LLAS Ch23

It's Ai's character development time. She's talking with... her sister(? mom? female charcter I don't know?), Misato, about stuff. Misato asks why did you leave the club if you're always so happy talking about your friends in the club, why don't you just join them again (thank you audience insert). Ai says she wants to compete against Setsuna & the others and in the club she was always getting beat out like in the popularity polls. So she while she did look into the Association as a way to get to know Lanzhu and try to get them to be more lenient on the club, her main prio was trying to see if this new environment could give her the edge to actually compete. IMO this would be very interesting character development if the other group was like an actually competing group instead of literally taking over the school and preventing the club from doing anything.

Lanzhu continues Lanzhu. Also tells Shio that turns out having a literal "Monitoring Committee" is bad PR and they can't actually stop the online baton pass lives. So Shio can disband it. Then she asks why is the Association so cringe and why won't the club members come join them.

Shio comes over to club and tells them they finally do lives normally again and apologizes for having to do this bs. The Monitors are really just student council members who tried to stall interrupting as much as possible. Only went in when their shows were winding down, etc.

Misato talks to Ai about how in the past Ai used to do sports tournaments and Ai thinks that's a great idea and the idols should do that. She proposes and Lanzhu thinks it's a great idea to show how much better the association is. Shizuku, Kasumin, Setsuna, and Rina end up deciding to join while Ayumu, Emma, Kanata would rather step out.

Next day everyone comes to the association club room to hash out the details. Lanzhu is super excited, she thinks they're all about to join, tells the MC to gtfo because MC is an amateur. Ai breaks the tension by saying if they wanna make it fair, both sides should contribute. The game shows off Mia's new friendship w/ Rina because now that Ai is in the association, they've portrayed Rina as being closer w/ her fellow 2 first years and w/ Mia. They only brought up Ai and Rina's relationship once this chapter despite that being 80% of their dynamic during season 1. Mia's not singing this time, but she wants to compete against MC this tourney as a composer.

Similarly Emma and Karin share a similar relationship where they were close friends and paired off often during S1. Emma leaves and Karin tries to get a chance to talk to her, but stops. Kasumin calls her out and asks why she just doesn't talk. Karin says she feels like Emma is mad at her. Kasumin rolls her eyes. Karin says she's sure the reason has to do with the fact that Karin joined the group that took their hang out spot, prevents them from doing anything w/ their hobby, and constantly shits over their president who is a good friend to Emma, but why can't they just get along like they used to regardless of what groups they're in. Kasumin rolls her eyes.

Kasumin tells her Emma thinks she doesn't have the same appeal anymore and that if you wanna prove otherwise, to do well in the tournament.

Tournament matchups are drawn, R1: Shizuko vs Lanzhu, Rina vs Ai, Kasumin vs Karin, Setsuna vs Shio.