the big two were pumping out of their studios (and yes, that includes Dragon Ball Z) but the fact the shows, especially Hallo Hallo Café, doing better in the morning after their first month doesn’t make sense to me because I would think most of the target audience for HHC would be either at school or at work during the morning timeslot so they would opt to watch the show in the evening timeslot since they’re already at home by then.
Also, I’m from the future and I know that Kawaii5 won’t stay that long. If you haven’t heard about it, there’s this group called MNL48 and it’s also managed by the same company that currently manages Kawaii5.
Rating: Clip Show/5
Positives: The way they presented the clip show was very unique with tallying the monthly winner from the Kawaii5 roster and Alice’s wishes at the end of the show made me do my research.
Negatives: They reused the same prize for this episode’s Hallo Hallo Panalo and I’m done with ranting about the Cool Japan Fiesta ads because there’s no sense in ranting about it. It’s obvious that they’re milking that AKB48 Team 8 video for weeb cred.
Rayas-WEB 