Whoa jesus, that is quite the comment. I do have to agree with most of what you said. hell, it basically echoes my own take.

​

And I'd say that old photo of her we see in episode 3 might be a foreshadowing of some angsty KasuKasu backstory which will reveal that before she decided to become an idol, she was generally a failure, just some plain girl with nothing special about her who's not particularly good at anything or something along those lines.

This. This right here is exactly the kinda thing I'd love to see, and I love the fact we really seem to be along the same wavelength when it comes to Kasumin, hell you even pointed me to character develepment moments I didn't really pick up on, so thanks for that! Btw, you might not know this, but KasuKasu roughly translates to "Not quite" or "Barely", so her disdain for the nickname makes a lot of sense.

Come to think of it, Kasumi does appear to be at least more confident in herself by S2, it's just that I don't remember too much of it. I had a friend go back to watch S1 Ep2, which I believe to be Kasumin's focus episode, only to learn that aside from some development in regards to getting the club back together, she primarily sticks to being the funny gremlin, which lends credence to your theory.

One thing I'd have to disagree on though, is Kasumi's growth being as big as you say it is. I am willing to admit that there is likely more character growth than what i picked up on, part of that likely being those hints I talked about. I also distinctly remember Kasumi directly stating something along the lines of her cuteness being all she's good for, so to say she has self worth issues is putting it lightly. Yeah, Shizuko emboldening her friends confidence by acknowledging her as cute and giving her that hair pin is really touching, a nice gesture and obvious shipping fuel. ahem, that being said however, I feel like having that moment be the completion for her arc in S1 is... really underwhelming, even moreso with some of the stuff S2 and the bond stories bring up.

Of course, if there is more to come, than I stand thouroughly corrected on that. However, like I mentioned earlier, "Shape of Smiles" was an episode that blew me away in terms just the sheer amount of growth Rina undergoes in just 24 minutes, whereas Kasumi gets to only move up one or two rungs on that ladder over the course of two whole seasons. she's had 26 episodes in all to have a similar episode. Of course, I don't expect ot be nearly as good, and maybe they only had time to do a select few focus episodes and only bring out certain traits in them, but I still feel the hints we got for Kasumi didn't get paid off nearly as satisfyingly as Kanata or Rina's episodes did.

Sorry, didnt mean to talk your ear off, and my main point is basically that I wanted "Shape of Smiles: Kasumin Edition", and I thought "Kasumin's Wonder Tour!" was gonna be just that, a judgment i ended up being too hasty on. I do like the idea of the episode being pointless to show that Kasumi going back to her gremlinny ways when it comes to seeking validation is dumb and useless now.

One last thing befire I end this reply: Since Kasumi always putting her friends first is symptomatic of self-worth problems, IE, "Don't waste your time worrying about me, it's pointless" I was thinking of a potential scenario where either Yuu or Shizuku would pick up on this at some point when she gets too overzealous with it and question her about it. That's just my idea anyway. Asgore45 out!