Love Live! Sunshine!!

Episode 6

Love Live! Sunshine!! seems to have some identity issues. It desperately wants to be its own entity, but try, try, try as it might, it can't free itself from the shackles of the first Love Live!. This is a problem that's been building for the past few episodes, but this week might have been the icing on the cake. It seems Uranohoshi Girls' High School is on the verge of shutting down due to low enrollment, and it's up to the girls of Aqours to try and save their school by boosting interest in their school idol club.

This latest development almost feels like a bad joke. As if Sunshine!!'s dependency on μ's wasn't enough, it's now actually borrowed a plot point from its predecessor. The writers try to differentiate it by varying some of the girls' reactions—Chika is thrilled because of the parallels with μ's, Yoshiko is happy because Numazu is more cosmopolitan, and Hanamaru is just happy because she's fascinated by the modernity that a larger city can offer. But all of these responses mostly feel like distractions, meant to convince viewers that Sunshine!! didn't just lazily ape its predecessor. If the intention was just to give the girls a reason to discover the heart of their town, there were other ways the show could've gone about it. And if the intention was for the story similarity to be tongue-in-cheek, then the seriousness of the episode doesn't really bear that out.

Regardless of the writers' intentions, we're now stuck with a recycled story in a series that just can't seem to figure out what it wants to be. The most frustrating thing about Love Live! Sunshine!! is that it's filled with great moments, but the series can't let go of the safety line long enough to stretch its wings and fly. So instead, it's a collection of sweet scenes that feel more like mismatched puzzle pieces than a cohesive picture.

This episode especially feels like a jumbled stew of thoughts. We get an intriguing flashback to a defining time in Dia's life when she, Mari, and Kanan attempted to be school idols. We get a vague conversation between Mari and Kanan that seems to allude to the same period of time. And then we get some comedic moments, like the Aqours girls trying to find positive things to say about their sleepy seaside town and Riko's continued fear of dogs. Eventually, the episode ends on a high note when Chika pinpoints the true magic of her village, and we get an incredible shot of everyone sending up paper lanterns that spell out AQOURS—but not before a jarring CG dance scene involving the girls and some uncharacteristically dowdy costumes.

Had the series stayed away from the school closure angle and tried just a little harder to balance the lighter and more serious emotional tones, this could've been a great episode. The Dia storyline has a lot of potential (I'm very eager to learn more about it), and there's a lot to be said for Aqours' folksy charm. It's one of the best things that separates the group from μ's. If μ's was about go-get-em urbanites that had to contend with big city rivals, Aqours is all about whimsy and participation. They're the scrappy underdogs from a town no one's ever heard of, borne from a desire just to be seen and heard.

But week after week, Love Live! Sunshine!! is more about what it could be than what it actually is. And every week, I hope that an episode will go by without the writers leaning heavily on the original series. But this episode seemed more ridiculous than most, borrowing not only the original series' character motivations and fame, but its story entirely. It's a little ironic that two of the characters cite the impending school closure as reasons to work harder as school idols. Both essentially say that the similarities between their school and Otonokizaka High will help spur them on to success, but that's backwards. μ's was formed to save their school; Aqours was formed because μ's gave them the inspiration to become something bigger than themselves, and to break out of their molds. Forcing Sunshine!! back into that mold just doesn't seem right. But maybe that's the point, and that's what the characters will realize as the season eventually draws to an end. If that's the case, then I guess all the frustration will have been worth it.

Rating: B-

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

Bamboo has known since the first episode that Dia is the best girl, and she's sticking to it. Follow her on Twitter.