Action Heroine Cheer Fruits Episode 8 Review – “Little Sis Aoyama Says She’ll Start Directing”

(Spoilers in this review)

Summary:

• Misaki discusses numbers with her aunt. They’re definitely bringing in more people with the Hinano Nectar performances, but it’s not nearly enough to fill the 3,000 seats in city hall.
• The other 8 members celebrate Misaki’s birthday with cake and a rehearsed performance.
• After watching another team’s performance use the exact same format they’ll be using, team Cheer Fruits becomes discouraged since they don’t want to be accused of plagiarism once again. It doesn’t help that a nearby festival is going to happening on the same day as the opening performance (for their next show), which will probably affect the amount of attendees.
• Genki shows some good ideas to get around these setbacks, which leads Misaki to appoint her as the director for the next show. She pushes both the heroines and Roko (Kanon received no input to her dismay) to be better by asking them to do unreasonable things to develop their characterization.
• The girls are ready to call it quits before long, but Yuki urges them to try once last time and they nail the final practice session.
• Both Misaki and Yuki ask Genki to play a larger part during the performance, but Genki turns it down. The two sisters are touched to be working together and Misaki checks in with the firework people to insure things will go smoothly.
• The episode ends with the girls being motivated for the upcoming performance (and with everyone bringing too many teru-bouzo in order to discourage rain since that would put a damper on the fireworks they’re incorporating into their performance).

Review:

• While the jokes weren’t as prominent in this episode, Action Heroine Cheer Fruits consistently depicts great characterization as the spotlight is mostly on Genki. She’s a strict director as expected, but she’s also very innovative and analytical. The team needs all 9 members to work out, but without her sharp eyes (and skills with technology) their group would be undoubtedly mediocre.
• Other than that, this was a set-up episode for the girls’ big performance. Since there’s only 4 more episodes left and they still have a ways to go before they can fill up the seats in the city hall, I’m led to believe that the series will end with the girls either achieving a miracle (by drawing enough people to save her grandfather’s building) or with the girls still striving to achieve their overarching goal (i.e. “their struggles and fights continue”).
• The performance can really go either way, but the allure of a festival is not to be underestimated. I hope they succeed!
• The series continues to be enjoyable, but I understand why people might consider it to be underwhelming since it isn’t overly flashy or “original”.