天下制覇

So much for stakes.

Impressions:

I said last week that now that it's set down its gimmick, the show needs to establish some stakes to give it some weight. Maybe the losers get mulched up and fed to the giraffe. Or being the 'top star' gives some special thing and knocking off the losers deprives them of it. Or their idol energy is being used to fuel the Glitz Pit. Something. Instead of doing that, this episode doubled down on the idol friendship crap. They just want to be a pop star because it's being a pop star, y'all. And the price of losing? Jack squat. Their conversation at the end is basically "Are we still friends?" "OMG, BESTIES! <3"

Nor is the episode used to develop anybody or flesh out really anything. At best, you can say that there's some focus on Glasses Girl being a little huffy about being upstaged, and they were probably trying to draw a comparison between the main two's adversary to friendship thing and that other pair being revealed to the opposite. It's less an arc and more just a huff that she spontaneously gets over. I'm sure somebody can probably make some hay out of the mannequin and mirror/glasses crap in the fight, but if this is drawing its inspiration from things like Utena, Penguin Drum, and Lesbian Bear Storm, then it needs about fifty times more random imagery and it needs to be ten times more nonsensical.