Drama continues as Tae makes a surprising declaration to Poppin’Party. She wants to practice even more, and after listening to the demo from Layer’s band, Tae announces to Popipa that she’s going to help them out as a temporary guitarist. Even though to me it sounds like she might even leave the band. But knowing about RAS, that’s most likely not gonna happen. With Chu chu taking her in, she announces them as RAISE A SUILEN and marks the day of their debut concert, which ends up being the same day as the culture festiva, which Popipa has been busy handling.
I really didn’t think Tae would become such a prominent character in this season, but I’m not complaining. However, I do think she’s overworking herself but I’d really like to learn why she’s doing this. Yes, I understand she wants to get better but I’d really like some deeper insight into Tae’s character in why she’s so desperate to get better. Where’s this sudden desperation coming from? Sure, it could just be that she just wants to improve because she’s just not satisfied with herself, but that’s a little boring. It’s never that simple, there always has to be something a little deeper than that and we haven’t quite gotten that answer yet. And while she’s gotten “more” practice with RAS, she’s been spending a lot less time with Popipa both when it comes to culture festival prep and band practice. With Tae out of the picture, the girls have to come together in her place. One huge thing is Kasumi assuming responsibility of songwriting and the riff in their new song, which Tae is usually in charge of. Which the songwriting part confused me? It was funny learning how the other bands make their lyrics, with the 4-komas showing up, but I thought Kasumi always wrote the lyrics for Popipa’s songs? So that didn’t make much sense to me since the anime is really sticking to references from the game, so Kasumi shouldn’t have had trouble writing the song. But it was hilarious when she tried channeling her inner Tae and Yukina when it came to the songwriting.
Either way, I have to give it to Kasumi this episode. I’m really not into the airheaded genki character type in these types of music shows, but I’ve always liked Kasumi and I don’t know why. She’s not a bad character at all, it’s just with her character type I’m just not entertained by the excited character acting before thinking. But I don’t know what it is with Kasumi that I like so much. Maybe it’s her dedication? Her passion? Her cat ears? This episode she decided to take on Tae’s usual role and put it on herself, immediately accepting Tae being a temporary guitarist and supporting her the whole time, while also juggling her new role with planning for their show and helping with the culture festival prep. Kasumi still acts before she thinks, but I feel like she’s been pretty mature in this anime season. Though I do think she’s taking on too many things at once and I think it would do her well to discuss this stuff with Arisa, Rimi and Saya.
We got some fun and cute stuff with our adorable part timer band. The open rehearsal was fun, the song is adorable, and all these girls are good girls. Rinko is slowly building up her confidence and Ako is right by her side. Rokka still can’t find band members unfortunately. She asks Lisa why Roselia came together, and she talks about Yukina’s dream of performing in The Future World Fest. At first it started off as Yukina’s dream but it became all of their dream too, but each girl also joined for personal reasons that’s talked about deeply in the game that the anime couldn’t include. Again Lisa mentions wanting to have performed with Roselia in the culture festival but Yukina not wanting to, but the preview shows different.
What do I think will happen next episode? RAS’ debut is the same day as the culture festival and I predict Tae will try to make it to both concerts, since she’s the type of person to help people in need. But I predict that she won’t even make it to Popipa’s performance. Showing Rokka failing to create a band again, and the fact that she’s a huge Poppin’Party fan, I predict Rokka is probably going to take Tae’s place in the culture festival. It’s probably going to crush Tae, but that’ll be the deciding factor for her: which band is more important to her?
I knew this already, but suilen refers to a bamboo curtain. So, raise the curtain! Suilen isn’t a commonly used word so I’m sure lots of people were confused. I know I was for a long time.
by “songwriting” i think they mean the actual music part, not the lyrics.
also, about Tae wanting to get better/improve at playing…have you read popipa band story 2? it’s explained there.
Yeah I know Kasumi was working on the music but she was extra interested when the Part Timers were talking about writing lyrics for their song and even copied Yukina’s method, which I thought was strange (but hilarious).
And no, I haven’t read the band story 2 yet. I was just going to wait for the official translation when the event would come to the WW server (this summer). Thanks for telling me!