Love Live!: Nijigasaki Episode 2: Kasumi’s Battle for Cuteness

After the excellent premiere we last left the show with Kasumi planning an attack on the seitokai. Let’s see how her plan went.

Before we get to Kasumi’s plan let’s start with Karin’s visit to Nana’s big, big office. She wanted to discuss School Idols with Setsuna but Nana said the club was already disbanded as Karin quickly eyed the student directory folder. That’s when Kasumi made her move.

As we can see she was taught mastery of disguises by Yohane who was taught by Nico. Operation Kitty Missile was effective, for one of the two girls as we would later find out.

It wasn’t Kasumi. Kasumi’s plan was to distract Nana, grab the NSIC tag and reclaim the clubroom. Alas it was already occupied by another club. She hoped Shizuku, “Shizuko” to Kasumi, would join her in the fight but she had Drama Club stuff to take care of. All hope was not lost for our Kawaii Warrior for later that day a certain couple crossed her path discussing school idols.

Thus Ayumu and Yu joined “Kasumin”s School Idol Club. Their reward for joining were some of her homemade sandwiches, earning praise from Yu. We’ll get back to that in a bit.

Ayumu joined as an idol but Yu was mainly there to support Ayumu. Thus Yu’s journey as one of the very rare female idol managers/supervisors/directors etc. in anime began.

The next course of action was to find a meeting area as Kasumin/Kasukasu explained. Our heroines soon learned why they couldn’t find a club room at school. Luckily Yu knew a nice spot.

Step 3 was to gather more club members. To do this they would record some recruitment videos. Kasumi showed her cuteness and had Ayumu do the same but she didn’t have enough confidence. Kasumi had her do “the bunny” to the delight of Yu. Said delight convinced Ayumu to give it another try.

It didn’t go well. Kasumi said cuteness was essential for idols but Yu recalled Setsuna being more cool than cute. She then asked why the club disbanded.

Long story short Setsuna and her had different ideas on what made a great idol. Kasumi emphasized cuteness and fun while Setsuna was more focused on passion and excellence. There is clearly more to it than that but we’ll surely learn the full story in due time. As she explained the backstory and stood her ground on the importance of cuteness she soon realized after seeing a scarred Ayumu that she was no better than Setsuna at guiding her peers.

Ai and Rina sighting. Not much to say about them this episode. They dropped some hints on their potential character episodes but we’ll learn more when their time comes.

Ayumu secretly trained her cuteness technique but a surprise Karin temporarily fried her brain. Fortunately she recovered. Karin complimented her training but sensed it wasn’t her style. She recommended focusing on who she wanted to convey her message to. Ayumu was like “I don’t have any fans yet” when she remembered a certain soul mate and had an epiphany.

Meanwhile Yu was with Kasumi. She explained her dream was to share her cute wonderland/happiness with the world but didn’t want to push others to do things her way if they didn’t want to. Yu concluded Kasumi, Setsuna and the other members had similar goals but different approaches and methods. Thanks to her words Kasumi’s new goal was to create a world where cute and cool people could live in harmony.

Ayumu returned ready for another go at the video. Safe to say it went swimmingly.

Kasumi’s performance was cute as expected.

Remember the “Yu praising Kasumi’s cuteness” thing? She did it a couple of times throughout the episode. Take a wild guess how Ayumu reacted each time. Thus Yu’s harem grew to 2.

After the excellent ED Karin and three of the four SIC members confronted Nana about Setsuna. Remember, Karin took the student directory earlier in the episode. She couldn’t find Setsuna Yuki’s name anywhere.

Another great episode. Next time Nana is backed into a corner.