Why is Mari 20 years old if the year just started? o.o

They're all in the same school year, which means they're all the same age when the school year starts: April. So in their 20th year, Mari turns 20 in June, then the New Year rolls around and Dia turns 20, and then Kanan turns 20 in February.

"See!?" Perfect.

Ah, yes, the second dual identity shenanigan: being in a love triangle with yourself.

Exactly. The game has a school idol infrastructure that's not wholly focused on the Love Live, so Shioriko's sister-induced school idol trauma played out differently; anime!Lanzhu came into a NijiGaku that didn't have her childhood friend as a school idol and student council president (and hit her friendlessness despair point earlier).

But back to Nijiyon — I love the concert report! Seeing the call and responses, the capsule reviews of everybody's solos; so great, and so nice to look back on these girls just starting out, from a time when their second anime season is close to wrapping up.

EDIT: Following up on 4.5 — boy, just when I figured Nijigasaki shipping had settled down, we sure launch some ShizuMia, don't we?

last edited at Jun 21, 2022 3:47PM

It's probably a much safer act for dragons; when your digestive tract is adapted for literal fire (and, more seriously, when you're incapable of being sick), someone else's gut flora in the wrong place isn't a big deal.

(On the other hand, Kobayashi could be in trouble, for exactly the same reason; the kind of microbes that could colonize a dragon might give a flimsier person some serious trouble.)

I keep hearing people say the characters are really different between these versions — Nijiyon, game, anime — where I just see mild changes in viewpoint and circumstances. Maybe I'm just more used to viewing characters from multi-media franchises as a gestalt.

Anyway, much love for Nijiyon.

I mean, they did act the story out on a stage. That's a thing that totally happened.

Bravo.

!

Shizuku's writing fanfic about her senpai, Rina's photoshopping them into dirty memes... What's Kasumi doing?

Mmm, that good "Rina gets special treatment from Mia" content.

It's kind of wild looking back at this discussion from 2022, where:

• The Sunshine! anime was indeed completed with its movie, aside from music videos, but Aqours is still touring, and has an upcoming collaboration MV with Hatsune Miku
• PDP, still considered something of a spin-off and now simply referred to as the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, launched as the centerpiece of the second Love Live game, School Idol Festival! All Stars in 2019, is now up to 12 members, and is currently airing its second anime season (with a bonus anime-only non-school-idol member taking the place of the game's protagonist)
• The "true" sequel series, Superstar!! , debuted in 2021 with five members in its unit, Liella, has had a successful first season of its anime, and will begin its second season in July with an additional four idols joining
• μ's came out of retirement briefly in 2020 for a new single and MV, "A Song for You! You? You!!"

It's been an interesting four years for the franchise. And of course, the All Stars game still features regular new content featuring the first 2.5 generations (Liella has not yet been added to the game.)

last edited at Jun 4, 2022 2:50AM

As I recall, her copy of the DenDenDen is one of Nico's most prized possessions.

Eh, sometimes you get nerdsniped — I remember once having to pause in reading an Idolmaster doujinshi because one of the girls had a geometric puzzle as homework and I had to refresh my knowledge of trigonometry.

But this has a lot of very sweet little stories in it. As has been mentioned, Mari gets some particularly great moments, but then I could say that about everybody.

I think there's also some influence from the pre-game groupings.

See, back when they were under the Perfect Dream Project codename, the original nine were put in groups of three for a set of 4koma running in different venues. The Famitsu app got Rina, Ai, and Ayumu, and is the memetastic one where Ayumu's a jerkass until Nozomi exorcises her, and then they all go to Mars; the SIF app itself got the three girls who'd previously been N idols in SIF, Shizuku, Kanata, and Emma. So Dengeki Online got the 4koma with Setsuna, Karin, and Kasumi, and for some reason a lot of early shipping featured those three in different combinations. (I think ShizuKana got some of that early boost well, and of course RinaAi went on to be reinforced by the game.)

I'd suspect Ayumu threw a bra on to go next door, rather than expecting to sleep in it.

(Though I do wonder what exactly their parents think of the situation/is going on. Maybe Yu's folks were out, or are very heavy sleepers? In SIFAS, the families are close enough that they vacation together. And now I'm getting ficbunnies for a Marmalade Boy -type plot where their parents admit they've been a foursome for years....)

To get back to the story, I like it a lot. I enjoy Kitaku's stories where the couplings get shuffled about, but the ones that are firmly AnaPomu are also top notch. It's also always kind of funny to see Yu's enthusiasm and tendency to throw herself into something headlong directed towards sex.

That thought process is clearly canon.

And of course ep5 did wind up, in the end, YuuPomu.

From the Goddess's lines, I would think that Lappi didn't have an existence as a human or anything like that prior to having her soul put in the plushie — that the Goddess created her for that purpose. (Otherwise she'd be released back into samsara to be reincarnated rather than just joining with the Goddess.)

I agree that there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn to disability or to asexuality. Not that it's necessarily a direct allegory, but that the analogy is there to be seen. It's really very sweet.

(And that's kinda why I think it'd be a mistake to have a sequel where Lappi turns into a human. Megu says she still has her magic — but she's already said what that magic is: it's love. It's enough, because it has to be enough.)

What's the word for what was done in creating Lappi, by the way? "Incarnated" implies flesh, as its root is "carne", Latin for meat. Was she inlanated? ("Lana" -> "Wool").

Really, if you want grist for the shipping mill out of official μ's material, head for the School Idol Diaries, either the light novels or the manga. (The manga is here, so that's probably easiest to get to.) You get the usual pairings — NicoMaki, NozoEli, UmiEli, KayoRin, the usual combinations of the second years — plus some relative novelties, like NozoRin, MakiUmi, HonoNozo, or EliNico.

Yessssss. This, this, completely this. This is why it's important that before the DiverDiva concert, Rina was the one to hug Ai as she worried.

Insert "you played yourself" meme here.

Aww. Stoic Shioriko has been fun, though.

When I was saying that Misato had served for the very young Ai the same role that Ai served for Rina, I don't think this is quite what I meant.

last edited at Apr 30, 2022 6:54AM

I so purely love the mini-autoemotionconverter Rina-chan Board pin in the extra chapter — winking onstage, yes, but especially giving Kasumi the side-eye when looking at the prize box.

^ Oh, yes! I'm definitely here for post-SIFAS-S2 out-and-proud Setsuna.