During school hours no less, Hina makes a surprise visit at Hanasakigawa. As Haneoka’s student council president, she proposes to Rinko, Sayo, and Arisa to have their schools hold a joint culture festival together. Hina gets near unanimous support for the joint festival from Haneoka’s student body but her idea is met with some skepticism from Hanasakigawa’s student council. With some encouragement from Aya, Rinko later agrees to the proposal, feeling that its her duty as a student council president to make the school year as amazing as she can. Considering that most of the bands in Bandori divide their members across the two schools, it makes a ton of sense gathering them all up for one culture festival. Chalking the event up as Hina’s idea is pretty clever as well. Hina strikes a good balance between winging it and actually being a competent leader, not to mention that she apparently has the power to make the joint festival happen.
Aya initially hopes for Pastel Palettes to perform during the culture festival but it doesn’t appear that they’ll get approval from management. Hina then suggests forming a new band to work around this issue. At first, I thought the idea is to simply have Pastel Palettes perform under a new, legally distinct name but the show takes a funnier route by having Hina pluck people out of their bands and gathering them into this new one with Aya. She recruits Kanon, Lisa, Tsugumi, and Moca and there doesn’t appear to much rhyme or reason besides maybe the vibes she’s getting from everyone. Hina also doesn’t plan on performing herself, instead electing to be the band’s producer. It’s a very funny bit as you can’t entirely tell if this is just spur of the moment or if there is a method behind Hina’s madness. Also entertaining is the reactions Hina’s plan elicits, like when Afterglow tries to object to Hina taking Tsugumi away, only to then lose Moca as well. On a more serious note, this mix up could be a perfect excuse to have some of the characters interact with people besides their bandmates and it could be really interesting to see how these characters would adjust to a new team. Kanon, Lisa, Tsugumi, and Moca haven’t exactly gotten a lot of screentime so this might also be a chance for the show to explore their characters some more.
Elsewhere, Poppin’Party have started working on their live show at Galaxy. The plan is to perform a month later, at the end of June, and have all of their friends join them as guest performers. Apparently, Tae has managed to get Pastel Palettes on board. She won’t say how exactly she pulled that off but I imagine her knowledge of Chisato’s solo practice sessions had something to do with it. Hooray for blackmail. I expect the live show to be at the season finale so the plan to invite everyone as guests makes sense. It’ll especially be nice to see Pastel Palettes with PoPiPa and the others as they’ve weirdly had the least crossover with anyone else so far. Even though they already have their hands full with the live show, PoPiPa agrees to perform for the culture festival first as the previous year’s festival marked the complete formation of the band. I had a good laugh watching Arisa trying to come up with a schedule for both the live show and the culture festival, as well keeping everyone (namely Kasumi) on task. Funny how Arisa started out as the least interested in the band. Now, I don’t even know how PoPiPa would operate without her.
For some reason, Tae feels she needs more experience as a musician so she opts to do a couple of street performances, inviting her friends to join her when they can. During one of these performances, Tae reunites with her childhood friend, Rei Wakana (Raychell), whom we first saw at the end of the last episode. The impromptu duet by the two characters is one of my favorite insert song scenes in the season so far. Rei seamlessly joining Tae, the harmony of their vocals, and the instrumentals provided solely by Tae’s guitar really help sell the history that these two share with one another. After the performance, Tae and Rei catch up and Rei brings up an old promise that they made with each other: that they’d one day form a band together. The subject is awkward for Tae as it’s been six years since she last saw Rei and in that time, she’s joined PoPiPa.
While Rei appears understanding of Tae’s choice, she nevertheless asks Tae if she could perform for the band she’s currently in. The band is soon to be revealed to be Chiyu’s creation, as part of her plan to get back at Roselia. Not only is Rei a member but so is the blue and pink haired girl from Episode 5 and the blond girl from Episode 6. Truth be told, you can see this reveal coming a mile away. This is a band anime. Why else would you introduce a bunch of new characters if not to set up and introduce a new band? That’s just the most logical conclusion to make. Adding a new band to an already stuffed roster doesn’t sound like a great idea to me but I’d be lying if I said I’m not interested to see how this band will pan out and how it’ll affect Roselia and PoPiPa.
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