Ayumu would seem the exception, as the redheaded figurehead of NijiGaku, but even she's got Yu, Setsuna, Shioriko, and Lanzhu.

Though if you ignore Yu's position as Harem MC, the real harem mistress of NijiGaku is Kanata; it's canon that everybody's slept with her.

(Just, y'know, literally. She uses other idols as hug pillows.)

You can ship pretty much anyone with pretty much everyone if you're brave enough.

18 months later, the event came and went, and I still haven't gotten my Chinese restaurant waitress Ayumu. Damn you, random number gods.

For a brief, vertiginous moment, I got the artist Yohane confused with the character Yohane, and imagined Yoshiko drawing all this art —

— and then I imagined Riko finding out, and it became a very fruitful imagining indeed.

I'm in agreement with KcaT — the book spent pages on spelling out how there are layers and layers of pretence for each of them. How each is a bundle of keeping others at a careful distance.

I mean, Kanade's feelings about Frederica are pretty plain from her dazedness and — I wouldn't call it jealousy, but disappointment, at seeing Freddie with another girl. And Frederica just stated, flat out, that Kanade's the only person she's been this attracted to. The "until we get bored with each other" bit sounds cold, if you're used to passionate confessions and all-consuming love, but —

It's at the same time a self-aware joke at their studied casualness, a front to keep that casualness going, and — just a bit — Kanade's insecurity and self-doubt.

The rules have recently been relaxed; since the establishment of the Uniform Relationships Act of 2012 and its associated body of regulations, a person is allowed to not hang out with their significant other up to three days a week.

(Prime Minister Kishida has been making noises about that moving to four, so it's best to keep up with the news on this, and be sure to check prefecture and local ordinances as well.)

Let Azunyan be poly.

(Really, though, there's no real indication that Azusa's plans are sexy plans, and she's certainly not sneaking around; if Jun's objecting, it's very passively. My read on the situation, which may or may not be warranted, is that Azusa and Jun's relationship is kind of casual, and that Azusa is still pining after Yui in a in-denial way, and that Yui, as always, loves her kohai but hasn't given an indication that she wants to take the relationship farther than her frequent hugs.)

Conditioned response as friendship goals.

Some serious adorability here. (And that's a good look on Ruby!)

Because of course Dia has giant plushies of Eli's and Nozomi's heads.

Wow, the fabled Everyone X Everyone tag. To think that I'd live to see it.

(And I was just looking at the page 3 image, which was translated separately years ago, and wishing for this translation literally minutes ago. Wow.)

I love this book because I feel so much for Hanamaru here. Literature girl overthinking, and getting caught up in sudden physicality and the mood, and then collapsing into embarrassment once she realizes what's going on. Good stuff.

(Next one is bittersweet, huh? Yeah, The Day She Fell sure qualifies.)

EDIT: Just realized that Haniel is a genuine angel name; in Jewish angelology, Haniel is considered one of the seven archangels, rules the sephirah Netzach, and is associated with the planet Venus. Christian angelology seems to demote them to a Virtue. (The name is also spelled/transliterated as Hananel, Anael, Hanael or Aniel.)

So presumably in Yoshiko's setting, her childhood friend the archangel has fallen for her, and Fallen for her, to become her little demon. Nice.

last edited at Jan 20, 2023 1:39PM

YuuShioPomu! It's the only way!

Ayumu and Shioriko are awfully cute together, though Ayumu and Lanzhu can be pretty cute together too. (See the 2021-09-04 Daily Theatre.)

I'm not sure I'd ship Shioriko and Lanzhu — the best way I can describe how I see their dynamic is that Shioriko is kind of Lanzhu's Umi, but Lanzhu is almost Shioriko's Rin.

I'm mostly amused by Himeno's bits.

(Er, Himeno's segments. Of the manga. Himeno's actual bits aren't particularly amusing. You can't see much of them, anyway.)

Yes — 11 November is Pocky Day for the same reason as it is Bean Sprout Day; you line up four of each and it's 11-11. You're probably more likely to hear about Pocky Day online, and Bean Sprout Day at your local market, so.

last edited at Oct 18, 2021 7:38PM

It's Honoka's look when she spotted Riko that most unsettles me on this. It could easily be the setup for a story where Honoka meets Riko and Honk's all "Oh, she couldn't stop talking about you", but that expression is — meaner? Than that.

(Honk's kinda robbing the cradle there, as this doesn't look like a SIFAS-style all-the-stories-happening-at-once world; she looks considerably older than her high school self.)

A more selfish example would be defying her parents to be an idol and watch anime. She has made her decision and pursues it regardless of their desires. (SIFAS may have included a bit where she mentions having pleaded her case at least once, but I cannot recall with certainty, and the anime glosses over the issue, so unless that changes in the second season, we are free to assume either way.)

My understanding from the game is that she tried to get her family to relent on the anime/manga/novels front a long time ago but settled in to believing they'd never change.

Her bond episodes have, after she loses the Student Council election, some part of her cover blown with her parents, being forbidden again, and running away over it; they reconcile after she invites them to see her in concert, and they see both how important this is to her, and how good she is. Later episodes and cards have her able to be open about all her favorite things, including being happy to explain what she and Riko were shopping for on Otome Road. All this has played out by the end of the game's second season, as she mentions this reconciliation in the main story; it's part of the last episode in the second season.

But you're certainly right that Setsuna's instinct is to shoulder burdens herself and bull forward regardless of anything else. And the whole point of the Setsuna/Nana dual persona is to hide her true feelings away.

I think it's important here that nobody else can see these strings, and that Setsuna's been able to see them for long enough to know what they mean. She's being selfless in a selfish way — but she did ask Ayumu's opinion before hacking away at her thread, and I think that's important.

Hah!

This is a reference to the Daily Theatre episode for 24 September, 2021, by the way.

(Edit: changed the link from going to Twitter to going to the archive.)

last edited at Jan 4, 2022 6:35PM

Now, now -- she's also got a big crush on Umi.

Mia Taylor, from New York.

She's a third-year, but because she skipped grades, is actually only 14, the youngest idol in the cast. Daughter of the "famous Taylor musical family", which I guess we're supposed to take as that she's James Taylor's granddaughter? Has written hit songs for others, and her arc thus far is learning to write and perform for herself. Appeared in the game when Lanzhu showed up, and was, like her, initially antagonistic; over the course of the game's second season storyline, she softened and really got attached to Rina. She and Lanzhu have recently joined the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club.

(She was in the most recent game event, being fussed over by Hanamaru, and they really had a great doting-big-sister/tsundere-little-sister thing going.)

Hrm... in Yu's speedrun of the NijiGaku anime, she had six idols in her party, including the required Student Council President, by the end of episode 3. Is leveraging a previously dissolved party considered a hack? Or the boost she got from guest PC Karin until she officially joined the party, hitting the then-current nine idol cap, in episode 5? Comparing across games probably isn't fair, though.

(Very cute bit, this story.)

Hrm. From Nanoha's final dialogue it seems less like a libido suppressant and more like the Ace drug. Interesting. We probably shouldn't have militaries drugging people to adjust their sexualities, but...

It's very nice -- but I'm getting a really unsettling vibe from Ruby. From page 14, her "things [I] wanted to say but never did" bit. "[W]ishing I had said something back then."

Now, that could just be canon stuff about her sister and the breakup of the first incarnation of Aqours -- but it almost feels like, more recently, she had a crush on Yoshiko and missed her chance. Maybe that's reading too much in. I guess it depends on how far back "back then" was.

I just now recognized that what Honoka's reading that triggers all this is "Non-tan", with Nozomi on the front cover and Nico on the back. Heh.