This week on Love Live… it’s taken me until Saturday to get around to writing about it. For those who don’t follow me on Twitter, I was in Chicago last weekend on a cartoon idol related agenda, and didn’t get so much as a chance to take a look at this weeks episode of Love Live until Tuesday – I actually watched it whilst sat in Kings Cross (the train station of Harry Potter fame, I suppose) whilst waiting for a train back home, but having just gotten off a post-convention eight hour flight, I wasn’t really feeling up to actually writing about it.

Of course, by the time Wednesday rolled around, and I started to get my head back into order, I elected to grab the new iM@S game, One for All, off PSN and promptly, well, sunk way too much time into it. Not to digress too much, but it’s pretty good – whilst I don’t have the best grasp of it overall yet, it’s structurally the biggest departure from the format of the original iM@S that they’ve done in a production game so far. I’m off at another event this weekend, alas (from a playing OfA point of view), but I’m looking forward to cracking into it in earnest next week.

Getting back to actual Love Live related news, we are starting to see some new merchandise being solicited on the back of the second series now. This cute Honoka figure went up for pre-order on AmiAmi yesterday morning, but there’s a bunch of other, smaller items as well. I’m tempted to pick up a couple of pin badges myself.

Anyway, on with the show…

1) Zenkai no Love Live!

After having been throughly disorientated due to the lack of recap last week, it’s nice to see that they have once again seen fit to remind us of the one relevant event from last weeks episode! How on Earth could I have possibly remembered that Yukiho had found a letter addressed to Honoka, for which she had not yet revealed the content, otherwise? I have absolutely no idea!

2) Much Ado about… Something?

This week on Love Live, Honoka discovers that, as all of us who have seen or read Scott Pilgrim know, bread makes you fat. Also living in a confectionary store as well, I’d imagine.

Honestly, though, it’s kind of weird to drop this in as a plot line right now. Whilst it’s not really a stretch to imagine that Honoka’s occasionally lax approach to life could result in her bulking up (even if it’s entirely invisible to the viewer – it’s not like adorably plump Ichigo from that one episode of Aikatsu), the timing really doesn’t make any kind of sense here. Her bandmates have been commenting on how it’s going to effect her performance at the Love Live and her dancing in general, but it’s hard not to notice that they’ve just gotten through with one of their biggest, most critically acclaimed performances, and one in which Honoka appeared to be the centre at that.

I’m just saying that, given that the results of the examination were probably from a few weeks ago, and that all the practice and exercise that was going on in the build up to the halloween performance, she was probably burning, what, 3000kcal a day? It’s pretty hard to imagine that what little weight she could have put on which could have been burnt off in the week or so seen here could actually have been retained during that period, and also that any lack-of-shape that she may have been in wouldn’t have been noticed during the practice sessions for their last performance.

(Also still nowhere near as plump-looking as Nozomi, but I guess that’s her charm point, and something that she couldn’t possibly allow Honoka to impinge on)

3) STUDENT COUNCIL PRESIDENT

It rather feels like an abuse of power to have a treadmill installed in the student council office!

Just saying!

4) Honoka is totally shafted

Dat Headtilt.

5) Afu!

Hey, Miki, Hanayo is edging in on your territory here.

Although, as with Honoka, we are pretty much just taking the casts word that Hanayo has actually gained weight here, as despite the fact that they picked such things up by merely eyeballing her, there is really no discernible difference in her appearance to the viewer.

Not that I actually tend to pay all that much attention to Hanayo, mind you…

6) This is where you can tell I have precious little to actually say this week…

I’m probably telling the cartoon idol hardcore how to suck eggs here, but these things the girls are holding to get signed are shikishi – hard boards usually with a rice-paper surface for writing on that are kind-of the go-to item for signings when you either don’t have anything else cool with you, or you are looking to get something that you can frame.

That being said, standard sized shikishi, at around 24cm by 27cm, are a really weird size when it comes to those of us outside of Japan actually getting them framed. Which is to say, I got one signed by Yoshitoshi ABe last weekend, and I’m looking for a suitable frame to cram the thing into. Any suggestions or recommendations are welcome!

7) As for this weeks major drama…

I’m honestly not sure how Kotori could even manage to make this mistake. It’s not like there’s a whole bunch of paper crowding the area, and given the only two dockets there are flagged Denied and Approved, I’m not even sure why she is even filing something that is pending review anywhere near the processed documents dockets. I guess they just figured that the weight-loss plot was a little too thin (accidental pun intentionally left in), or perhaps the weightloss story was retained to prop this up with something that was actually humorous. Or it’s just two different ways to simultaneously show that Honoka and Umi are really good friends, actually.

8) No KinpatsuRice, No Life

I don’t really have anything interesting to say about it, but I just wanted to acknowledge that the scene in front of the restaurant, done pretty much entirely through mime and monaural utterance, was pretty cute and well done. I’d have thought that Umi would have figured out that they weren’t exactly taking the most expedient of running routes based on their course times well before stalking them around, though. Either that or Honoka and Hanayo need to quit the school idol circuit and take up competitive eating.

9) “Parfaits”, huh…

Pfnar Pfnar innuendo and all that Pfnar Pfnar

I have to say, given they are in the midst of a dietary crisis, you’d have thought that maybe they’d be a bit more thoughtful about their food intake than to partake in seemingly daily parfait consumption – those things are big tubs of empty, sugary calories after all.

10) Just because you’ve not said you’ve started…

Doesn’t mean that they can’t hear you, Honoka! You really shouldn’t be discussing your school idol budgetary scheming in front of those also positioning for club budgets who you could potentially be screwing over, you know?

11) Mono no Aware

The ephemera of things and the transient nature of school life and the best days of the Japanese populations life yadda yadda yadda…

I don’t really have anything to say regarding the obvious slow build towards the graduation of the third years, and Nozomi’s presumable realisation that her friends no longer need her to be secretly (or not so secretly) scheming or pulling strings for things to work out, but I do, from a visual standpoint, like the visual tone of these few cuts of animation. The show always seems to plump up the size of the lips whenever they want to make things look melancholic, though!

(And, yeah, I totally realise how much of a stretch that post title was this week!)