#I've been watching her stories in my watchthrough and she's just so good and so funny.

[tharizdun-03]

Love Live Nijigasaki School Idol Club Season 1 Watchthrough: Episode 1

#1: "The First Thrill"

We got our two main girls, Ayumu and Yuu. They are already going on dates.

I quite like Yuu's mixed hair colors, I don't think we've ever had that before in Love Live.

Nijigasaki's cast seems a bit subdued than the previous series'. Sunshine had a girl fall from a tree, land on her feet, and declare herself a dark angel. The most quirky we get here is maybe the sleepy girl, which quite frankly, is just a mood.

We'll see how interesting that goes, but we already have some pairings, and interesting archetypes for the series (kuudere, gyaru, school nerd, Kasumi looks like a brat in the veer of Nico), so there's plenty to play around with.

It remains to be seen if Yuu herself wants to be an idol, cause I'm also getting a bit of a Killua vibe from her, supporting her friend until she finds her own goal. Which could very well turn out to also be becoming an idol in the next episode so lol.

also their school is fucking insane and it looks like a central train station inside or something

I only have two performances to go off here (both a bit more genre bending than previous entries) but it'd be nice if we kept up the more individual performances than just big group songs all the time. But, we'll see.

Speaking of the performances, they look great. Seriously, like fully fledged music videos, and the CG is finally so good that I sometimes forgot I wasn't watching 2D animation sometimes. Setsuna's is a big rock performance, while Ayumu's was a love confession.

Like, the lyrics are really gay. "I've been hiding it for some time now, deep within my heart Pretending that I hadn't noticed these budding emotions Lacking in self-confidence, I was hanging my head At that time, you pushed me on The warmth of our connected hands"

I wouldn't say the premiere blew me away or anything, but it seems like a solid Love Live entry. And then it's sure to be a lovely story about femininity (you're not gonna see anything super radical but love live is quite inclusive) with a very queer coded cast.

Again, but because they're school idols, Love Live avoids all the cruelty, exploitation, and horrific abuse that actual idols have to go through. It's really just about a school club of girls who like to sing and dance, and just happen to be labeled as idols.

We'll see how Nijigasaki's cast fares (i'm not sure if I like the new overall visual style that much but it's well animated obv) but the narrative is taking a more unique approach compared to its predecessors, not following previous archetypes or storylines too much. A good sign.

i forgot to mention that the ed is really cute (yes, a nice stylistic change) and a bit more overt in its gay subtext, for those of you who need the rainbow to get it.

[a-student-out-of-time]

I've been catching up with the another series because of this blog and i really don't understand what Linuj wanted to go for with Ayame's character

In one side we hear that she killed Kizuna so thag Akane wouldn't become the culprit, it's a sacrifice to save someone she loved. But on the other hand not only did she made the cast go through an entire class trial but she even set up a trap to make herself seem less suspicious as the culprit, that's so contradictory to her sacrifice narrative because it means she did want to escape

And I'm wondering is this intentional? Or is just another case of Linuj's unusual writing? I just don't understand how we're meant to view this character

//Yeah, Ayame's role in the story is...a little perplexing. I like do her character, but on a first watchthrough, it can be strange to see all this. Here's my understanding:

//Kizuna found out that Yuki might be the mastermind, and so she tried to recruit Akane to help kill him. She disagrees, they get into an argument because Kizuna wants to escape, and in the process of trying to kill Akane so she can have someone die as part of her murder plan, a struggle ensues and Akane accidentally stabs Kizuna and runs off.

//In the trial, Ayame admitted that her reasoning was that Kizuna was already on the verge of death, so there was no time to get her help and, if she died, Akane would've become the Blackened. She had no time to save her, even if she wanted to.

//Ayame did all this in an attempt to save Akane, and Kizuna, whatever her motivation, corrects her dying message from "The Maid" to "Not the Maid." Whether it was a change of heart or just wanting everyone to know who actually killed her so they wouldn't escape, it's hard to say.

//Of course, even Rei points out that, if all of that were true, why go through a trial at all? Why not just confess from the start?

//I think we put too much stock in the idea that people with good intentions are also just okay with dying. The survival instinct is pretty strong, so in most cases, I doubt that they would just come forward and say it was them until they have no choice. Even if they do, it's not like everyone is just going to believe them immediately.

//Even Ayame admits that she had some intention of maybe escaping, as I think everyone here does, and was maybe using Akane as the pretext. That doesn't negate that it was done to save the girl she loved from dying, just that there's nuance to it.

//Ayame setting up and deliberately set off a trap to injure herself is also something she explains. The obvious answer there is to throw suspicion off of herself, but as she says after the trial, it was essentially penance for if she did escape. She lives, but she'll never run properly again thanks to her severed tendon.

//Of course, by the time the trial's finale set in, Ayame knew the full story with Akane and thus gave up on the idea of escaping. That weird bit about her pretending to be evil at the end was probably so nobody would feel bad about watching her get

//I think that, as a character, Ayame is meant to serve as the first major influence on Akane's growth as a person. In a very harsh way, of course, because this was the first fangan and thus it parallels a lot of what happens with Taka and Mondo ^^;

//I know I complain a lot about characters getting fridged, but that's about characters who die without any major role in their story and only to advance the development of another, and usually very briefly and shallowly. That's not what happened here, it was Kizuna facing the consequences of her actions and Ayame's decision to try and save someone she cared about a lot.

//As we'll see from here on out, Akane never forgets Ayame through all of this.

[doctorwho2022]

Doctor Who episodes that aired on the 2nd of September…

In 1967, The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 1

In 1978, The Ribos Operation Part One