At the start of Episode 12, we briefly hear Poppin’Party perform Tae’s new song, “Returns”, for the first time as a group, having worked on it a bunch overnight. Satisfied with the result, the band moves onto finishing up all the preparatory work for their live show at Galaxy. The first order of business is contacting all the guest performers they’ve invited for the show, which of course consists of the four other major bands in the show. Naturally, the funniest follow-up comes from Hello, Happy World!, as Kokoro draws a bunch of pictures for her band’s setlist, as opposed to professionally written forms like everyone else. That girl sure is colorful, to put it mildly. That scene also has one of the wildest jokes I’ve seen in Season 2, where Misaki jokingly asks Kasumi to join HaroHapi and Tae and Sāya gets comically protective of Kasumi. Like, we just had two whole episodes where Tae’s future with PoPiPa was left uncertain. To joke that we need to worry about anyone else is sending me.
Understandably, the one guest band that’s a giant maybe is Roselia, what with Yukina telling PoPiPa to not bet on her band’s help again. To their surprise however, Yukina accepts their invitation and her band already has the necessary paperwork for the live show. Sayo explains that since Kasumi made the offer before the culture festival, Yukina is willing to honor a past agreement. If you go back to Episode 8, when Kasumi asks Yukina about the live show, Yukina actually says that she’ll consider it. I think what’s actually happening is Yukina doesn’t want to admit that she is willing to work with PoPiPa again so she’s using a loophole to save face. Yukina should really learn to open up some more (though I suppose this awkward aspect of hers is part of her charm).
After doing some work at Galaxy, PoPiPa runs into Chiyu and Reona. Having already made her mind up, Tae decides to tell Chiyu on the spot that she’s staying with PoPiPa. Needless to say, Chiyu doesn’t take it very well. I think Chiyu was getting presumptuous for assuming that Tae would choose RAS in the end so it admittedly is a little satisfying to her act so defeated. On a more serious note, that outburst does make me wonder if Chiyu struggles socially. Like, she scoffs at the idea that someone would rather be in a band with their friends and yet, she seems to have genuinely want Tae in her band and she seems to take it rather personally when people decline to work with her. Hopefully in Season 3, the show addresses this more.
A couple more minutes are spent showing PoPiPa getting the live show ready. In one scene, PoPiPa and Rokka hang out at Kasumi’s place to get some more work done. Unsurprisingly, Rokka feels very awkward to be there, especially since Asuka has apparently invited her to come over on multiple occasions. During the hangout, Arisa asks Kasumi about the song she started working on in Episode 7. I had completely forgotten about that (and I’ve been covering these past couple episodes back to back). To be fair, it did get buried underneath all the stuff with the culture festival and RAS. Apparently, Kasumi has finished a rough draft of the song, which is impressive considering the circumstances. After the girls refine the lyrics some more, they decide to use it for the live show.
Funnily enough, Episode 12 actually addresses why the live show does not include CHiSPA. According to Sāya and Natsuki (Misato Fukuen), their bands’ schedules didn’t line up (though Natsuki can apparently still attend the actual live show). Honestly, it’s a really flimsy justification to work around CHiSPA not being one of marketable bands. At least the show addresses it; otherwise, Sāya would unintentionally look like a jerk for not inviting her old pals. Natsuki getting Sāya new drumsticks is also a nice touch.
The day before the live show, the five main bands do a rehearsal at Galaxy, though the only performance you see onscreen is PoPiPa’s rehearsal of “Returns”. I’m assuming this was done so that Episode 13 can either abridge or skip “Returns” and highlight the other new song instead. That’s a reasonable compromise as the finale is likely crammed with a potential total of five insert songs, one from each band. As for the song itself, I really liked it the first time around and I think the band version is even better. The theme of “Returns” is having a place to belong to and people to face the future with. That hits a lot more when it’s expressed by all five members of the band, as opposed to just one. I kind of wish Tae led the vocals since she is the creator of the song in-universe and I’ve come to like Sae Otsuka’s singing this season. That said, the contents of “Returns” is very applicable to Kasumi’s character so I don’t mind in the slightest that she’s the leader singer as per usual. It’s kind of crazy that this rehearsal scene is PoPiPa’s first big performance since the season premiere. That seems to be a recurring risk Bandori likes to take: take its sweet time so that next time the main characters performs, it feels all the more special. Eleven episodes is kind of pushing it, even with the other bands providing their music as compensation, but I still think it pays off. It took a long while for PoPiPa to perform again but the wait is worth it.
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