IDOLiSH7: Third BEAT! Episode 12

Not gonna lie, this episode was a tad strange. Though most of it is probably due to it essentially half of the episode was composed of just recaps/flashbacks. It honestly felt like they were just trying to pad out the extra time they had by inserting recap flashbacks and it did bother me a bit with many there were and each recap took a noticeable chunk of time. It also slowed down the pacing a bit and made me slightly impatient since I really wanted to get to the meat of the drama with Ryu since it left us on that cliffhanger last episode. Also was it just me or was some of the comedy inserted at weird times?

But before we dive into that part of the drama, let’s talk about Nagi’s drama first. Though I’m not even sure how to address the situation because spoilers lol. Though judging from the interaction, it’s obvious that Thorvaldur isn’t really Nagi’s proclaimed stalker but more along the lines of an attendant of some kind. At this point, it’s been heavily hinted that Nagi comes from some sort of royal lineage and it wouldn’t be unheard of if someone were keeping tabs on him. To which, the fact that this man cut the power and broke down the door in a matter of seconds was absolutely TERRIFYING. Not to mention he was able to slip past the updated security for the dorm with little difficulty. LITERALLY A HORROR MOVIE SET UP. Though I admit when Tamaki immediately thought Sogo was the one who broke open the door, I cracked up real hard.

Not gonna lie, but the fact that Nagi is doing everything in his power to keep quiet about his past is rather frustrating. Especially just coming off of Yamato’s arc where he learned to open up about himself to the others. Though I’m sure Nagi has his own set of reasons as to why he hasn’t said anything and continues to hide it. But it doesn’t make the sentiment any less frustrating. Though from the sounds of it, Nagi may end up “disappearing” some time soon for reasons we can only imagine. However, from what Tsumugi told the boys, she won’t stop looking for them until she finds them.

Also can we talk about how silly it was that they Nagi and Thorvaldur were supposed to be speaking another language… only to just speak Japanese with the other language’s subtitles at the bottom. Guess the language was too hard for the VA’s to emulate XD.

And now for the real meat of the episode. Poor Ryu has found himself in the middle of a scandal of sorts and things just seem to get worse and worse. Despite trying to do damage control by claiming that they weren’t even thinking of hiring her, Hanamaki apparently went ahead and started spreading rumors that she was indeed transfering from Tsukumo Productions to Yaotome Productions on her blog. Effectively cornering Yaotome Productions. While we can be sure that Hanamaki is most likely being coerced into playing a role in defaming Ryu, we haven’t gotten her actual thoughts on the situation yet. So I suppose we should hold judgement on her until we see her side of the story. Though it was rather convenient for the photographer to take a picture of the two of them while almost completely obscuring Nagi so the could pass the story of “there were no eyewitnesses so it must have been a secret date!” However, considering how everything is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was on purpose.

Both Re:vale and Idolish7 try and lend a helping hand to Ryu’s problem as the other parts of the Idol Trifecta should. Because Nagi was there as a witness, of course he would be the best person to testify against the accusations. However, Ryu doesn’t want anyone else to get involved with his mess and refuses help. Which completely offends Nagi to the point of refusing to go through with it anymore. Children please… I understand why Ryu is so adamant about not wanting to get those younger than him mixed up in all this, however, there is only so much he can do on his own. He’s being incredibly stubborn on not letting anyone else help but it comes from a place of concern. And I do think it’s his big brother attitude that’s kind of overriding all logic and reason at this point. He’s more used to taking care of others rather than letting others take care of him.  I also think that Ryu heavily underestimates how much people like him as he just can’t seem to fathom why they would all go so far for him. Because he’s shown care for others and helped them whenever he could, of course the others would want to go out of their way to help him.

Yamato and Tenn break off to go try and talk things out with Hanamaki while Mitsuki, Nagi and Gaku try their luck at Tsukumo Productions. Everything definitely seems hopeful as at least one group should succeed, but I worry as to how all of this will go down. Because we already know that this isn’t going to end well for Trigger one way or or another. So I’m going to assume that both parties are going to fail at their negotiations, which could lead to a bigger fire that’s just waiting to swallow Trigger.

On an added note, I absolutely love the new dynamic that Yamato and Mitsuki seem to have now. It was absolutely hilarious how they both playfully get on each other’s nerves with Yamato expressing more exasperation than he did before at Mitsuki’s provocations. It’s great lol.

Oh boy, here we go… I’ve been avoiding talking about Gaku because incoming typical Shadow controversial opinion time, but I don’t particularly like or care about Gaku all that much. I find him to be rather boring as a character, especially considering he’s probably the least developed out of all the characters. Not to mention I’m like probably the 2% of people who don’t like the Gaku x Tsumugi ship. I generally try to be fair in my posts by not letting negative biases overrule my sense of reason… but with Gaku I just can’t be bothered with him so I’ve just kept my mouth shut about him. However, in this circumstance, I can’t really avoid talking about him since he had a prominent role in the episode.

It was essentially foreshadowed in the first episode that his friendship with Tsumugi was starting to strain due to people noticing them together. So of course it was going to get brought up again one way or another. Due to the fire Ryu and by extension, Yaotome Productions has been under due to the whole Hanamaki situation, Tsumugi was at risk of getting caught up in the mess as well if Gaku kept making noticeable interactions with her in public. And it was rather messed up for that hairdresser to offer to help hook him up with her in the way that he did. It all felt rather sleazy.

Too many people have been taking notice and started spreading rumors about the two of them making things incredibly uncomfortable for the two of them. Even making Gaku resort to referring to her as “Takanashi-san” rather than his typical “Tsumugi.” This all leads up to Gaku making the decision to put some distance between them in order to not cause any more trouble for her. Which I will admit, is respectable. Though he definitely was being way too careless with his feelings, especially with how idol culture is about relationships.

Out of everything, I do feel really bad for Tsumugi. She’s extremely work oriented and the realization that her actions caused trouble for others in the workspace must be absolutely devastating to her. Even extending to the idols she works with as she immediately brings up how she wouldn’t want to cause trouble for Riku if someone found them in the room alone together. And my heart did go out to her when she even wished she was born a man instead so people wouldn’t think twice about her being friendly with others in the industry. Poor girl…

Things are most likely going to just keep snowballing from here on out which leaves me dreading what is going to happen next. I don’t want to see Trigger fall and Ryo reap the rewards from his plans, but it’s going to happen whether I like it or not. In any case, next week will be the last episode of the first part and I’m going to miss this series like crazy until the second part comes out.