This week in Cinderella Girls, we meet the Energy Drink, the trademark-infringement-free way to restore your idols pep anytime, anywhere.

This is, of course, a concept lifted from the original mobile game – it’s one of the many items which can be used on your idols to provide a beneficial effect. That said, whilst I call it “legitimising micro-transactions”, I’m mostly joking, because it’s one of those things that is a little difficult to to properly place a significance on without actually being a player of the game. It’s probably for another post, but the bath scene in last weeks KanColle rather puts that into focus, as I’m sure that came across completely differently to those in the thick of the war against the Abyssal Fleet than it did to those who aren’t (by which I mean, buckets are common as muck without paying for them). Mostly, though, it’s just a small, if a little weird, acknowledgement of actual game mechanics in the show, something that the previous iDOLM@STER show never really got into.
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This is an obligation post, to a degree. I figure that people would think it would be weird for a new iM@S cartoon (or just a new late night otaku idol anime) to air without me passing some kind of comment on it, but, as I’ve previously mentioned, I don’t really DereM@S. This isn’t really my territory, and I can’t really tell anyone anything that they couldn’t pick up just as quickly by skimming the fan wikis instead. I mean, whilst I’m the kind of guy who knows about most of the surreal Uedo Suzuho cards purely by cultural osmosis, I’m really not equipped to pick up the apparent use of Nation Blue, instrumental or otherwise, in the soundtrack.
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