Love Live! Sunshine!!

Episode 1-3

Capturing lightning in a bottle once is hard enough. Twice seems downright impossible. And yet that was the task given to the collective creative minds behind the Love Live! franchise, a multimedia phenomenon that has not only reaped millions of dollars since its inception, but has also sparked the boundless devotion of fans across the globe. The companies backing Love Live! could have easily continued milking μ's—the school idol group at the center of the original Love Live!—for years to come, but they chose instead to retire them after two series and a movie and raise a new generation of school idols with Love Live! Sunshine!!.

Some fans were distraught, but in the end, it kind of felt right. There's a poignancy to the fleetingness of happiness. What was experienced, what was loved, can never wane or stagnate. It can only fade into a rose-colored memory, remembered with nostalgia and perhaps a twinge of heartache. It's in that fragile transition that Love Live! Sunshine!! makes its sterling debut. It asks fans of Love Live! not only to trust in a new generation of girls, but also to open their hearts to the possibility of an equal or greater love.

The pontificating seems overly melodramatic for what is essentially just a new season of anime—and an idol show at that—but to understand Love Live! Sunshine!! requires an understanding of its place in the broader context of Love Live!. It's not enough to just replace the nine girls of μ's with palette-swapped girls and sling them on their way to another Love Live! idol competition. For the show to succeed, fans need to be convinced that their devotion to the original nine can be transferred to a whole new group.

Love Live! Sunshine!!, at least in the first three episodes, pulls this off magnificently, even with a new director at the helm (animator Kazuo Sakai), thanks to the relatively newfound complexity of the girls. Sure, the scenery has shifted from Tokyo to a seaside town in Shizuoka Prefecture, and instead of existing in a vacuum where school idols are being presented as a new idea, the characters within Love Live! Sunshine!! already know the in-universe celebrity of μ's. But their motivations are different, as are their personalities. Rather than having an altruistic notion of wanting to save their school from closure, the girls simply want to shine.

The center heroine this time around is a bubbly girl named Chika, who discovers school idols when she chances upon a big screen playing a μ's concert (as she clumsily chases after some flyers that were blown away by the wind). In that moment, she's taken not by their fame nor their success, but by how normal they are. School idols, she realizes, are just normal high schoolers, not necessarily perfect or stunningly beautiful, who are able to come together, create something intangibly magical, and yes, shine. It's that last bit, despite all its inherent anime clichés, that lights a fire under Chika to form her own school idol club.

Near the end of the first episode, she meets a transfer student and musician named Riko. In a moment of vulnerability, Chika admits that unlike Riko's own goal of becoming a pianist, she's never had a dream of what she wanted to become. "I'm a normal person, born on Planet Normal," she says. "No matter how much I change myself, I'm still normal." Like so many of us in the real world, she fears that if she doesn't do something about it, she'll stay normal forever. It's a touching moment for the character, but also for the audience. The fear of never becoming someone can cripple even the strongest person with insecurity. With Chika's dream of reaching new heights, the audience can lend their support. In that moment, her dream becomes one that viewers can invest in, because it's such a normal dream.

Similar to the original Love Live! though, Chika must gather her own crew, an endeavor that will likely be spread out across the next few episodes. By the end of the third episode, we've already at least glimpsed the new group. There's her good friend You, who's just along for the ride, and transfer student Riko, who has her own slate of insecurities, like a fear that her musical talent has already peaked and plateaued. The other girls have been introduced—chuunibyou Yoshiko, mentorly Kanan, rich girl Mari, hardened school council president (but secret school idol otaku) Dia, her cherubic little sister Ruby, and a host of others—but they'll have their moments in the spotlight as the season unfolds. Already, it seems as though Love Live! Sunshine!! wants to be more personal with every girl's motivations for becoming a school idol. Unlike μ's, who were driven by a love for their school, newcomer Aqours (pronounced "Aqua") is about personal growth.

Those with an aversion to cheese might be pulled out of the world on occasion—there's a scene where the girls are snorkeling off the stern of a dive boat and listening for musical inspiration from the sea, and there's one at the end of the second episode where Chika and Riko are leaning from their adjacent balconies, literally reaching for connection—but the series is so sincere in its emotional offerings that it's easy to forgive some silly moments. It certainly helps that the girls are so darned endearing. With a soundtrack worthy of the original and improved dance animation, this new Love Live! creates an atmosphere where it's easy to get pulled into the communal dream of seeing the girls "shine."

It must be said that while Love Live! Sunshine!! is technically a standalone product, it helps to be familiar with the original series. There are small nods to the first series in the form of referential humor, and there's also a reliance on the contextual importance of μ's. The latter may be the biggest barrier to appreciating Love Live! Sunshine!!. It's not that it's difficult to figure out who μ's is and what school idols are, but it's beneficial to a full enjoyment of Love Live! Sunshine!! to understand why so many people (and the characters themselves) are so emotionally invested in the group. Otherwise, it runs the risk of sagging under hype, as with any highly anticipated project.

Still, even as a piece of entertainment, the first three episodes of Love Live! Sunshine!! do a good job of setting up the large cast, as well as crafting a reason for viewers to be invested in what happens next. The basic formula of assembling Aqours may run parallel to the events of the original series, but Sunshine has done well in ensuring that its girls can stand on their own.

Rating: A

Love Live! Sunshine!! is currently streaming on Funimation.