Holy crap, I feel like a lot happened this episode. I felt like there were a lot of little things one after another, whether it related to the plot or with the characters. To sum it all up:
- Popipa want to write a new song, but also want to perform at the culture festival.
- Hina wants to combine Haneoka’s school festival with Hanasakigawa’s.
- Rinko is unsure of herself.
- Hina and Sayo’s relationship.
- the appearance of the blonde girl again
- Tae getting more serious and performing on the street
- culture festival prep; new temporary band formed
- Tae meeting up with Layer, Layer asking Tae to join her band
- CHU2 forming her band
Some are bigger than others but they all kind of matter because they all sort of connect, though some not with the main plot.
Hina being the new student council president of Haneoka, she decides to combine their festivals after watching Popipa and Afterglow perform at the market festival. The talk of the festival makes Popipa want to perform at the festival since it’ll be their first year anniversary as a band. Since Rinko is the president, she has to decide if Hina’s idea is okay. She has some trouble with this and talks to Ako over chat while playing online together. Rinko and Ako’s friendship is probably my favorite friendship in the game, they’re both so supportive of each other and Ako is always there to help Rinko when in need. They understand each other so well and their friendship is just so pure and I love it. In the end, Rinko decides yes and things get underway. Hina is very glad, and we can see how much she loves Sayo but we can see that their relationship is a little off. Hina decided to skip lunch just to see Sayo because that would be the easiest time to see her, and Sayo can be a little cold towards Hina at their house. But Hina obviously loves Sayo a lot because she was so curious where her class and desk were. Their relationship is touched on a lot more in the game and is an interesting dynamic to say the least. The game’s writing when it comes to them is very strong. During festival prep, Aya is sad that management won’t let Pasupare perform at school but Hina makes the idea of Aya forming her own little band just for the festival. Hina being producer, she gathers up girls and gets to form a band consisting of Aya, Lisa, Kanon, Tsugumi, and Moca. Which is a band formed in the game from a survey, the High School Part Timers. They only have one song but I love it, and it’s totally not because some of my favorite girls are in this group.
To the more serious stuff, Tae is suddenly showing some self doubt. I’ve always liked Tae, but when it comes to her (and frankly almost all the girls of Popipa) I can’t say I totally love her. She can be really silly and funny and make me laugh a lot, but she and the others don’t stand out as much compared to all the other girls. It’s why I usually find Popipa to be a little boring, they just feel very standard sometimes.
But Tae showing this seriousness was very surprising. She says that she lacks experience and wants to perform more, that performing in front of a live crowd is helpful. So as she, Kasumi, and Rimi walk home from school, Tae decides to sing on the street next to the station. Kasumi and Rimi join in, but eventually Tae makes this a common thing for her by herself. And I only found this out recently, but this is a nod to Tae’s seiyuu, Sae Otsuka. Before getting the job to be part of Popipa and Bang Dream, she would perform on the street right next to a train station! So I thought it was very cool that they would pay homage to that through the anime and through her character. At the end, the last girl of RAS appears and sings with Tae and wow their duet was beautiful. Both of their voices mesh together really well. It turns out that these two were childhood friends and Lay moved away. She always wanted Tae to join her band if she ever made one, but now that she does have one, that’ll cause some drama. Lay has only been here for a few minutes but I really like her already. Her design is cool, her voice is great, she just seems cool overall. I wonder how Tae is going to react to all this.
And at the very end of the episode, we see Chu2, Pareo, and Masking (Masuki) all together. CHU2, with her wine glass full of jerky (what the hell) is forming her band to take down Roselia. And judging by her USB and Layer’s USB, it looks like that Layer is already part of her band. Hmm, I wonder who else is missing? 😉
It was a pretty good episode but it was just a set up episode for things to come. I don’t think things are going to move on quickly, I think they’re going to focus on the school festival next episode judging by the preview, so I guess we can look forward to that. I wonder just when RAS is going to be complete.
