In which Sunrise blow through as many of their media partner obligations as possible in one episode?

Well, not really. It’s a slightly odd feeling episode of Love Live this week. I mean, the overwhelming character Love Live exudes is one of almost oppressive earnesty – aside from the Nico stuff the show plays almost purely for comedic effect, it doesn’t have a cynical bone in it’s figurative body. It’s a pretty strange contrast to something like AKB0048 which, despite being sponsored by a genuine idol conglomerate, has a tendency to feel like the production staff are fully acknowledging how dumb this whole idol thing is.

What’s kind of odd is how much of this particular episode ends up coming across as being product placement – even when upon further investigation a lot of it actually isn’t. It’s something that you wouldn’t bat an eyelid at were it not something which comes across as being so cynical in an otherwise so, well, uncynical show.

Not that almost all anime shows aren’t trying to sell at least something, obviously, and the frequent PVs already suggest this show had more of such an agenda than most, but those at least feel organically integrated into the proceedings.

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At this point in the proceedings, I’m increasingly convinced that the whole Love Live tournament we have looming on the horizon is merely a red herring designed to distract the audience from what is actually going on in this show. You see, Nozomi is clearly a master of The Long Con, and everything which is going on in the show is part of that. I’m pretty sure that Idol Groups are the new Circus Troupes, and Nozomi is, in fact, putting together a team of super-specialists who’ll tour the country performing extreme acts of thievery whilst disguised as semi-popular aspiring pop divas.

This is all, of course, part of the larger Nico Esper Theory, established due to the fact that the shows fifth episode makes literally no sense unless Nico is the holder of super-powers. It, of course, follows that if Nico has psychic powers, other characters may also have similar mutant powers, and even if they don’t, they may be possessing other skills (although I’ll refrain from going as far as suggesting the show is actually set in Academy City).
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For one episode only, I’m bringing back an old blog-post format that was way more effort than the show I used it for deserved, where I attempted to summarize an entire episode in but five crudely drawn images (because, frankly, the better scanning, post title-wise, nine was way, way more than that other show required). I kind of picked a bad episode for it, though, because whilst it felt like there was very little plot progression, a surprising number of things happened.

Anyway, on with the usual…
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Changing the goofy title, keeping the goofy format, it’s time for the weekly Love Live post!

No immediately glaring continuity errors this week! Huzzah, I’d say, if it didn’t rob me of the ability to make a witty post entirely out of easy targets.
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She forgot to smile!

Part of me thinks that I should really pick a new favourite character, given the recent Nico-favouritism being displayed in many of my frequent haunts. Then I remember that the reason behind her popularity is that she’s clearly the best character, thus rendering it an exercise in futility…
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