Love Live! Sunshine!! – 02

Dia is unimpressed with the summer anime so far

And now we’re into the part of the season where we talk about what actually happens in the show. This is like the opening song to the Garry Shandling show!

We’re on a Mission from God. Not Really.

“What part of No do you not understand?”

It takes a while to put a group together. And Chika’s working on it, but is taking a lot of time to find person #3. Pretty much the whole episode was focused on the pursuit of Riko to try to get her to join. But she’s adamant that she’s not going to join, no matter how many times Chika asks. And even as Chika gets a bit more annoying about it, she also seems to come to a realization about bothering Riko and that she needs to change her tactic. This leads to Chika just talking to Riko about herself, and what’s bothering her.

“I saw this in an anime…”

They return to the idea of hearing the sound of the ocean, and Chika decides to help her out, not even holding any conditions over her head. And she finds out that Riko has had a bit of a mental block about playing piano, although it’s really played up a lot. If you’re worried that you’re not improving, you don’t flake out on a performance on stage. I think someone watched a little bit too much of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso and decided they liked that kind of worrying. The other thing that goes a little bit wrong in this episode is the fact that all Chika, Riko, and You would be dead after drowning from staying underwater too long while snorkeling. But they get a little advice from Kanan about using your imagination underwater because your ears don’t work that well, and a little bit of help from the sun finally reaches Riko.

Caught in the crossfire

That doesn’t mean Riko’s in the group yet, tho. She’s going to help with the music, but needs some lyrics to go with it. And Chika cheaps out by ending up just writing down Yume no Tobira for her. But what I thought did work well from a message standpoint was Chika’s final appeal to Riko. Riko has been saying she doesn’t have time to be a school idol because she’s trying to find her sound on the piano, but Chika realizes that the way she’s going about it isn’t working. So why not change it up? Do something different for a while. If it works, then great! If it doesn’t work, then you go back to something else. It’s a nice patient way to think about it, and it takes being able to assess honestly how things are going. Riko’s made no progress, so it’s time to change. And it’s not ‘quitting’ with either one.

“I’ll save you!!!!” “It’s not that dramatic, you doofus.”

Check-In With The Rest

“I’ll join if you kiss me!” Dia thinks she’s in another kind of show

You and Hanamaru just watch as Chika toys with Ruby

One of the things about a show like this is that you kind of know the ending. You know who’s going to end up in the group, so the question is how do they get there. So they make sure to have everyone up to date in the show, from Dia’s refusal to have a school idol group even though she’s secretly a complete fan of μ’s, to Yohane’s wacky invitation to everyone to be her “Little Devil” before she left school for two weeks. Some people have hardly been introduced, like Mari, who we’ve only seen fly over in a helicopter, and Kanan, who just seems like Chika and You’s diving friend. I do hope we get more on all of these others, although I figure that half of them will join just because the plot demands it.

An excuse for wetsuits

There’s almost an art to knowing when to keep doing what you’re doing, and knowing when to bag it and try something else. It’s something that I am constantly trying to evaluate as I go through life, in both work and in play, such as something like World of Warcraft raiding. You need to honestly evaluate how you’re doing, and if there’s improvement in results, because sometimes it’s bad to change everything up when you’re on the right track. And sometimes it’s hard to deal with other people in that kind of situation as well, because they might not see the same indicators that you do, or they might read them differently from you. What this really means is that there’s no standard way to go through life, and I like that the show is presenting that, even a little bit. Especially in a medium like anime, where almost the entirety of the message is “Try harder and you’ll win.” I think that Love Live! Sunshine!! in this episode put two big qualifiers on both of those points: Sometimes it’s not better to try harder, and sometimes you need to think about what ‘winning’ means.