(Spoilers in this review)
Summary:
- The competition between Yumeko and Yumemi primarily consists of idol activities.
- Yumemi has a natural advantage being a high-level school idol, but she purposefully throws as many matches as she can in order to make it a close match.
- However, Yumeko realizes this and it is implied she chooses a game where she has a chance to win (game #5: Fan appreciation!) even though she rolls a die.
- The game has Yumeko roll the die in order to receive a number and thus pick a specific member from the audience. Yumeko and Yumemi both has to guess the individual’s birth month and whoever is closest wins. As a result, Mary is the one who is chosen and Yumemi, who had memorized the birthday dates of every member in her fanclub, has no idea about Mary’s birthday.
- Yumemi reads too much into Yumeko’s guess and ends up losing.
- Thus Yumemi agrees to have the recording played and everyone gets to hear how she actually hates her fans. Her fans, however, don’t care and she is able to continue her idol career.
- Yumeko and Yumemi then perform together.
- After their short performance, Yumeko reveals that Yumemi was set up (remember the torn up fan letter and the recorder that was left in Yumemi’s locker?) and that the individual responsible should stand up. Yumemi agrees and points at Kaede, the Student Council accountant who had set up the event in the first place.
- Kaede goes on stage and denies his involvement. He then announces that he wants to be the next Student Council President.
- Yumemko challenges him to a match and he turns it down, scoffing at her status as a housepet. In response, Yumeko challenges him to an official match with her one-time privilege as a housepet.
Review:
- The viewers only got to see three games, really, even though they played six games total. Well, I guess doing so made sure their match could conclude within this episode.
- The implication that Yumeko was able to manipulate the dice to select Mary for their sixth match is silly, but Yumeko was going to lose for sure if she hadn’t done that. I guess things just had to turn out that way.
- They showed Yumemi’s thinking process very well during that final match. I also had thought that Yumeko was being sneaky by pretending to write a 6 when she was actually writing a 9. Turns out I would have lost, too, haha. Yumeko’s thirst for actual gambling is the real deal, it seems, since she actually didn’t know Mary’s birthday and she was thrilled over the uncertainty and the risk (as usual).
- Yumemi agrees to pay up, which was commendable.
- I was confused with Yumeko’s stance on Yumemi’s situation. She made it very possible to ruin Yumemi’s life by making the idol put the recording on the line. But then she turns around and blames someone else for setting Yumemi up. I guess Yumeko was fighting fire with fire, since Yumemi challenged her first with the intention of ruining Yumeko’s life.
- Yumeko using her right as a housepet to challenge anyone to an official match is unexpected because everyone had assumed she would use said right to challenge Kirari, the Student Council President.
- The studio took some shortcuts in regards to the animation due to the repeated footage as well as the amount of still frames. Even Yumeko’s performance with Yumemi looked a bit choppy at times. Ah, well, we’re not watching Kaekgurui for sakuga, right?
- The next episode looks very intense according to the preview, but I’m wondering how the (anime) series will end. It seems very likely there will be a lackluster conclusion, but we shall see, yeah?
The Lily Garden 