I was not particularly attentive to efforts of episoders back when AKB0048 was in its middle. Now I am reaping the problem by not having a whole lot of interesting stuff to reblog. It's made worse by high-brow bloggers tending to show their worst or at least overthink it. The Paper made me roll my eyes so hard for seeing everything through the prism of gender. I bet she eats her gendered cereal with a gendered spoon. Schneider made me roll my eyes a little over painstaking picking-over of Sae vs. Megumi and coloring with his intrinsic nasty.

AJ The 4th used the Shoji Kawamori link to a decent success. The question of the same songs repeated also bears pondering. I mean, how often do you hear the 60-year-old Irving Berlin's "I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas" nowadays... Jokes aside, the impact of alien entertainment under the ban is certainly different. Just can't imagine ban planets supplying AKB0048 much revenue. So, who knows, maybe it's considered something akin to Olympics: challenges are the same, competitors change. The little fan of Orine promised to buy Orine's card, not a moldy AKB48 record!

In the end, Fencedude was most reliable, and the retellings were easy to skip (Why do they even bother transcrabing episode events in the first place? Every episoder does it: Omni did, too.). Here's his Sae vs. Megumi:

Sae is Youko, a member of the 76th Generation, and it seems she was very close to Megumi. Megu clearly does not see Youko as Sae, and probably never has, even at the end, when she called her “Sae-san”, she was just trying to bury the pain she’s feeling.

That's the kind of reflection I wish was more popular. There was some personal touch to it, as well. And in 07, I had certain misgivings about the Peace Mission, too.

P.S. Did anyone notice that Sae has a personal relationship with a hardcore fan of hers?