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「UR 葉月恋」 (Yū Āru Hazuki Ren)
“UR Ren Hazuki”
First off – I apologize for this week’s coverage being a little bit late, I, unfortunately, fell ill with some type of stomach bug and had to be hospitalized for the majority of the weekend and late part of Monday, as my stomach was refusing to digest or absorb any nutrients in any type of way, you can imagine the rest. I won’t go into further detail as this is certainly not the place, I just thought you should know. I’m all better now and resting at home, so there’s nothing to worry about, except maybe I can’t eat pizza, so there’s that.
With that out of the way, some news! Episode 08 has been delayed due to COVID-19 affecting the production schedule. Let’s all just hope that the production team is well rested and takes their time getting through this hard time, all my love and support goes to them. Episode 08 will release on September 11 – and will be live on your usual streaming platforms one day later. (saucy sauce)
Without further ado, let’s talk about today’s episode. And honestly, I found it quite tone deaf, to me the story about Natsumi and why she wants to make that sweet-sweet Yen is still not complete, the storytelling team is clearly shying away from it, probably worrying that this obsession with money will make her character unlikable. To me, her obsession with money is what makes her character. I really do wish the team would go full in and explain in great detail her backstory, other than just – she tried to make every single dream happen, but was unable to do so because she gave up way too easily, or life was just against her in some type of way. It’s not profound or revealing and falls short of the reveals the other girls had, at least Mei and Shiki have some type of bond that keeps them tied together to the school idol club. Natsumi is just taking the easy way out because now she’s been handed a dream where she can make her own dream come true, and that is making lots of money.
But still, the question remains – why? Why does she want to make lots of money for anything other than her basic needs? There has to be another reason why she’s so obsessed, is it really all just to buy equipment for her youtube channel? There’s something that is hidden away, and it simply doesn’t want to come out. Maybe it’s just not appropriate for the show, or something like that. So they decided to skip it, keeping things as superficial as possible with her, while trying to inject personality through small gags and interactions with the rest of the group.
So today’s episode sees Ren struggling to compose the music for the song they will be using to apply themselves towards getting into the Love Live, the rules for this year have been revealed; They must submit an application remotely, and then from that ruling they will hear back if they get to participate in what you could call the semi-finals on stage in Tokyo. Let’s just watch and see what happens.
Anyway, Ren suffers from burnout because guess what, she became addicted to games after playing Mario Party way back when Natsumi first started gathering footage of their daily lives. So now Ren’s absent father literally bought her every single console to have ever come out from the PS5 to the SNES, and then some. Even PSVR is in the mix. She plays a game Puyo-Puyo something-something, which I’m guessing is a JRPG, Monster Hunter-like game with co-op as the other girls were able to join in and defeat the boss she was stuck in. With just an inch of HP on her character, she is able to defeat the boss and they all celebrate their victory. This in turn liberates her from her mental prison and allows her to touch that piano once more and start composing their next song. The piano melody beautifully transitions into the ending song and the episode is done.
What can I say, as much as I enjoyed Ren being unable to concentrate on her studies and show a different side to her other than just the perfect daughter, the episode came off as a lazy way to move on from last week. It’s now about the nine members of Leilla and not about Natsumi so the writers struggled to find a reasonable excuse to incorporate the nine girls into a plot that revolved around all of them.
But this of course is only one lowly opinion of a random person on the internet, I would like to know if any of you feel the same way. Maybe it’s just me, being me, like always.
Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!
Full-length images: 36.
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