And so, we have the beach episode. With no specific personality focus, it added a few welcome touches to a several idols. In particular, Chihaya continued to be developed in rather interesting ways, such as her reaction to girl things. Some of these touches are... obvious, for the lack of the better word. Specifically, Azusa drank heavily in college. But of course. Hellooo Momono-san. And I found the fanservice rather good for our days as well.

A few random notes now.

Takane was comically overpowered, demonstrating that this anime is not to be taken too seriously in an even greating degree than Yukiho.

Ritsuko has beaten P-san badly in the professional arena. I'm quite happy to see that, even though I have nothing against the guy.

Apropos that, I noticed only now that OP has Ritsuko performing on stage with other idols and in a bespoke outfit (those are ones she carted in in pre-OP of 02). Are we in to see another Sawa-chan-sensei teaching the "youngsters" a thing or two (speaking in the maturity age terms, of course, since canonically Azusa, for example, is older)? That would be nice.

The biggest downside so far is that whoever A-1 employed cannot draw at the required level. We saw quite a few nice chests, but faces are more difficult. And just to make it worse, directors select difficult and varying "camera" angles all the time, which would be plainly hard to perform even for excellent animation staff. Part of difficulty is how anime in general is highly stylized, so, for example, it is next to impossible to draw anime eyes outside of several standard positions or turns. Good directors know that. They understand the media with which they work. So they do not challenge their staff with impossible requests. But this director treats anime as if it were a live action. It was most problematic in the bedtime talk scene, when girls have to turn over and talk while drawn in most atypical projections. But this staff is having trouble even with things like Haruka turning her head in the lounge (that actually included a very nice frame — only sandwiched between two off-model ones). Clearly they need director helping them. You fight the war with the army that you have, not the one you might have or wish you had.

UPDATE: Kuro sums it up thus:

Now that’s more like it, iM@S! This is what I wanted from the show after all! Some decent fanservice after the long slog at work really relieves the stress. It’s not like I don’t want to know each girl’s little traumatic past and/or their insecurities, it’s just I don’t want to deal with that shit after work!

Also, do you think he made the lead stitch himself? I remember when I was that dedicated.