Monday 19 May 2014

Love Live! School Idol Project Season 2 - Episode 7

The worries just keep on coming for μ's. This week - Honoka got fat!

Well, alright, strictly speaking she got fat in that way that only anime characters can, that being by looking exactly the same and perfectly healthy while everyone else frets about how overweight they are.  For Honoka, this means that it's time to diet before that all-important final preliminary round of the Love Live - a mission into which Hanayo is also co-opted thanks to her love of gulping down massive bowls of rice. Speaking of which, it probably isn't the smartest idea to set the girl's regular jogging route to pass a restaurant offering up free bowls of rice...


As if trying to handle all of this isn't enough, Honoka's neglect of her student council duties also comes to a head, leading to an inadvertent error which leaves the school's art club with a much greater budget than they were projected to receive.  Needless to say, this is a genie that it's difficult for Honoka and friends to put back into its bottle, and it takes long hours of work and a significantly revised club budget allocation to finally win them over - work that proves hard enough to also resolve Honoka's weight issues.

Although its whole depiction of Honoka's "weight issue" felt a little weird, there were still some fun moments born from it in this week's Love Live, not least Honoka and Hanayo's unspoken dialogue outside of the restaurant which made for some imaginative comedy.  Beyond that, both of the episode's main plot points felt a little half-baked - the resolution of the weight storyline was inevitable, but the student council issues felt like they could have been given more time and more full realised.  Admittedly weighty narratives aren't what this series is here for, but it did leave the episode's plot feeling a little "phoned in", which in turn reduced its comic impact.

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