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Nice to see those 2 were able to work things out.

I just hope our main character remembered to get her Euph at some point.

meiam wrote:

And I never said Mizore had a problem with Nozomi reason to quit, I was just saying she took something fairly small extremely seriously (again, shoujo).

Have you ever been a teenager? Things that would be small to other people can be huge. Have you had social problems like Mizore? Because I have and I can totally understand where she is coming from, and how it would be a build up of extra anxiety that would make her sick every time she was confronted with it. To a "normal person" it might look so molehill that it should be easy to get over, but for someone with real social issues who was able to connect with a persona and then become estranged from them, it is a mountain.

Different things mean different to different people. That is a basic premise of empathy, and was somewhat a topic in this arc.

I'm glad we're done with this nonsense and that we've still managed to have good little characters moments sprinkled throughout. Here's to expecting the next arc is as good as I know this series can be.

Mizore's feelings are realistic to me. I've been there before, even. Has everyone not been there? Having someone you feel like is a great friend start leaving you out of things/not telling you what's going on?

I remember as a teenager I took those kinds of things very hard.

proper1420 wrote:

NeverConvex wrote:

I shared in others' skepticism of Eupho's central melodrama, but I think they handled it pretty well this episode.

In general, I agree. I have no difficulty enjoying this show. On the other hand, they added what I find to be yet other contrivance (regarding Mizore's playing) in S2E4. This stuff is an irritating flaw in an otherwise excellent show and something I didn't notice in season 1.

meiam wrote:

You know, I would struggle to place season one in any specific category but season 2 really just feel like an ultra basic shojo just with a really pretty coat of paint.

I'm generally inclined to disagree, although your comment did lead me to the thought that Mizore is similar to Sawako in Kimi ni Todoke: timid and prone to misinterpreting things.

Then I googled up the "Write a Shoujo" article on tvtropes. It lists the following necessary tropes for a shojo:

Teenaged girl MC: check
Drama: check
Love: most people think so
Bishounen: Shuichi

So yeah, basic shojo.

Like I said before, shoujo, shonen, and even josei or seinen, none are genres, they are just demographies typically asociated with certain genres. Shoujo is supposed to be relatable for middle and high school girls, Euphonium is (though, KyoAni has a thing with the exploration of teenage years) likely relatable, so Euphonium, if it was a manga, could be in a shoujo magazine, but that's not the point.

What you guys are trying to call "shojo" is just dramatic writing that can be present in any other story, not even particular to just anime. If you got to this part and never realized that this anime was clearly aimed for teenage Japanese girls or that it's obviously dramatic, then I don't know what fooled you.

I agree that from a tenager's POV this kind of friendship drama can be "serious business" and Mizore's behaviour is completey understandable, considering her personality. I'm having a harder time getting why Nozomi (apparently) never confronted her about it. Judging from what we've seen from her so far, she's not exactly the type that shies away from conflict. Was this really the first time she approached Mizore after she quit? What kind of friednship is that supposed to be?!

And then there's Asuka. What's her deal? I know she's supposed to be the "mysterious beauty character" in this story, but she's increasingly coming off as a giant bitch. She knew what the problem was and could have simply resolved it by having both parties sit down and talk it out. Or does she just really enjoy messing with people? Confused

Valhern wrote:

I don't know what fooled you.

I know something that fooled you:

proper1420 wrote:

Bishounen: Shuichi

Merida wrote:

I agree that from a tenager's POV this kind of friendship drama can be "serious business" and Mizore's behaviour is completey understandable, considering her personality. I'm having a harder time getting why Nozomi (apparently) never confronted her about it. Judging from what we've seen from her so far, she's not exactly the type that shies away from conflict. Was this really the first time she approached Mizore after she quit? What kind of friednship is that supposed to be?!

And then there's Asuka. What's her deal? I know she's supposed to be the "mysterious beauty character" in this story, but she's increasingly coming off as a giant bitch. She knew what the problem was and could have simply resolved it by having both parties sit down and talk it out. Or does she just really enjoy messing with people? Confused

I rewatched episode 2 to understand that, and Nozomi already said that she never talked to Mizore to not drag her down because she (Mizore) was never bullied by the 3rd years and that she was already a competition level player and she shows to be sorry for never accomplishing the promise, something that bothered me. So yes, this is the first time because she thought it'd be better to not bother Mizore with her problems. Though, this wasn't a full-fledged relationship like others seen here, but Nozomi took for granted that Mizore would catch what she was doing, and Mizore took a completely different turn to it, beating herself up about it.

And about Asuka...that's literally my favorite part about her lol, her moral compass is so freaking weird for a series like this, it's almost backwards to everyone else's.

proper1420 wrote:

Valhern wrote:

I don't know what fooled you.

I know something that fooled you:

proper1420 wrote:

Bishounen: Shuichi

Ah, yes, the bishounen. The one who had only one line of dialogue this season, which was basically getting shutdown by Reina. And whose connection with Kumiko has been mostly an awkward friendship (that could become anything by this point), never taking any part as her biggest worries in her life. But hey, it's not as if I dislike the guy, I liked his determination on getting better as a musician, taking inspiration from Kumiko.

You’re missing my point by only focusing on the breaking friendship aspect, a broken friendship is not a sign of fickleness, the fickle aspects come from the back and forth.

So Nozomi quit and doesn't tell Mizore, in this time (so maybe 6+ months) she doesn't email her, she doesn't text her, she doesn't call her, she doesn't message her on social media, she doesn't pass by her classes and she either (miraculously) never randomly bump into her (hard to believe since they both go to the same school) or (far more likely) if the two saw each other’s Nozomi never initiated contact.

So okay, let's say Mizore has serious issues (seriously, if your friends act like her, they really should get professional help, it's not an healthy way to live), she does kinda have a point Nozomi really doesn't seems to care about Mizore, it's not even like she decided to cut all link with the club since she still regularly talk to the other eupho girl. But then all it take to defuse the situation (something that's been brewing for over 6 months! and cause Mizore to feel like puking just from hearing a song and run away crying just from the sight of someone) is a "well I didn't want to bother you"? How does that explain and make up for the 6 months radio silence?

And that’s what I’m talking about, thinks go off the rail in drama just to be fixed by very simple things. So either they are really big deal, in which case resolving a conflict should take time, or they’re easily fixed, in which case why make the big deal out of it? Shoujo.

Wait what. Hibike takes place in the age of smart phones and social media? I never picked up on that.

meiam wrote:

You’re missing my point by only focusing on the breaking friendship aspect, a broken friendship is not a sign of fickleness, the fickle aspects come from the back and forth.

So Nozomi quit and doesn't tell Mizore, in this time (so maybe 6+ months) she doesn't email her, she doesn't text her, she doesn't call her, she doesn't message her on social media, she doesn't pass by her classes and she either (miraculously) never randomly bump into her (hard to believe since they both go to the same school) or (far more likely) if the two saw each other’s Nozomi never initiated contact.

So okay, let's say Mizore has serious issues (seriously, if your friends act like her, they really should get professional help, it's not an healthy way to live), she does kinda have a point Nozomi really doesn't seems to care about Mizore, it's not even like she decided to cut all link with the club since she still regularly talk to the other eupho girl. But then all it take to defuse the situation (something that's been brewing for over 6 months! and cause Mizore to feel like puking just from hearing a song and run away crying just from the sight of someone) is a "well I didn't want to bother you"? How does that explain and make up for the 6 months radio silence?

And that’s what I’m talking about, thinks go off the rail in drama just to be fixed by very simple things. So either they are really big deal, in which case resolving a conflict should take time, or they’re easily fixed, in which case why make the big deal out of it? Shoujo.

Mizore says that she purposefully avoided her, and considering Kitauji is quite the big school, I don't see it not happening.

The "correction" of the misunderstanding of the problem is simple because it was simple, Nozomi and Mizore's feelings are the complicated part. Actually, most conflicts between people are far more simpler in regular terms, a lot of them can be summed up to "Why don't you just X", the hardest part of those conflicts are the feelings of those people and how the conflict makes them feel. Sometimes, it's not the conflict itself, it's those person's own problems but the conflict makes it more poignant and the conflicts can either help resolve that inner conflict or make it all the harder.

In fact, it's not as if everything is fixed now, it's just that the conflict was solved, however both Nozomi and Mizore's personalities clearly have their problems, just like Kumiko and everyone else after any conflict (Yuko or Natsuki) do.

A fickle or extremely dramatic outcome would have been Mizore quitting the band or lashing out at Nozomi, in my opinion the two parts both finding a way to resolve their own problems.

Last edited by vonPeterhof on Fri Oct 28, 2016 6:11 am; edited 2 times in total

Couldn't have hoped for a better adaptation to the resolution of this conflict. Yuuko lashing out at Mizore, and then literally dragging her into the light may have been a bit on the nose as far as symbolism goes, but I'll be damned if it wasn't cathartic (but then, I'm generally a little dense when it comes to symbolism, so I tend to assume that any visual metaphors I understand right away must be on the nose Smile

). And yes, I could totally relate to Mizore with her "asymmetric best friendship" and her feelings of abandonment.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, in the novel Kumiko and Mizore are the only band members who speak in standard Japanese and not the Kyoto dialect. While the former is revealed to be originally from Tokyo early on, no clear explanation was given in Mizore's case: when Kumiko asks her about it she just shrugs and then says something about having a cousin in Saitama. I remember reading about linguistic research that shows that the strongest influence on one's way of speaking when growing up are one's peers, especially those who are slightly older. It wasn't until watching the last episode that I put the two and two together - apparently as a child Mizore didn't have enough contact with her peers to develop a local accent, instead defaulting to the standard language of public announcements, newscasters and teachers in Japanese class.

Valhern wrote:

Only two shortcomings: the foreshadowing for these two wasn't possible to be made as clear in the first season and I'm not sure if there was enough space to cram them in. Secondly, our other two main characters have been so out of the spotlight that I don't even recall seeing them this episode, it's not like they're bestest friends with Kumiko but in this season I feel a great lack of agency. I don't mean commenting on the conflict or play any relevant part, but setting up something for their future development, if we're going to have any.

They did foreshadow Mizore and Nozomi to a slightly greater extent than the novel did by having them visually present, but they probably chose not to make it clearer because it wasn't obvious at the time that the show would be getting a sequel. The movie actually adds a couple extra scenes featuring Mizore prominently.

As for Hazuki and Midori becoming less prominent, I guess that's was inevitable with the second season adapting two books and sticking closer to the source material. The first season had more original scenes and whole original episodes, and the producers thought that four cute female leads would make the show more marketable, so they got extra emphasis back then. Now that the show isn't leaving itself much room for filler the two have defaulted to being side characters.

Merida wrote:

And then there's Asuka. What's her deal? I know she's supposed to be the "mysterious beauty character" in this story, but she's increasingly coming off as a giant bitch. She knew what the problem was and could have simply resolved it by having both parties sit down and talk it out. Or does she just really enjoy messing with people? Confused

I don't think the show gave us enough reasons to believe that she knew exactly what the problem was between Mizore and Nozomi until after the conflict was resolved. But even if she did, having them confront each other this close to the competition would have still been quite a gamble from her perspective, since they could well have ended up on even worse terms over one careless word, plus she couldn't have predicted the role Yuuko would play in all that (in the novel Asuka actually tells Kumiko that Yuuko "was the MVP this time" and that "without her around all this wouldn't have wrapped up this well").

Megiddo wrote:

Wait what. Hibike takes place in the age of smart phones and social media? I never picked up on that.

Not sure if this is sarcasm or not, but the characters are clearly shown using smart phones in many scenes, and a scene in the first season's episode 8 during Reina's soliloquy showed characters using a messaging app. Having said that, I can totally see Mizore as the type of character who isn't on any social networks and maybe even doesn't own a smart phone (apparently it's not quite as common in real life Japan as not owning a computer, but characters who don't own any sort of mobile phone show up in anime all the time) [Edit: never mind, totally forgot about the rhythm game scene; the point about social networks stays though].

Megiddo wrote:

Wait what. Hibike takes place in the age of smart phones and social media? I never picked up on that.

Not sure if sarcasm, but just in case, Mizore was playing a rythmn game on her smartphone last episode (or 2 episode ago?).

And so, even if Mizore was avoiding Nozomi, she would still get phone call and such, so either she was ignoring all of those, in which case Nozomi would have been clued in or Mizore just never called, in which case there's no misunderstanding, Nozomi really doesn't care much for Mizore, tier 3 friend kinds of stuff.

And really no matter how hard you avoid someone, its not really possible, again Nozomi could have just passed her class during recess, was Mizore running away as soon as recess happens to hide just in case Nozomi would pass by? Was she constantly looking around corner with mirror just to make sure Nozomi wasn't just randomly passing by?

So yeah, no misunderstanding, Mizore though Nozomi and her were super bestest of friend; they weren't and she realized once Nozomi left (which apparently emotionally damaged her). But hey now Nozomi pass by after 6 month, give some kind of explanation why she didn't tell her she was quitting 6 months ago (that barely make senses on its own) and in no way explain the lack of contact between them and now Mizore trauma is fixed? To bring back my shoujo comparison, imagine a girl crush just left and didn't get in contact with her for 6 months, just to randomly stroll back into her life and the girl would go "O.M.G. he totally do love me!", pretty shoujo.

Rhythm games have been around for a long long time, at least since the early dawn of the original Playstation with Parappa the rapper. I honestly thought Mizore was just playing a handheld game system and that Hibike took place in somewhere around the early to mid 2000s, and I only say that because Taki has a notebook that he uses in his office otherwise I would have placed it in the mid to late 1990s.

If smartphones have been used then I certainly never picked up on it. Characters would be waiting (such as Kumiko waiting for Reina with the first episode of this season) without having their phones out to check if a text had been sent. There were massive crowd shots during that festival atnight and I don't recall seeing the glow of cellphones from the people in those shots which should have been pretty easy to pick up even at a glance.

I don't think Asuka refused to have them talk it out for the sake of being cruel. It's just that she didn't trust that Mizore and what's-her-face talking it out would actually resolve in a drama-less fashion and wouldn't endanger their competition performance. Maybe she didn't even trust that them talking it out would lead to reconciliation rather than an even uglier situation than before; Asuka seems like the type that would rather stubbornly hold onto an imperfect present than risk it shattering to reach for something better.

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