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Last episode, there was this whole story about a turtle, balloons, and a dream. Not all that abnormal.

First Impressions

Judging by the first few seconds, this episode will also focus on some new girls. Probably four if patterns are a thing. Chunibyou girl will be one of them and also the maid one who’s apparently into video games. The other member is generic glasses girl. They feel left out since they’re the only three not assigned to a group. They’re the leftovers—their words, not mine.

I was pretty sure there were 16 girls, so I’m clearly forgetting what happened to the other one, or I’m insane, but for now, they’re a group of three. They have to fix their profiles, which is probably why they can’t get work. Most people won’t hire a chunni who likes to corrupt people and drink demon blood, but I do feel like they would hire someone that likes to sleep only. That seems like a good gimmicky VA. So is Chunni, to be fair.

Proving that I’m actually just crazy, AiRBLUE gets a 16th girl in the form of Rinne, some airhead who enjoys taking pictures and playing with the neighborhood kids, two hobbies that would be exponentially creepier coming from basically anyone that doesn’t have the mental age of an 8-year-old and is still a concerning combo.

Rinne suggests they all group up and watch the other groups. Learn by observation or something like that. Good idea, I suppose. First, they go to see the world-famous (well, not yet) radio show hosted by the probably also not world-famous AiRBLUE girls. We learn that glasses girl has a thing for BL. It’s a whole thing I’d rather not explain because it’s not that interesting, to be honest. She needed more character, I guess.

Next, they go see the Vogel girls but end up just taking turns playing what I can only describe as Gundam Smash Bros. I have very little information to base that on, but I feel it’s somewhat accurate. Finally, they almost barge into the recording session that our main main girls are doing, but Chunni stops them with a very inspiring speech and basically cements herself as the leader of this group.

This experience brought them all closer together, and we finally learn some more about Rinne when everyone runs into the neighborhood kids. We don’t actually learn anything new, but she plays with them for a while, and they all sing in an incredibly cute sequence that was so adorable and innocent that I kind of feel bad for the joke a few paragraphs ago, but I’m keeping it in to appease my dark sense of humor.

Basically, Rinne’s dream is to inspire kids to have dreams. A very important dream actually, that I do respect a lot. Dreams are important, and not enough people follow them. Regardless, they’re all like besties now, and they’re fine with being leftovers so long as it’s together. Truly inspiring.

My Thoughts

So, I went through quite a few emotions this episode, and that’s only partly because of my somewhat screwed sense of humor. Rinne went from annoying me to me actually liking her, but not really for her, if that makes sense. She’s nothing new. You could probably find a dozen characters just like her with the exact same motivations, but putting her in the group was really smart.

Each of the groups has their foundation. Their thing holding them together. The main four it’s Bloom Ball. The soon-to-be-singers, it’s Vogel and Yuuki keeping them all together. For radio show, it’s, well, that they’ve all decided to create and work on the radio show together, and for leftovers, it’s the fact that they are now leftovers.

Do I think they’ll have “their thing” at some point? Yes, unfortunately. I think it’s more interesting if they don’t. It would still work. These three fairly reserved people get Rinne thrown into the bunch who forces them all to change and think for the better. They’re not leftovers because they have nothing to do; they’re leftovers because they can do whatever they want. Rinne adds a lot to the group, and it almost makes me think there was some decent thought into who would be part of them.

When it comes to character development, none of these girls are strong yet besides Chunni, but even she just has the generic Chunni traits. These characters are all just tropes, even Rinne, with nothing interesting about them. Still, that can work, as I’ve said before.

All and all, the series is still fairly interesting. I do wonder if, in the end, we’ll get a project that all of the girls will work together on. You know, maybe main main girls do the voice work, Vogel sings, and radio show promotes it and leftovers…get the food, I don’t know. They’ll do something.

Thank you very much for reading

We’re all leftovers at the end of the day.