UniteUp! Episode 6

It’s finally time for our boys debut as PROTOSTAR! …except, they are not immune to the protagonists’ fate of their launch being interrupted by a freaking Typhoon!

The entire sMiLea Production team worked hard to problem solve and improvise to salvage their debut stage when their original plans had to be scrapped entirely. Lin understands best of how important first impressions are, so he wasn’t about to agree to any subpar arrangements regardless of the fact they could shift their plans to stream the debut online instead. Fortunately Gakuto had connections, and knew of a venue who had a concert cancelled for the same reasons, so they were able to get permission to use the space and stage for the streaming process. Talk about quick thinking! Hilariously Lin’s pride seemed to be a bit bruised by the fact his juniors were faster to problem solve than him haha! Well luckily for them, JAXX/JAXX quite literally just got back from their tour. Consider themselves lucky that they left as early as they did since the Typhoon would have certainly would have brought about delays, and they definitely wouldn’t have had the equipment then!

But they weren’t the only ones who came in clutch today, Ogawa was called in to help! Yay! As you may already know, in the beginning of the series I had expressed hope for Ogawa to not be forgotten and somehow still be involved with the production in some way, so it was really great to see him have the opportunity to help out with Akira’s debut. They needed someone who knew how to set up and run the streams, and Ogawa was the man for the job. He had even made his own little drones, which they used for the broadcast as well! And when all else failed, they were able stream it from four phones (it was pretty funny seeing them all lined up like that) and cellar data so that it’d be able to be broadcast on each of the boys’ and what I’m assuming the fourth to be the agency’s channel. Anyways, luckily for everyone involved though, the power had been restored in the middle of their announcement, so they were be able to go forward with the plans of singing their debut song: “You”. And I quite like the song, but what I like the most is actually their voices. They sound really good altogether. The only thing that bothered me was that it ended too soon, you know where it just stop abruptly and you’re looking around for “where’s the rest of it?!”, that kind of feeling! Well, time to find the full version HAHA!

Previously we’ve seen how Banri and Chihiro step up to the plate, and this week it was Akira step up to the plate to be the morale booster. Things were looking looking bleak after they lost power (it was only a matter of time after all), and their broadcast was at stake. He had some nifty suggestions for how they could salvage the announcement, such as placing a water bottles on top of their phones to emit more light as opposed to being limited to their phone’s flashlight to serve as stage lights for their stream’s broadcasts. I can only imagine the different colors from the bottle came from the light surfacing from whatever was being displayed on the phone’s screen. (Actually I’m so curious about it, I’m going to try that next time we lose power and see how well that actually works haha!) He was also the one to speak up on the group’s behalf of how important it was to them to be the ones to announce their debut to their fans, as oppose to it being found out in a magazine that was originally set to be released following their launch. And it makes sense, it was already nerve-wracking to have to suddenly go MIA due to the lack of updates on their channels, unable to leave any words of assurance to their fans in order to keep their launch a secret. Banri in particular was very unsettled about this, more so than his own anxiety of revealing his face without the mask.

Speaking of which I suppose one could say Banri certainly benefited having their launch be online instead of in person. In a way, you could say this might help ease him into having a live audience where a bunch of people are staring right back at you. But I do wonder whether this is something that will be glossed over for most part (as it seems to allude to), or whether we’ll actually see him be at risk of having nervous breakdown. Is it bad that I kind of want to see the process of him overcoming that? I don’t generally like it when they present something like this, only to mostly use it for gag reasons, and then toss it to the side when its not needed anymore. I feel like it’s a missed opportunity to present a more series conflict for a character to face to flesh them out a bit more.

And then there’s Chihiro, who has been the rock for the group bracing for increased tension between him and his father. We finally got a chance to get a glimpse into his life, which revealed at the very least, his mother appears to support his dreams of becoming an idol, but his father on the other-hand… seems to be either be completely against it, or didn’t know that Chihiro intended to debut as an idol. Either way, there’s certainly some tension brewing, but we’ll have to see whether anything actually comes out of it. Honestly I’d be surprised if it wasn’t a bit more serious–unless it’s a presumption and misunderstanding on Chihiro’s part due to the lack of communication with his father. But considering we haven’t actually see then two interact, it’s really hard to say exactly what kind of relationship the two have. Initially I thought his entire family was against it, so I was a tad surprised that it seems his mother is fine with it since she had told him that he should tell his father about it. By the look of things right now though, since his family runs the Isuzugawa School of Japanese Dance, I can only suspect that Chihiro is expected to follow his father’s footsteps and continuing running the place once he’s older. Well, we’ll have to see just how big of an issue this could blow up into if any at all.