Love Live! Sunshine!! – 04
Whew, this post writing stuff can be tiring!
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I’m so bad at writing opening lines. I always end up putting what I thought was a clever line in the first paragraph instead. So imagine there’s something more clever here. |
I Declare This Club Open
Congrats on your club, now get to work!
And with an enthusiastic flourish from Mari, Uranohoshi has a school idol club! Normal activities begin such as cleaning the (fancy) club room and recruiting members. And of course, the first people on the prospective list are Ruby and Hanamaru. They’re really the only ones of the 6 remaining characters that we know will join Aquors who have shown any overt interest in being in the group. Dia has been totally against the whole idea and Mari has been the group’s advocate, but only so far as canceling out Dia. Kanan has been an enigma throughout, although there’s a hint about her in this episode. And Yohane is still a whackaloon.
There’s your Yohane picture, no complaining!
So you cast your rod where you know there’s fish. Ruby is super excited about them getting club status, because she wants to see more performances, but Chika’s not holding back for any of that. She fairly dragoons Hanamaru and Ruby into service, only to be stopped by Riko and You telling her not to pick on her kouhai. But the reality is that Ruby definitely wants to, and Hanamaru thinks she wants to do Ruby a favor, getting her out from Dia’s influence to be able to do what she wants.
She’s like a cat, thinking that she’s hidden
Domineering Older Sister
Before Dia turned into super crabby emoji-girl
The slightly larger portion of this episode goes to Ruby, as describing her relationship with Dia. Both loved school idols, but for some reason Dia turned 180 and banned Ruby from having anything to do with school idols in her sight, in her grumpy Dia way. But Hanamaru figures out a way to encourage Ruby and also to get Dia to understand that Ruby should be her own person (with the obligatory stand-up-for-yourself scene for Ruby). And feeling like she’s the first stage of a rocket, Hanamaru’s happy that she’s sent Ruby up to the stars and is happy enough to fall back to earth, not being cut out for being an idol herself. But it wasn’t like Hanamaru was struggling too much, and stamina is something that can be gained with work. And so Ruby reaches back to pull Hanamaru up with her.
Hanamaru is happy to send Ruby on her way…
And Ruby follows through with Dia
Mari is a bit flouncy
As far as the Other Member Watch, Mari’s working on Kanan, who has her own reasons for not joining. I don’t know why Mari is such a champion of Chika’s group, but she says that she’s come back solely because of the group. And Dia is probably going through some personal turmoil and we’re going to relive the reasons she became anti-school idol soon. I’m going to guess that it’s something like “she wanted to start a school idol group in high school and had her dream squashed by some grouchy upperclassman.” And Yohane is only on the radar because we know she’s in the group eventually and the show keeps putting her on-screen.
Ruby doesn’t let Hanamaru let go
I know I’ve been saying that comparisons to the other series are something to avoid, but I think Sunrise has decided “Screw that noise, we’re going to make it as alike as we want.” Hanamaru and Ruby track Rin and Hanayo’s story so much that this show throws a lampshade on it and uses Rin as Hanamaru’s attachment to µ’s. Maybe it took a little more pulling to get Hanamaru to join, but it was essentially the same arc. The show also throws in a lot of the same things that µ’s did, such as running up stairs for training, and says “This is what µ’s did, so we should do it too!” This does set up maybe the opportunity later for Aquors to have a significant break from “what µ’s did” but it runs the risk of making the shows be a bit too samey-samey. I think we all expect them to have the same beats, but when they start having the same melody, there are definite risks of overdoing it. Heck, they even put Chika in the same workout outfit as Honoka: An off-the-shoulder shirt with the first character of her name over a tank top. Maybe the show will work as “µ’s-mania” but I think most of us would like to see it diverge a bit.
Granted, the others don’t have exact copies of outfits
About Highway
Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!
POWUH: 800-899 and Self-proclaimed Manga Queen with 874 comments
~Am I the only one who caught this?? I’m surprised I haven’t seen other people bringing it up because this would mean that Sunshine takes place 5 years after µ’s (which also means…college µ’s), and also explains why Riko didn’t know who they were despite being from the same school.
Anyway, I’m disappointed, but not surprised, at the rehash of certain story arcs from the original series lol. I like they changes they made from the original and wish they could just keep it up. Anyway, I’m excited from Yohane to finally show up for more than just a brief, weird occurrence~
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I’ve been trying to reconcile the timeline a bit, and I thought I had seen that before, but the things I was more thinking about were that Ruby and Dia were obsessed with µ’s something like 3 years ago, before Dia had her high school idol dream shot down. The 5th year anniversary actually works better, because Riko would have likely been 3 years behind Rin, Maki, and Hanayo, if Otonokizaki rotates ribbons by graduating year (although Uranohoshi uses all yellow ribbons for all first years, it seems).
That makes the real weird thing “Why were they showing µ’s on the screen outside of the school during Chika’s trip to Tokyo 4 years after the fact?” You’d certainly think they have other, more topical, groups to show.
POWUH: 800-899 and Self-proclaimed Manga Queen with 874 comments
~I’m assuming they still show µ’s videos because they became the mascots of the Love Live and are still considered ‘legends’, especially if years from now there are girls who still want to imitate them.
And lol at me automatically assuming ‘Love Live = µ’s’, but either way there’s still a significant time gap between the original. I don’t know why, but I’m genuinely curious about the timeline lol…
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I have a tendency to understand the capacity to be a caretaker/custodian/minder of, say, US comic book time lines and continuities. But for an idol group!?
Spider-Niko!
Captain Honkers!
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Wait…Love Live’s 5th Anniversary. That’s not necessarily µ’s 5th Anniversary…IOW the contest, not the group featured in two previous series and a movie… Now how that might square up the time-line, I have no clue (and honestly little care, it’s an emotional thing, not a calendar thing…)
But on the much more positive side, I really adore these two. It’s mostly because they underline the very opposite ideal that Dia insist’s on, which is…we’re here to have a bit of fun…you know what that is right?
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
I haven’t seen the original anime, so all this feels new to me. But since Chika always says what they’re doing to copy µ’s, I know where some of the similarities lie. And yes, I also think this might be a set-up for a future episode where Aquors is finally confident enough to branch out and be their own group. Afterall, they can stay in the shadows for only so long. At least, I hope this happens…
Also ahh Hanamaru is really cute!
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Hamamaru is fantastic!
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Well, a lot of the “µ’s did this, so we’ll do it” is because “Hey, it worked for them”. Running stairs *is* a good way to build stamina over time. Practicing on the rooftop *will* give you a place to practice (although I was just waiting for Dia to bust in with the “You can’t practice here, you don’t have permission!”).
And I’ll also say that if you like this show, then you’ll like the first set of shows. Not because they’re totally the same, but because the feel is the same. The same positivity, the same bubbliness, the same kind of story. I will say that Love Live S2 is pretty much a victory lap, but it’s totally what you want to see, or at least what I wanted to see.