Air Dates: July 27th to September 14th on NHK
Shows were on 11:30 pm Saturday nights, 28 minutes an episode and subs by HPriest
Main Cast:
Yuki Sakurai as Mana Endo.... 30 year OL who stumbled into the world of Idol groups
Seminosuke Murasugi as Takafumi Shiiba.... Sunny Side Up group's lawyer
Yoshihiko Hosoda as Hiromu Azusawa.... Group's co-manager(?) and a huge otaku
Yu Sawabe as Minoru Shogoin.... Police detective who interviews Yuki
Hideyuki Kasahara as Masaru Urita.... Group fan but overly obsessed with Hana
Sunny Side Up Idol group
Sei Shiraishi as Hana Kurimoto.... Untalented waana-be Idol who Yuki befriends
Ruka Matsuda as Karin Hara.... Group's leader
Akari Matsukawa as Shiori Mugita
Shuri Tanaka as Rinrei Nasu
Jun Amaki as Noriko Tomaji
This is the second batch of four recaps which will finish off this eight episode series. Would help if you read some of the first four as I'm not going to be rehashing what's taken place up until now. But briefly the story revolves around an up and coming idol group named Sunny Side Up. They're not overly popular at the moment but do have some rabid fans or Oshis which is a word you'll be seeing often. One night the main star who is Mana happened to catch a group performance and since then has become a huge fan of the group and before knew zero about the idol world. She's a thirty year successful OL while the group is made of five gals between eighteen to twenty.
Her main oshi in Sunny Side Up has been Hana who she's helped out quite a bit. The story takes place in the Summer of 2018 but the tale is being related by Mana in present time or this Summer. She's being questioned by a detective as it appears she's pushed a man named Urita off a roof. He was a huge fan of the group but specifically Hana who he obsessed over, for now we don't know what led up to the event. Many other things have taken place which is why it may be a good idea to read the first four recaps but in a nutshell that's where the story stands heading into episode five.
Huge bombshell ended off the last recap as the detective Shogoin announced to Mana that the final performance of Sunny Side Up will be beginning shortly. She's being questioned about Urita being pushed from a roof and there's just been an eyewitness who claims Mana was at the scene. Mana is still relating the events of the previous Summer when Sunny Side Up headlined a small but important Idol festival. The group still wasn't immensely popular but are slowly getting there but as Mana mentioned the signs were there for the group to disband.
That bottom screenshot above is of the group's leader Karin who we don't see enough of but do this recap. In a flashback scene her main Oshi Hiromu was talking about when he first met her, often in screenshots you'll see his nickname which is Azuki that I'll use on occasion. At the time of their meeting Karin was a street singer and Azuki had helped her by preventing a pair of policemen from breaking up her small performance. Karin was going nowhere with her career so Azuki asked if she ever thought of becoming an Idol which had never crossed her mind.
But Karin wanted to be any kind of popular singer and with a bit of guidance from Azuki eventually found herself in the new Idol group Sunny Side Up. From day one she was the group's leader and did most of the talking and introductions at their concerts. As mentioned it's now the Summer of 2018 and there are hints of friction within the group and mainly from Rinrei. She's a college student who had begun missing some practices and shows because of her school schedule which started to annoy the group but mainly Karin. But what made the situation even worse for Karin was at a photo shoot for the group shortly after Rinrei had missed another performance.
At that photo shoot Karin was supposed to be the cover girl for a small Idol magazine but that changed as the people in charge now wanted Rinrei to be the cover girl. That infuriated Karin to no end but to her credit she kept her anger hidden and continued to put the group first. But that honor for Rinrei soon went to her head as at Sunny Side Up's next gig Rinrei jumped in before Karin could do the introductions and did them herself. Also instead of letting Karin sing the main song lines she did it herself which was an utter flop.
At first it seemed as though Hana was the worst singer in the group but not so sure of that now after hearing Rinrei. She was beyond horrible as she sung the group's most popular tune and before long Karin just couldn't take it anymore as she grabbed the mic out of Rinrei's hands. This led to a fierce argument on stage between the pair which soon spilled over to the crowd after Rinrei pushed Karin hard to the ground. Rinrei had become much more popular after being on the cover of a mag and did let the attention go to her head but it also really increased her fan base who were fighting in the audience with the members other otas, an ota is a fan who has an oshi in a group.
That incident appeared to spell the end of Sunny Side Up as the pair of fighters wouldn't talk to each other and shortly after Mana received a call from Hana that the group may disband. There's no way Mana could allow that as after her job the group was the most important thing in her life. Mana quickly tracked down Hana to help her patch things with Karin and Rinrei though Hana insisted she needed no help as it was a group matter. Sunny Side Up is also the most important thing in Hana's life as before joining the group she didn't belong to anything and had been bullied often growing up. She told Mana that for once in her life she would take charge of such a situation and headed back to the group's headquarters to patch things up.
That get together was a failure for Hana though soon things may be back to normal. To make a short story even shorter eventually the gals did put their disbandment on hold for a while which was arranged by Azuki. Karin believed in him so much as it wasn't for him she would have never joined Sunny Side Up. For now Azuki was able to smooth out the rivalry between Karin and Rinrei though once a situation like that arises it's just a mater of time until a final breakup occurs.
That concert event was quickly forgotten and soon the quintet are back on their rise in popularity, they even were chosen to do a CM for an egg company. That's where the episode came to it's close it a rather quick ending for the recap. Had written the first two segments a week ago and completely lost my mojo to finish things off though don't think anything was overlooked.
Did wrap up things fairly fast but in all honesty 90% of what took place was described in the first two segments. When you go a week like I just did between writing a post up you can get a bit scatterbrained which happens to me often. This is the first of four recaps to finish off this eight episode series which I've truly enjoyed but not going to view the final show until the seventh recap is written up as not to spoil anything.
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