Heaven’s Gate

Key Events

With song and costumes set, Starish starts practicing. They find a big problem as Cecil can only dance his own country’s dance and won’t dance anything else. However, Syo will teach him the proper dance personally.

After hearing Maji Love 2000%, all members of Quartet Night have been affected by it in a strange way. Reiji especially wants everyone to start performing more as a group of four, even though he knows they work separately most of the time.

Cecil works through the night to make sure he knows everything and everyone comes to check up on him.

On the day of the event Haruka is getting ready but meets Heavens on the way. They try to corner her but Ranmaru appears and helps her out.

Back on the main stage the show is about to begin as Raging and Shining stand on tall pillars facing off against each other.

First up is Heavens and they put on an amazing spectacle that everyone knows it’s going to take a lot to beat.

Thoughts:

Well, at least I was right in that Heavens would put on a show that everyone would deem extremely hard to beat and they showed some training from the groups. Heaven’s song was actually quite enjoyable and with the ‘force’ of it gave a nice impact to the audience and judges etc. So I’m thinking it won’t be impact that wins it for Starish. It’s gonna be that uplifting feeling everyone got when they first heard the song, i.e. when they were all on a high and floating around on heart bubbles… Or good CG and pyrotechnics, but Heavens already demonstrated good use of such things so they have to be much better to win on that front as Heavens had what I would call ‘first mover advantage’. Also I don’t feel Starish are particular fans of that sorta thing anyway, not their style.

I also noticed that Heavens spelt out their name at the beginning of their song, wonder if that’s just Haruka’s style to have some sort of countdown thing at the beginning of every song. Not that it’s bad, I actually quite like it.

And whilst Haruka’s worried that Starish may lose this, she should at least be thrilled that her songs sound amazing whoever sings it. Her career as a composer will at least flourish whatever happens, though understandably she doesn’t want to end up with heavens. But surely she can refuse and work with another group, or work with each member of Starish as solo artists if they lose and disband, that would be the ‘happy’ way out if they lose.

First time I’ve seen Quartet Night this involved in an episode, wonder if that means they’re gonna do something as the anime finally remembered there were other characters as well. Though if they’re to do anything it’s probably give Starish some sort of inspiration or moral support. That’s all I can see them doing this late into the series.

But whatever, I’m not sure why the episode focused so much on Quartet Night, maybe it was to emphasis how strong the effect of Maji Love 2000% was. If so, I think we got that when everyone was floating around on heart bubbles. It also felt like they ran out of things to do in the episode which could be another reason for the focus on side characters. So if they do nothing next episode I won’t be surprised, but either way, the fact remains that it’s set the stage for a grand finish from Starish to take the win with a more emotional performance.