And what a Super Idol Nico is, right?

It’s probably not much of a surprise when I say that I really enjoyed this particular episode of Love Live, but, then, I’ve made no particular secret about Nico being my favourite character in the show. Ostensibly a Nico episode, this instalment did a pretty good job as to hitting why I like her – whilst she’s kind of a self-conceited jerk sometimes (well, frequently), and certainly a little over-proud, she’s ultimately rather sweet and well-intentioned about things.

Mostly.

Also, this episode is one of those ones where a whole bunch of things which don’t necessarily make sense, when you actually think about them, happen, and those are the best episodes of Love Live.

In other related news, Kadokawa, fresh from buying up From Software, released a new teaser for the upcoming Love Live Vita game(s) yesterday. It’s looking way less rough than it did last I saw of it – or at least less rough than I remember it looking, though I guess the only real difference is that they’ve shown the gameplay layer, as well as having all the members on stage at once during a performance. Some of the other visual compromises start to make more sense that way, once you cast aside the assumption that splitting the game into three separate releases was in order to reduce the number of idols they had to render at once as opposed to just the cash-grab it probably is.

In any case, the game is coming from Dingo, who have a background in the likes of Project Diva and the upcoming Persona dancing game, so I wouldn’t be too worried about it anyway. The games release was pushed back a couple of months from it’s previously announced release date, though honestly, I wonder if that’s as much to do with getting it out the way of One for All as it was about the game needing more work.

In solicitation news, the OST for the second season went up in the listings of most of the major Japanese online anime retailers today, scheduled for release in the back-end of August. My main point of interest in this relates whether or not the A-RISE song, Shocking Party, is going to be relegated to the OST much like Private Wars from the first series.

That said, we probably aren’t going to get a track listing for the OST until after the last episode of the show has aired – they like to keep the names of the mooo’s insert songs a somewhat-secret until they are actually used in the show, and because they usually stick TV-length versions of the songs on the OSTs, they can’t reveal the expected track listing in advance even though the realities of TV animation scheduling means that all the songs have probably been recorded already.

Anyway, on with the cartoon…
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The Internet is Vast and Infinite. Also full of streaming idol contests, apparently.

I was pondering whether or not, given some of the charts shown later in the episode, there were any internet hacking shenanigans going on in this episode, but whilst Nico has previously proven herself quite adept around a keyboard (at least whilst trolling idol groups on internet forums), I’m pretty sure that Arisa and Yukiho aren’t exactly the sorts to have a Love Live voting bot-net at their beck-and-call. Infact, given that half of our heroines active fanbase seemed to be at their concert, and didn’t seem to have their ‘phones out, I wonder who was actually voting for them.

But I’m digressing in an attempt to justify the silly post title.
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Leaping to the top of the queue by virtue of drawing first blood this season, from the first episode of Kanojo ga Flag wo Oraretara – or If Her Flag Breaks if you like English (Or Gaworare if you are worried about letter counts). It’s that thing in the top-right corner, being used as a table in the ramshackle Quest Dorm in which the male protagonist resides.

I have to admit, I’ve been spending an awful lot of time this season staring at the frontpage of Crunchyroll, finding myself not really finding all that much that I particularly feel like watching most nights of the week. I only really stuck this show on as background noise whilst I was fiddling around with something else, but it’s cute enough, I guess. I suppose I should watch No Game No Life by means of comparison, but Gaworare feels very much like a confluence of ongoing trends in the industry – it’s all very light-novel, whilst also continuing that gamification of relationships as portrayed in the likes of The World God Only Knows. Only, you know, being way more literal about this whole flag concept. Maybe I’ll watch more, maybe I won’t.

But, hey, it’s a double Bank Holiday Weekend here in the UK, so I’ve got a nice four-day break during which I can pretend that I’m actually going to catch up on checking out new shows.

Lewder cuts of animation are available, but this is a family blog, you understand, and I therefore have standards to maintain.

(Also, not really much lewder, unless you find Honoka’s bare back particularly lewd. I probably wouldn’t judge you if you did)

Anyway, let’s keep this comparatively short this week, because aside from the fact that I don’t really fancy attempting to proof another four thousand words about a mere twenty minute cartoon, I don’t actually have much to say about this episode.
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From the second to last episode, hopefully not providing any spoilers.

I had fun with Zvezda, but it’s a bit of a kooky show with an approach that is probably as off putting as it is appealing. Essentially, the show simply doesn’t give a damn about providing the audience with any kind of actual context in regards to the world in which it’s set. It’s a experience not entirely unlike watching a spin-off series without having seen the original work, or perhaps watching a slightly more coherent Tomino production.

This is to say, the show has a certain internal consistency to it, and there’s never really any indication that the characters are ever experiencing anything that doesn’t make sense to them outside of some sporadic bouts of confusion from our protagonist early on. It’s a weirdly naturalistic approach to writing for a show as conceptually out-there are Zvezda, in so much as the characters don’t really feel the need to stand around and explain things that they should already know to each other simply for the benefit of the audience.

The show does, eventually, find itself with the need to throw the viewer a narrative life-ring, lest they drown in the shows closing arc, but it’s little more than is necessary. The show still expects you to make your own assumptions and draw your own connections between things, though – it’s a curiously intelligent for a show is actually kind of dumb, even if it does end up making it easy to reach too far and make conclusions about what the show is actually about that are shortly proven completely wrong.

Also Renge-chan da best.
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