Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Season 2

Episode 9

“I feel certain...that it's impossible to create something every single person will love. And what's wrong with that? Just enjoying the process of creation makes you happy. As long as someone out there in the world gets it, even if you're just two of a kind, wouldn't that be a great stroke of luck?

That line comes for Time Paradox Ghostwriter, a very short-lived Shonen Jump manga that is entirely too convoluted to detail here, but ended on an emotional note that's managed to stick with me well after its time-traveling microwave manga story has faded from memory. And while that quote's more about the definition of “successful” art in a society where creative expression is inescapably tethered to industry and commercialism, it kept bouncing around in my gray matter as this episode delved into Mia's personal conflict and relationship to music. For her, the pressure to please everyone comes from the expectations of her family name rather than the demands of, say, the music industry. But at its heart the struggle is the same as any artist, and trying to find the right place between making something that has meaning to you and something that matters to other people can be truly paralyzing.

Speaking for myself, I'm a fan of indulgent, personal art. While there's much to enjoy about broadly aimed, well-executed entertainment that's more or less “universal”, the stuff that most concretely sticks inside my brain and heart are works where you can tell the people making it were basically creating something just for them, any chance of being marketable be damned. Obviously Love Live! is never going to get that radical, but I still appreciate the sentiment that Mia doesn't need to worry about making music to please everyone, or to achieve some lofty definition of success or fame. The essential thing is that she wants to sing.

And this is the song she's singing, ironically something that probably would have been a huge hit around 2011. Like I can easily imagine seeing the thumbnail for this music video in the YouTube sidebar, sandwiched between “Fireflies” and “Call Me Maybe” with 7 million views and embarrassing cat face emoticons in the video title. The song itself is solid, though the fully English lyrics are likely going to be hit-or-miss. While Mia's voice actress, Shū Uchida, speaks fluent English, it's obvious the person who wrote this song doesn't, and the result is a lot of uncanny grammar and strange meters that you'll either find charming or cringe-inducing, possibly both. If you've ever listened to English covers of anime themes on YouTube, you know what I'm talking about. Combined with the deviantart cat hoodie Mia sports through most of this, it makes for a decidedly awkward production, but that honestly just enhances the charm for me. I'd probably put this and “Eutopia” as my favorite tunes from this season so far, and the character-focused visuals do a lot to sell me Mia's resolution in this episode in the same way Shioriko's did.

Which is important, because this is again a conflict that's been hamstrung by the narrative structure of this whole season. I like a lot of the ideas behind both Mia and Lanzhu's characters here, and through sheer gumption it mostly works, but I found myself giving things a lot of leeway along the way. Like yeah, I can absolutely imagine how Lanzhu's HBIC energy can both captivate and rub people the wrong way, so I understand her reasoning for why she needs to stay solo rather than wrecking more friendships by joining the School Idol Club. The problem is we never really see that happen in the show itself, as Lanzhu's had maybe two meaningful conversations with the rest of the cast since she arrived, in which basically everyone besides Kasumin was instantly ready to welcome her into Yu Takasaki's harem. I imagine this made more sense in the mobile game's version of events, where I gather Lanzhu was a more antagonistic force than she is here, but as-is the audience is going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting to make this conflict work.

All that said, this episode on its own still works, both for Mia and Lanzhu. Even without a full understanding of how they met or what led Lanzhu to her self-isolation, sometimes the right combination of music and earnestness can smooth over those bumps. And while the cast is still too large to stay upright under its own strength, they do make better use of the Nijigasakids here, letting just a couple of key members be the difference makers in Mia and Lanzhu's stories, while the rest play support roles. It's sweet and fitting that Rina is the one who helps Mia step out of her own anxieties, considering her own struggle to express herself in season one. And it's funny that Emma and Lanzhu are bonding over their duty as their respective girlfriends' alarm clocks. Now that the main character drama is resolved, it even looks like we'll be getting back to some good ol' fashioned Love Live! shenanigans, and I certainly won't say no to that.

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Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.