This is because of anti-dakimakura prejudice.

Love Lab was a fairly successful comedy despite not having a lot of depth to its jokes. The basic premise is interesting (provided you don't have violent aversions to male characters in your all-girls-all-the-time anime), although the characters did not do as much with it as I had hoped. I think diverting so much attention away from the main effort and focusing instead on Riko's inability to confess about her lies was a mistake. As a consequence, it made the ending somewhat weak, whereas if the resolution had occurred during the mid-season mark there would have been more opportunities for meeting-boys hijinks.

Mixed success at being more feminine.

Despite its flaws, Love Lab still had enough charm to be enjoyable each week, even with a deadweight character or two. Where it really succeeds, however, is in breaking conventions regarding anime hair. I did not diligently catalog all the changes and variations (but surely some obsessive fan somewhere on the Internet has), but it seems Riko changes her hair style and accessories every episode and sometimes once or twice during each episode as well. Oddly enough, I was able to recognize her even though her hair accessories cum charm points weren't fixed. It's frankly more daring than anime characters who don't wear the same clothes every single day. In fact, I'm nominating Riko for 2013 Girl of the Year just for her hair alone.

Riko's Doritos duvet is pretty awesome.

Additionally, I wasn't really a fan of Hibiki's speaking voice in The iDOLM@STER but Numakura Manami's delivery as Riko works well in Love Lab, even though it still feels to me that Riko is a character of an in-iM@S-universe television show starring Ganaha Hibiki, if that makes any sense.

Miki has pretty good hair for someone who sleeps so much.

As you might expect, THE iDOLM@STER TV anime is a bit different if you're already familiar with the characters, their songs, and the dances. The first time I watched the series, I merely had a general understanding of the franchise at best, with most of what I knew coming from (once again) the fan art or from criticisms I had heard of the "apocryphal" Xenoglossia series from years back. I'm still largely ignorant of the gameplay, but I've at least been exposed to the music, more of the fandom, and Haruhi knows how many hours of all-singing, all-dancing videos on YouTube and NicoVideo. I've also played enough Shiny Festa to know I'm pretty terrible at it.

The Hibiki episode should have been a real-time broadcast
about Hibiki competing in a 5k road race.

I've been re-watching THE iDOLM@STER TV and thoroughly enjoying it even more than the last time. A big part of this is because I'm more familiar with the franchise and its characters now. I still haven't played any of the games besides Shiny Festa, but I've watched countless numbers of their all-singing, all-dancing videos, and I think I'm more in tune with what the characters are like (or at least what their fans claim they are like).

Makoto, that hat's wearing you.

As I stated earlier, one of the biggest problems with the Hibiki episode of The iDOLM@STER TV is that it doesn't feel as if it's really about Hibiki. It's about Hamzou and Inumi and 961PRO as much as or more than it is about Hibiki herself. The following episode, on the other hand, is a Makoto episode which is very much about Makoto.

Still perky despite it all.

As in the first season, of Puchimas! Petit iDOLM@STER, I like the Puchimas!! Petit Petit iDOLM@STER Hibiki more than the Hibiki from the regular iDOLM@STER anime. This is mostly because in the regular anime Hibiki is sort of a gag character with pretty broadly drawn defining characteristics, and they never quite worked for me in that context. Frankly, I find Hibiki's pet alligator harder to accept than believing Takane might be from the moon. (Speaking of which, Takane from The iDOLM@STER TV is eccentric and mysterious. Puchimas! Takane is a nutjob.) Hibiki is a gag character in Puchimas! as well, but every character in Puchimas! is a gag character. Curiously, Hibiki's defining role as a gag character in a non-canonical gag anime is not her canonical gag from the canonical non-gag anime. (This is my way of saying that "has a lot of animals" is not Hibiki's primary attribute in Puchimas!!. Rather, Hibiki takes the role of the beleaguered straight man, constantly vacillating between moments of incredulous Takane-inspired despair and regular moments of more conventional low-level suffering. Hibiki's affectations are influential enough that I've caught myself mimicking her exasperated sigh during darker moments of comically bad fortune, to tell you the truth.

WHO RUN BARTERTOWN?!

So what about Hibiki from the games? I can't give this question a straight answer because I don't actually know all that much about Hibiki from the games. In fact, I'm only familiar with game-type Hibiki from Shiny Festa and Internet videos. Regarding the former, my lack of rhythm prevents me from advancing too far in the game. With regard to the latter, I've only seen a few game-play clips from the proper games; mostly I've just watched all-singing, all-dancing performance clips. As far as those are concerned, Hibiki, Takane, and Miki are all equally valuable to me as members of Project Fairy. That really is a well-balanced and nicely harmonized trio. Best project. Best fairy.

Raglan shirt.

One of my favorite shows from the spring 2014 season—not necessarily reflected in its "objective" score—is Puchimas!! Petit Petit iDOLM@STER, the second season of a gag anime (presumably non-canonically) based on the iDOLM@STER franchise. Curiously, the blobby little puchis themselves are probably my least favorite part of the show.

This cat is so chill.

Just a few months ago, I noted I followed an unusually large (for me) number of shows. This time around, I tried following too many shows and ended up DNFing on shows I wanted to follow but didn't get around to finishing even though I never officially dropped them. Apart from that, there were no major deviations from my expectations addressed during my initial impressions.

Go on, take a big whiff.

What does your waifu smell like? This is an under-explored (entirely unexplored?) aspect of 2D romantic interests. Due to the nature of the medium, high-level aficionados obviously know what their anime girlfriends look like and sound like. Those well versed in non-canonical studies likely even have a general idea of these girls' potential sexual proclivities, but who knows what they smell like? Most of the time, the answer is entirely up to speculation, but in certain cases I believe reasonable guesses stand a good chance of being accurate.

There would be so much spatter.

For example, Takane from The iDOLM@STER is known to be a great fan of ramen, regularly consuming bowl after bowl of these delicious noodles (yet with no damage to her trim figure and flat stomach). But it takes even a fast eater quite a long time to scarf so many servings. There's a good chance the spatter from these prolonged meals and the sheer amount of time Taken spends in restaurants and at noodle stands cause her to take on a distinctive ramen scent, at least for the remainder of the day.

Go on, take a big whiff.

In line with at least one comic strip, Takane's Project Fairy compatriot Hibiki almost certainly suffers from an unfortunate side effect of spending all her idle non-idol time among her beloved animal friends: Hibiki's hair probably smells like dog. (Yes, I know.)

With regard to the rest of the 765 Production girls, it's a bit harder to say. Miki eats a lot of onigiri, but I doubt there are any particular olfactory concerns here. In fact, I'm hard pressed to make any reliable guesses as to any of them with the possible exception of Haruka, who probably gives off a slight wiff of floor wax if she's faceplanted on a well-buffed floor recently. For most characters, the clues are not quite as evident as, say, Charlotte Yeager from Strike Witches and who almost certainly smells like motor oil.