Pretty Rhythm Rainbow Live halfpoint thoughts

Some official art for once. Been using this as my wallpaper for a while. If only Naru was as cute and prominent in the show as in this picture, if only Otoha actually looked like that, if only Rinne actually wore those yeti fur skateboots…
I’ve been wanting to write this post since when we actually crossed the halfway point. Had no time to do it though. Also I’m not sure if it’ll be an interesting read if you’ve read all of my posts till now, as I’m gonna repeat a lot of things. I also did it just so I could stuff in some pics. Also apparently this is my 200th post, and 91 of them are about Pretty Rhythm. Never thought I’d stick with animeblogging Pretty Rhythm for so long.(Cuz I don’t like aniblogging except if it’s Pretty Rhythm)

I was thinking about how the show barely had any comedy in it’s first half, while it’s slowly started to appear in the second half. It’s because of Bell&co. In the first half of the show, the Prism Stone girls and the Edel Rose girls weren’t friends, so they had to constantly show the opposition between them, not leaving much room for fun and relaxed moments. They had to always show Otoha like the Bell follower she is, Bell like the huge bitchii she was, and Wakana as the nasty girl she was. Now, Otoha has more confidence in herself but is still Berusexual, Bell is like a totally different person, and Wakana changed too. Though in Wakana’s case, I always thought that rather than being a bad girl or evil, she’s just the type to go along with the flow and doesn’t really care about stuff. Remember when she heard how Hiro double crossed Kouji and she just didn’t give a damn?

Now that everyone is friends together, some opportunities to make some funny scenes finally appeared (episode 29). It’s still far from what I’d expect after seeing the first seasons though.  In all of the first half, the characters only interact to either advance the story, or for the drama. If you think the story is boring, or can’t feel involved in the drama, you’ll dislike most episodes, as there’s nothing else for you to enjoy besides these two things. First off, they need to make the characters act more crazier. They started doing it with Bell, but they should do it with Wakana and Oto too. By now, there should have been tons of scenes of Otoha fangirling about Ito or Bell and being conflicted about which she likes the most.
They also made some funny scenes with Bell, Wakana and Oto together, and some with Naru, Ann, Ito and Rinne, but they haven’t mixed the two groups. Otoha and Ito are supposed to be counterparts/friends/rivals but they haven’t interacted with each other for ages (though I guess Ito is busy with Kouji’s plotline), and it’s the same with Ann and Wakana (before episode 33 happened). Ann is like just there, and then stuff happens when she meets Wakana, else she does nothing. There’s also Bell who should be asking tons of questions to Rinne about how she literally saw her teleport in her waiting room etc.

When the duo groups happen I really hope they rectify this. I actually have very high expectations for the last part of the show. Plus, Hiro will probably stop his bitching too by then and join the big group of friends, reconciling with Kouji, so there should be even more opportunities for comedy. Sadly when that happens we won’t get to see his yandere homo obsession anymore though, which is one of the most entertaining things in the first half of the show. I guess considering how much he genuinely likes Kouji as showed in episode 31, when the time comes I hope they make him act like Yong Hwa and that he’ll fully display his gayness for Kouji whenever they’re together.

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Speaking of duos, it’s not that surprising to me that Bell got much more development than Naru so far, as I think they’re both supposed to be the main heroines of the show. Just like Mia & Hye In in Dear My Future. Episodes 1-13 focused on NaruAnnIto at first, and how they learned to actually appreciate Prism Shows in order to meet rivals and enjoy Prism Shows while taking them seriously etcetc, then the focus switched to BellWakanaOto for episode 13-26, and we haven’t seen much Naru development since then. I think the only major thing related to her that happened which I can remember is her getting heartbroken, and choreographing the dances for Happy Rain. I guess they’ll save her last developments for the last part of the show (ep 39-51), I really hope so. But before elaborating on that I need to bring up something about episode 32:

I’ve been checking the Juné videos on youtube and some of the comments. It’s pretty hilarious how right I was about some little girls getting mad about her jumps. Of course, the reason Juné did Aurora Rising etc is to display her skill, but the thing that the haters don’t get is that it’s fanservice; They did it to please the fans. One of the other reasons is that recycling jumps is easier than making new ones. They could have well made her do new jumps, just as impressive as those.

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There’s also something interesting I noticed, a lot of people wrote a lot of speculation about the reason why Juné didn’t have wings during Mugen Hug Eternal. There’s nothing to speculate about or not meaning behind it. The only reason she didn’t have wings is because they skipped the part at the beginning of the jump where she would grow them. Pretty funny how some people read SO DEEP into it. She didn’t have wings either when she did Angel Kiss, for the same reason: They skipped the beginning of the jump where Mion would grow them. I think the only thing you should analyze deeply was Rinne’s reaction to her wings/fifth jump.

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As for why they skipped some parts of the jumps, it’s to make the jumps chain faster, just like how they skip the beginning of Bell’s Million Rose since ep 26. There’s also the fact that the system in RL is different compared to other seasons: in here the jumps are much more dynamic and closer looking to the arcade game, and chaining jumps is a big deal while in Aurora Dream/DMF they never did it or talked about it. Ever since episode 1 when they explained the jump chaining thing of the RL world, I always thought anyone in the previous seasons could have done it. So you can’t really compare Juné with Aira and the others.

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It would be funny if the guys speculating about the wings thing are right and that I’m wrong, but I doubt it’s happening. In any case I don’t really care that much, but now let’s see why I brought this up: If some people are already this mad about Juné, I can’t wait to see the reactions when Naru, since she’s the main character, will pull off something even more amazing than Juné at the end of the show. And that’s not even mentioning the Rinne & Juné Prism Show duo/battle which will certainly happen at a point too.

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And this is what I was pondering about above. They really need to develop Naru, and they need to start now(Luckily episode 34 seems to focus on her). If they don’t do it right now, and if by the end of the show she’s still the same way she is at the moment, when she’ll do ten jumps or something crazy like that even I will get mad about it. Naru really needs to stop crying and man up. If I was on the writers team I would have actually made her fired as manager and have Bell replace her, that way it’ll be the second shock in a row after loosing Kouji so she’d ask herself questions and move her ass a bit, or go to the dark side and become crazy for a bit, I would totally like Naru going evil. Or she’d ask advice to her parents. They brought back the parents characters for each girl just like in AD but they really haven’t done much with them in this first half, I’m hoping this will change too. Some of them get regular screentime like Ito’s parents, but some only appeared twice and haven’t done anything in particular, like Otoha’s parents. In any case, if there’s something that will make Naru change now, it would definitely be something happening to Rinne.

About Juné and Rinne, my own personal theory was that they’re the same person and that Juné was separated from Rinne as an alternate personality when Rinne crash landed to this world, loosing her memories. As for the time inconsistency, since Rinne crash landed, it affected time, and Juné got created in the past, or something like that. This is way too crazy and less and less likely though, as they actually showed Juné when she was younger, and she was already very skilled, so it’s not like she inherited some of Rinne’s powers (or “stole them” like some little girls on youtube said). I’m also totally lost as to what to make out of Starn, as while all the foreshadowing they did, it’s pretty confirmed he’s not Rinne’s penguin since hers turns into a guitar. So I guess Rinne’s really is the peacock whose name I forgot. Seriously why haven’t they brought him back yet? He seems like Penguin sensei v2, I’m sure he’s liven up things.
Anyway, with Rinne’s reaction to Juné’s wings, I guess the most logical theory now is that she already saw them, meaning she already saw Juné back in the Prism World. One thing I’m convinced of ever since her Kaguya Hime analogy is that Juné is also from the Prism World, so that makes up sense. I actually thought that they would reveal the secret between them in the first half of the show, and focus the second half on why Rinne came to this world and her mission, and then her departure, but right now Rinne still haven’t gotten back her memories. I think that’s my biggest disappointment about the first half of the show.

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Don’t get me wrong though, the first half was great, and had some amazing episodes plus a great climax being episode 26. I have a hard time comparing Rainbow Live with the other seasons. Besides the fact that the comedy and character interaction is inferior in Rainbow Live, each season have their own weaknesses and strengths. While the CG in the first two seasons isn’t Aikatsu levels of bad, and is actually okay, the CG in RL is even better, being some of the best CG I’ve ever seen. There’s also the fact that Dear My Future is a sequel with returning character so it’s a given the characters are more developed in it, as they had 51 more episodes.

Cleaned by this person

Episodes 26, 31 and 32 of RL were the best of the best so far, being the same quality as the last episodes of AD and DMF. Things have calmed down after episode 32, because we’re not in the final part yet. But I have really high expectations for the latter half of Rainbow Live, and just like the previous seasons I really hope that starting episodes 38-39, every episode will be just as amazing as episode 32. To get a rough comparison, for me, episodes 39-51 of DMF were like watching a new episode 32 of RL every week. As a side note, I also liked DMF’s ending even more than AD’s ending, so I think RL should be able to do something at least just as good.