Love Live! Sunshine!!

Episode 11

Friendship, in all its iterations, can be a beautiful thing. It can be warm, it can be supportive, and it can be loving, but it can hurt a lot too, especially when you feel it slipping away from you. So it's fitting that a show built around central themes like "friendship" and "teamwork" would also spend time on its cloudier side. We saw a few episodes ago with the third-years how something like sacrifice could morph into isolation with just a simple lack of communication. This week, we see how Chika's strident support for Riko can have other unintended consequences as well, namely feelings of increased abandonment from You.

This You episode has been a long time coming, and it's great to finally get her time in the spotlight. For much of the season, she's been relegated to the perpetual sidekick and the occasional visual gag as the resident uniform otaku. Virtually everyone else has had their moment to shine except You, who's largely been unintroduced outside her role as "Chika's friend." Now that Chika is spending more time with Riko and the other girls, You worries that she's being left behind and Chika doesn't need her anymore. It's a touching episode because it's just so real. Who hasn't felt pangs of jealousy when their best friends have started spending more time with new people? Who hasn't felt left out on occasion or worried that their friends were drifting away? Who hasn't acted out, as You did wearing her sailor uniform during pool cleaning, to try and be funnier and sunnier to recapture their friend's attention?

During the episode, You looks more and more out of touch with her best friend. She sees Chika linger behind as Riko leaves for Tokyo, and she sees the way that Chika's face lights up when Riko calls. But for You, it's not just a worry that her friend may have found stronger connections elsewhere, but also a worry that the activity they share together no longer holds any special meaning for Chika. Touching back on the importance of communication, many of You's feelings are compounded by a lack of it. For her, the school idol club has meant a lot because it was finally an activity that she and Chika could do together. It turns out that Chika has felt the same way all along, even with the addition of the other seven girls. It's somewhat bittersweet when the third-years find Chika's original club application form. Even they had thought it was originally just Chika and Riko instead of Chika and You, underscoring just how much that initial determination meant to both girls.

There's a great metaphor in this episode, which is made all the more wonderful because it's organic to the series. When Riko leaves for Tokyo to prepare for her piano competition, You needs to fill in for a dance sequence, which involves her and Chika stepping towards each other and meeting in the middle. They keep colliding into each other because Chika has already memorized Riko's particular step pattern. You says that she'll do her best to mimic Riko's gait, but in the end, Chika tells her to just be herself and use her own steps. They start over from scratch, and by the time the Love Live! qualifiers come around, they're perfectly in sync.

Speaking of the Love Live! qualifier, props have to be given for how great this episode's song is (and pretty much all of the songs in Love Live! Sunshine!!). The harmony at the beginning sent waves of happiness and chills down my spine (and for what it's worth, it's more musically ambitious than most of the songs from the original Love Live!), though I couldn't help but laugh at the awkward pantomime of piano playing. I know it was supposed to be a sweet tribute to Riko, but it looked like the girls were controlling puppets or doing some kind of weird hocus pocus.

Overall, this episode was a hit. I've long thought You was the outlier in terms of fleshed-out characters, and this episode did a lot to give her more dimension. It's true that only a few of the characters actually have fully rounded backstories, but with nine girls and only eleven episodes so far, the series has done remarkably well exploring its cast. There will undoubtedly be more character development in the second season, but even with the introductions and character spotlights given up until now, Love Live! Sunshine!! has managed to create girls with more emotional complexity than their predecessors. As the Aqours members continue to grow outside of the shadow of μ's, it'll be great to see where the series takes them as the season draws to an end.

Rating: A+

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

Bamboo has a childhood fear of marionettes. Follow her on Twitter.