This episode was better to the extent that Chika was less the focus. Ruby and Hanamaru’s stories are a lot more interesting.
What They Say:
Episode 4 – Two Girls’ Feelings
Chika wants the first years Hanamaru and Ruby to join the School Idol Club, but they are both hesitant. We learn about the two and what their true feelings are toward school idols.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The central flaw of Love Live! Sunshine!! so far has been its utter lack of originality which makes the entire production come across as devoid of authenticity. In the absence of that, it’s hard to make any kind of genuine connection to the characters. Why should I feel anything for replacement Honoka when I can just pop in a BD of the real one?
The only way that Sunshine!! could have dispersed all doubts would have been to start things in an entirely fresh manner, trying not to merely fit into the mold of the first series. But that didn’t happen. In retrospect, the warning sign was already there before the first episode even loaded into my browser for me to watch. There were nine members of the new group, just as there were nine in µ’s. I should have been more on guard.
Can they recover from such a poor start? I will not expect this show to leave the safe confines of the box it sits in, which we could label “µ’s clone,” so that’s pretty much off the table. It was even more off the table the moment I saw Chika’s training outfit, which incorporates チ chi into its design in exactly the same way Honoka’s shirt says ほ ho on it. (As if using hiragana for one and katakana for the other makes any difference. Please). For good measure, Chika’s desire to run up and down stairs at a local shrine for stamina training is because µ’s did it. As if the copycatting could not be taken any further, the group will be practicing on the school roof as no other spaces are available for them. The production staff is so deathly afraid of diverging from the formula, they cannot even fathom altering minor and completely inconsequential details.
That’s the C/C+ part of the show, the vapid mimeographing (we’re a step below using a modern photocopier here) of the original Love Live! So, what’s the B- part?
That’s because even though it wasn’t original and it wasn’t a great revelation of any kind, the personal story between Hanamaru and Ruby at least produced a modicum of feeling. Sure, the archetypes are quite tired at this point: the pretty bookworm and the ultra-shy friend, both of whom met when they retreated from the outside world into the Library (a common female character type, especially in dating sims, perhaps finding its ultimate manga/anime expression in Shiori Shiomiya of The World God Only Knows). But the execution was…eh…good enough, even though to this point the only thing said about Hanamaru in-show was that she is pretty. It was nice to hear her internal voice, not Chika’s (Chika, frankly, is getting a touch annoying; the less she is on screen, the more the show improves). And more than that, Hanamaru’s genuine feelings for her friend came through.
With Ruby, we get more of Dia’s backstory. Whatever it was, she had once been a fan of Eli Ayase’s, but when Dia took on the student council president role herself, she became opposed to all school idols. Hanamaru, however, pushes Ruby to be true to her own feelings, since it’s clear Ruby has never stopped liking school idols and only run away from the idea out of loyalty to her sister. Seeing Ruby stand up for her own feelings and then reciprocate the moral support Hanamaru offered her by drawing her friend out of lonely isolation in the Library and into the…ugh…sunshine…was at least touching. Ruby to this point was just a fetish object, hiding behind objects (yes, I find it cute too, but that’s not enough to sustain an entire episode, let alone a multimedia franchise). Now, we finally got to see what was going on inside the two girls’ heads. It was not a blockbuster spectacle, but it works to drive one episode forward.
The problem is what comes next, based upon the next episode title and preview.
In Summary:
Chika and her club gets off the ground with a clubroom and official status, but now the process continues for getting the band together, so to speak. The first targets are the first-year students Hanamaru and Ruby, though the work is mainly done by Hanamaru (and frankly, the less Chika, the better for me with this show). If only the show could more consistently feel like there is some genuine feeling in the characters and do less outright copying of the original franchise. I have my doubts, though, that that’s even possible, now that we’re one-third of the way into this season’s episodes.
Grade: C+/B-
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 12GB RAM, Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite
