“Shioriko, Ai, and After School”
What They Say:
Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is on the verge of being disbanded! It’s up to the club’s 13 members to come together to stop this. Based on the spinoff to Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club comes a slice-of-life anime following 13 Nijigasaki girls’ cute lives filled with drama, suspense, and excitement!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With such a large cast of characters, it’s easy to get new pairings and configurations that can play with things pretty well. Here, it opens on Ai trying to get Shioriko to skip some of her student government duties and to go and have some fun since that’s what Ai wants to do – just not alone. So that has them going out for some karaoke and gossip that’s simple but fun. It’s good to see Shioriko letting her hair down a bit like this and some fun costume material as well. It plays out well for both characters with their personalities shored up a bit more and just some real amusement in seeing the usually serious Shioriko smiling and having fun. Even Ai realizes this and enjoys the experience both in karaoke and some of the shopping they get to do later – at least until Shioriko turns serious again.
In Summary:
With this episode being more subdued overall and much more focused because it’s dealing with just two characters, I found it a lot more enjoyable than the episodes so far and a bunch of what came out previously. It’s able to effectively give us some quality time with a pairing you don’t often see and to just let it breathe with small moments of humor but also some good bonding. And it goes for more standard animation design material at the end as it we get a bit of “growth” out of Ai after the time the two spent together. More of this, please!
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
