Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Season 2

Episode 10

With Lanzhu officially a member of the Nijigasaki High School Yu Harem Club, we've effectively wrapped up this season's dramatic conflict, in record time no less. What this means for the remaining few episodes of the season is anyone's guess, but this week it allows Nijigasaki to return to the most classic and cherished of School Idol traditions: goofy bullshit and dunking on Kasumin. Took them long enough – my Idol Schadenfreude reserves were dangerously low.

Really though, it feels like forever since we last saw the cast just goofing off together, and since the natural mating ritual of School Idols is wacky comedy bits, it's only natural that the club welcome Lanzhu, Shioriko, and Mia into the fold with a weekend of goofing off. That this is also a theater for Kasumi to show off her gremlin powers is gravy, and it's easily the most fun Nijigasaki has been since Yu and A*Zu*Na's amusement park date before the School Idol Festival started. There are some primo Idol Activities here, from Rina putting a lost child tracker on Karin to her programming a whole Pokémon GO ripoff starring cat versions of her and all her friends. To say nothing of the Haikyu!! level ownage these girls take while playing volleyball. If you're like me and primarily come to this franchise for goofs, you're eating well this episode. And if you're just here for shipping there's a plethora of singular moments to feed plenty of crackships, along with a ludicrously on-the-nose night time talk with Yu and Ayumu. The moon is beautiful, isn't it?

Plus, while Kasumi definitely gets hoisted by her own petard several times across this field trip, I like that the conclusion still affirms her as the club president. Sure, her Daffy Duck plans to prove her presidential supremacy didn't work, but she still arranged and delivered a great time for everyone, letting them bond with their new members and just have fun instead of focusing on all this idol drama. While I Love Me some idol gremlin dunkfests, if you push it too far it just turns any given series' resident Nico into a punching bag. So letting Kasumin get a win and reassuring her place in the club is a sweet and necessary counterbalance. I'd say the same for Lanzhu's awkward turtle quest to ask for a photo with her new friends, but considering how defanged she already was by the narrative it's mostly just a nice little moment to conclude this episode on. Much like Yu's new song for the 12-girl club, it's serviceable, but I still can't quite get over the disappointment of how Lanzhu's character has turned out after her stellar introduction.

And that's about it, really. There's a teaser at the very last second of some new impending story to presumably close out the season, but otherwise this episode is just some (much-appreciated) down time for our bakers dozen girls. It's sadly not as exceptional or high-octane as some of the best pure-comedy episodes of this franchise, but it's still solid character-driven jokes that make for a good palette cleanser after so much drama.

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Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.