Aikatsu!

22. How did it not become a massive scandal about Sakuya becoming the Scam Idol once it became public knowledge her sister was subbing in for her without the fans knowing about it? Seems like that should be a bigger deal. Well aside from that, I do like Kaguya. Fussy, but fun. Also an even bigger fake fortune teller than her sister. Plus that means more goth songs incoming, and those are always a killer.

23. Ah, so Friends can still do drama. Aikatsu needs a bit of it to keep things interesting, as Maika feeling bummed and her modeling suffering as a result was helped by a more dour atmosphere. Even idol activities need a bit of edge. I think Ema is controlling the weather, and she timed the rain so that no one else would enter the competition, but cleared it up when it mattered. Clearly a sign of the supernatural.

24. Kaguya is jumping up high in the awesome list, sending both Mio and Aine into shock by not worshiping the ground Love Me Tear walks on. Had to be reversed by the end of course, but nice while it lasted. Plus Kaguya had that great gag with the elevator. More showing on the how this all works, which is always appreciated. Karen is still boring, but at least Kaguya was able to carry their sections. Mirai did good in helping Sakuya stay in character. Mirai still has the best performance.

25. I'm mostly surprised at my lack of surprise that big name idols have their own private jets. So if Mio has to fill in for Love Me Tear due to a hurricane, that means Mio had like, a day at most to prepare for the show. And not just one subject, but six detailed and historical activities with masters of their craft who may not be so accommodating to someone rushing to prep everything. And she did it with flying colors. Mio truly is the top idol. Meanwhile Aine gets to pig out. She's the lucky one. Directors with a particular vision are an ass to deal with. Mio has got to be mentally exhausted after all the prep and actually doing the show, but having to deal with a surprise hostile guest after all that is a lot to expect of someone when she's already stretching herself. Pulling that off requires the Zone. This is either really good for her, or if you believe the scary music, she's catching Yume's Rainbow Cancer. Could be Friends's most interesting plot point thus far.

26. I love the smell of new op and ed in the morning. Not sure if the op is better or not, but I think the new ed is better. Aikatsu still does a good job of making the sidles look interesting. Still following up on the thread of Mio potentially vastly outshining Aine, and Aine feeling very uncomfortable about that, but that's not an issue today. Their performance seemed balanced, and the audience didn't notice any discrepancies. Yet Love Me Tear have their serious faces still on. Meanwhile Sakuya is causing a big mess by buying into her own scams this time. Kaguya sees herself as mostly her sister's support. Kaguya is far less trained in the idol arts. Kaguya is exhausted after running around doing everything. Sakuya is a nervous wreck. There's no way they should be winning this contest either logically or thematically, yet the law of drama and debut performances says they'll win. The upcoming execution is going to have to be very good to pull this off. Second half starts off strong, and next episode may set the tone for the rest of the season.

Seems like we're getting some Stars! style drama now what with Love ME Tear saying that Mio wasn't able to pull out Aine's full potential.

27. More cute Sakuya and Kaguya backstory. Kaguya still the better twin by far. Plus Sakuya was quietly exposed as a fraud, so that's all good. Still don't think Reflect Moon really earned their victory in a logical or thematic sense (yeah they just grew a lot closer, but that felt a bit contrived), but their performance was so good that I'll overlook it this time. As for the interesting stuff, Mio would just normally be seriously contemplating what to do next. Until Love Me Tear pour salt into that wound. Ouch. I'm already seeing problems coming up from Mio getting burnt out from work and stress while everyone else expects her to be perfect while carrying Aine along with her. Tone has been set.

I don't think they're expecting Mio to carry Aine. I think they were basically saying that Mio didn't take things seriously enough and was essentially dragging Aine down but it's Aikatsu! so they phrased it as her not focusing and failing to bring out Aine's potential as a result in order to be nicer.

Edited by Chariot on Oct 14th 2018 at 3:06:16 PM

28. With only 3 teams being available for the big finale, Honey Cat is so being setup to be the ultimate jobbers of the season. Aine once more feels inadequate about herself due to their loss. Mio is a bit more complex, not trusting herself to fully believe in Aine, which makes it her fault even if her technical skills are still superior. Nice message this time about not only being willing to take a break when needed, but also trusting that everyone else can handle themselves without her watching over them the entire time. And thus the crux of the episode, for both of them to believe in each other and themselves, Pure Palette breaks up for now. Actually a pretty good episode that at least makes good use of Reflect Moon's contrived victory.

29. Man I'm reminded how much I miss the old drama episodes. Those good old whacky shenanigans were some of the best highlights of OGkatsu. At least the Idol Witch show seemed legitimately interesting. Kind of a surprisingly serious episode about how Aine needs to be actively striving to beat Mio and Love Me Tear if she ever wants to get on their level. Mirai looked older than usual. Not sure if it was just me. She certainly enjoyed being a bully. Mirai remains the better of the two senpai. Decent enough episode, but it must be seen how Aine actually apples her lesson. Nice duo performance on Identity at least. We don't get enough unusual pairings for the songs these days.

30. Episode about voice actors voicing voice actor roles. How meta. Kaguya going solo is nice, though it also shows how much favoritism this industry gives based on who is related to who. Good song for her at least. Mio accepting how she has difficult adapting quickly without Aine is fine in theory, but she's shown to be good at this. She got the The Aikatsu Zone via epic ad-lib. Give her two minutes to compose herself and she could've passed that part easily. Why do producers keep putting her through this? And wow Pure Palette's break up was pathetic if they're getting back together next episode. Also, I'd call Karen the laziest mentor ever for not actually doing anything (even if it reaffirms that Mio is the best), but I also dislike Love Me Tear going out of their way to mentor Aine and Mio. Too much blatant favoritism from the top. So no-win scenario there.

31. The idol industry is so cheap that they just repurpose their super-AI to give counseling duties. That or very rich to be able to afford one of them. Between holograms and AI, Aikatsu is leading the charge on the robot revolution. Actually a robot idol may not be that out of place in this series one day. 100% rivals for Pure Palette is fine, but they need to stop with the 1:1 parallels to Love Me Tear. Makes them look cheap. And I call bull on them doing 101 challenges in a single day. When they had maybe an evening to prepare it. The result I was hoping for was 1)Mio wins, 2)Aine wins, 3)tie. The latter of which disappointing me, yet was expected. So of course they had to disappoint me further by not saying who won. Cowards. Aine dropping the chan makes me realize how honorfics tend to fly over my head these days. Time for Honey Cat to prove they are the ultimate jobbers.

32. What kind of rich-ass family does Karen have to give her an island at the age of 3? Mirai may be crazy, but I'm convinced Karen just straight up wants to see some dead idols at the end of the day. Maika and Ema apparently did all the cool stuff off-screen. Their performance was fine, but I was surprised by the appeal. Of course Karen controls a volcano too. Meet her standards or everyone on the island burns to death. Jobber team is done, so it's time for Pure Palette to step up.

33. So either Karen broke the laws of physics and built an entire city under her island, or this is all just fancy hologram tech. Yeah I'm going with that one. I think Karen really wanted to burn some idols to death, but Mirai persuaded her to lower it to drowning in cream. Double Hibiscus is so dumb. How could they think someone else was supposed to be their prince when competitors are the only other people there? Guess Love Me Tear took pity on the jobbers and let both groups of note pass. Well they already make the rules, so why not go one step further.

34. Garbage industry remains garbage, constantly imposing unreasonable deadlines on their workers on a moment's whim. At least Aine is capable of putting in the effort and getting good results, but those late night working hours cannot be good for her. I like how Mio clearly wanted to yell at Tamaki before getting interrupted. Some nice development on the designers, getting a better grasp on how adults handle it. Which in Noa's case apparently means having a nervous breakdown, then getting stress relief pudding.

35. Kaguya gets another taste at living the life of a professional bullshitter. She's not cut out for this. The others sure are out to embarrass the sisters this episode. Meanwhile Coco is up to something. Oh no, she's the true big bad and is secretly out to conquer the idol world and replace it with androids and AI like herself. Truly, she is the great evil. Also idols need to learn not to destroy public parks thank you very much.

36. Industry focus plus Mio being a boss makes this a good episode. Momone knows how to get far in life. I swear every time someone takes a plane trip it gets cancelled or delayed. Try to be a little more creative with how the show is in crisis please. Good thing Mio is a master of padding. Meanwhile Momone plots to take everything from her sister.

This was a nice episode. Thankfully it doesn't seem like Momone is going to become an idol any time soon which is good because I would be upset if we got cheated out of Noelle as an idol only for a less endearing little sister to get the stoplight as one.

That said, I was checking the episode list because I'm working on a fanfic for a secret santa over on Tumblr and I discovered that the Diamond Friends Cup is starting in January. That's surprising though, considering that like the Starlight Queen Cup from OG and the S4 Selection from Stars! the Diamond Friends Cup seems like it should be the final arc of the season but unless Friends! seasons are shorter than usual this season shouldn't end until the end of March and I don't think the Diamond Friends Cup can last that long. I wonder what they're going to do after it.

Edited by Chariot on Feb 26th 2019 at 9:41:23 AM

37. So Honey Cat gets to remain as Pure Palette's punching bag. Other than that just everyone exchanging presents while confirming Mio's book is nothing but lies. Ema apparently has no family. Is it really an Aikatsu Christmas with no axe? The Christmas songs are always great, and this is no exception.

38. When half the episode is old CG, you can tell that the studio is on a holiday break. But Mio should've still gotten her macaron dance in CG. Red team's ghost cheerleaders >>> White team's penguins. That plus having Mirai's Identity should've made them the clear victors over the lame tie we got. But hey, special Coco performance. Which was barely in the episode proper, but at least Aikatsu Tube gave a bonus performance with her.

39. Time for the real deal. Which group is the real Friends, and which are the fakers? So if each member of a Friends group is both friends and rivals, would that not apply to close Friends groups as well? Seems to be the theme of the episode at least. Fairly typical training and big semi-final showdown with the expected result. I thought Honey Cat had a better performance, but not enough to be upset that Pure Palette won.

40. The episode where they take the boring characters and finally give them some decent development. Of course no one, not even Reflect Moon themselves, actually believed they could take on the champs. Kaguya may be open about it, but Sakuya is in denial, believing her own fraud over logic. That and getting annoyed at Kaguya sucking up to her again and again. Nice to see her have some spunk. Meanwhile Karen gets to actually have some character. Turns out she's been highly suppressing herself from her super serious competitive destroy everyone side because Mirai has beaten into her that it's not a good thing. A bit late, and a shame we're not really going to see that, but it's something. Also firmly establishes that Mirai is the real lead of Love Me Tear. The big climax has been reached, yet there's many episodes left, so this might be interesting.

41. Karen more or less redeemed, as off-stage she can show her other side as an awkward rich girl. She shows off the ideal to reach for sort of idol over the kind that really connects to her friends. She does want to be the best and reach top idolhood, but she's scared both of what it may do to her and the effect it may have on those around her. Lucky for her that she's got Mirai to carry her. Plus Aine and Mio aren't slouches at this point. They can take some punishment. The ed kind of spoiled their moment long ago, but still a good song for them. Mirai shows she's still the keikaku master, having seen the Miracle Aura coming and already named it. Really don't see how Pure Palette can possibly match them, but they're certainly going to try.

42. It took Ichigo 2 seasons, a time skip, and a movie to surpass Mizuka. Yume needed two seasons to grow strong enough to take down Elza and Hime. And here, Pure Palette has beaten the top idols in well under a season. Honestly I saw this coming. Mio was already top tier, Aine grew fast, and Love Me Tear never felt quite as unstoppable as the other top idols. Not completely satisfied on how much they relied on frienergy yet again, but I guess they did a decent spin on it, so whatever. What did impress me was the sudden extension leading to the Miracle Aura. That was cool. So, now what? The season still has plenty of episodes left, and it's not like they're going to be stopping then.

43. Time for a celebration tour. The Minato family truly is solely made up of winners. Pure Palette looks like they're being set up to be the next dynasty after Love Me Tear. Nice speech by Aine. Surprisingly good new dance that I wish was present when there were actual stakes. Still no idea what they're doing the rest of the season. Hopefully not just spinning their wheels.