Happy (belated) birthday, Kanata Konoe!
You’re a perfect pillow-toting performer!
Back when you were only an N girl, you kind of flew under my radar. While I liked N girls decently enough and even had a few favorites amongst them, they didn’t hit me the way that the main cast of characters – whose stories I got deeply invested in – did. (I can only hope that the second season of the Nijigaku anime will delve more into the lives of the N girls in a similar way.) When the Transfer Student Festival comics rolled around, I did gain a bit more appreciation for you and your sleepy antics. After all, this comic continues to be one of my favorites – if not my overall favorite – of the TenFes comics.
When your revamped character was shown, some things changed, but a lot stayed the same. You ditched your former school and former main attribute, carried over your sleepiness, love of food, and caring nature, and gained a seiyuu. It was cool to see you and your other N-girl-turned-Nijigasaki-idol cohorts talking and taking part in a new adventure in the school idol world! While the three of you wouldn’t have been my first picks for N girls to get a status upgrade, I’m glad that you ended up getting picked after all because I gained a newfound appreciation for you.
You’re generally a pretty laid-back girl. When it comes to your mannerisms, you’ll often laze about – speaking with a gentle drawl whilst trying to find the best spots to nap around the school. Your schoolmates will try to keep you awake during practice with varying results as you showcase your knack for falling asleep anywhere and everywhere. Due to these tendencies, it’d probably be easy for someone that was unaware of the things you manage to pull off to dismiss you as a sleepy slacker…which is just not true.
Despite your general sleepiness, you’ve proven time and time again that you’re hardly a slacker! You may be laid-back, but you’re also very hard-working. You worked twice as hard when Yu and Kasumi got the School Idol Club up and running again after you and some others initially called it quits. You set school idol goals with Yu and progressed nicely. You worked together with and competed against your fellow School Idol Club members, and continue to do so – lifting one another up and keeping each other on your toes. It’s revealed that the reason that you’re sleepy so often is because you stay up completing tough classroom assignments, you work a part-time job to support your younger sister, and you make meals for the both of you each day. I say that you totally deserve each nap for each of these feats. Trying to juggle all of those responsibilities sounds like something that only a superheroine could pull off – a sleepy superheroine!
I kind of slept pfft on your solos in the beginning. I did like them and their fairytale feel, but they were around mid-tier for me. However, once Märchen Star came out, I knew it was instantly top-tier for me. Butterfly and Silent Blaze were awesome deviations from your usual singing style, and it’s always fun to see what you can do when you’re energized. As for QU4RTZ, all of my favorite bops have you as one of the centers (Beautiful Moonlight, Make-up session ABC, and Swinging!), so that’s pretty cool.
I pulled a Kanata and wrote this while in the state of needing some sleep, so I hope that it’s at least somewhat coherent.
Never stop being the sleepy sheepy queen that you are! I hope that your dreams are as sweet as the fluffiest birthday cake! 🐏
