Love Live! Sunshine!! Episode 1: I Want to Shine! (First Impression)

Here we go, more wives for people to choose from. I already call dibs on Yoshiko/Yohane.

She’s so silly. I guess I’m drawn to the idols with personas. *blows kiss* Also, her deep voice makes me tingly.

I’m going to admit, I was worried going into this show. I’m so biased towards Muse and I’m trying to change that about myself. When I first saw the PV for Sunshine, I noticed that there were a lot of similarities to School Idol Project. Orange-haired protagonist wants to start a school idol club but has trouble finding members, and the mean student council president keeps rejecting the idea. Also, the characters seem a little similar to Muse. The only difference is that the school doesn’t need any saving. The reason for wanting to start the school idol club is different.

Here we’re introduced to Chika Takami. A happy-go-lucky normal girl. She’s always wanted to be special and make something of herself but she’s never found anything to pursue. She’s always been living life normally. It wasn’t until one say she was down in Akiba with You that she met a maid handing out flyers, and when the papers were blown away Chika went after them. One paper was blown especially far, and she followed it and stumbled upon a giant screen. The screen showed Muse’s performance of START DASH, and that damn song always makes me cry. :’) Out of all their songs, it’s their first one. Anyway, after that, she was hooked and ever since then she wanted to become a school idol. She listened to all of Muse’s songs and memorized them and watched all of their performances, so she immediately got into school idols. The rest of the episode is Chika trying to recruit people into the club, but of course she’s met with difficulties. I at least appreciate that we don’t have the same plot from School Idol Project, because I was worried about that. But Chika simply wants to create a school idol group because she wants to. She finally has something she aspires to be. I loved her little talk with Riko on the beach. That even when the girls of Muse look normal, they’re still something. So that means even when she’s normal, she can become something too.

We got introduced to all of the soon-to-be Aquors girls too, but they were all scenes we saw in the PV. You is Chika’s best friend from childhood, and while she’s already in the swim team, she signed herself up for the school idol club because it’s Chika (kinda like Umi). We meet Hanamaru and Ruby, who’s so damn shy that she screams like she’s being murdered whenever someone touches her. Yohane, who fell out of a tree. Mari, the rich bitch who rode to her mansion in her private helicopter. Kanan, who seems to have known Chika and You for awhile. She’s been taking a break from school because her father’s hurt, and for whatever reason she had a weird reaction when Chika mentioned her school idol club. Riko, who Chika met earlier on the beach when she tried jumping into the water in April. She composes music and plays piano (hmm, that sounds familiar). Also, she transferred from Otonokizaka, so that’s important! And lastly, Dia the school council president who looks like a mean bitch but she actually has a dorky side. It was revealed that someone had tried starting a school idol club before but Dia rejected it. Her family owns a fishing business and she doesn’t like “silly” things like school idols at the school, which is why she keeps rejecting the idea. Nothing too deep, basically she’s just boring.

And of course, they’re all going to join later. Even when Dia disapproves, and Riko rejected Chika in the end, we all know that they’re going to join anyway. Which is a little boring. Like with School Idol Project, I was watching each episode thinking “When the hell is Eli and Nozomi going to join?!” I hope they don’t take too long here too. Like I said, I saw some similarities, most of them coming from the characters. Chika is the new Honoka. She’s happy, excited, and her voice is so damn loud. So I already know I won’t like her. Riko looks like the next Maki, but cuter and more likeable. Dia is the Eli, but we see her dorkier side immediately. Yohane is basically Nico and I love that. I guess Ruby is Hanayo? I don’t want to compare them to Muse, but I just see it that way. Characters, I already picked my fave, but I can’t say anything about them right now since we only really focused on mostly Chika, so I need to see more. Riko seems so cute though.

The episode started off like any other first episode, good but nothing too special. We’re just getting started, we won’t see anything too spectacular until later. I know things are going to go well for Chika and we’ll get Aquors later, I just hope the journey to the idol group won’t be slow, which is one problem I had with School Idol Project.

With all idol anime, we get our generic idol music. We got the opening song, of course, then we got a small performance from the second years. Was the music good? Mmm…well let me start with the opening. Their outfits were cute. Visually, I liked it. The visuals in general in the show were great, I feel like the CGI has improved. As for the song, I’m not sure. As well as the second year performance. It was cute, but it didn’t slap me in the face with me shouting “I love it!”. Honestly, I don’t even remember how both of the songs go. Hand in Hand was more catchier though, so out of both songs, I prefer that one. Since I’m going to hear the opening song each week, my mind will probably change later on. I might need to just hear it more and it’ll grow on me. Actually, that’s how I’ve felt for Aquors’ songs. They’re good, but they don’t catch me. Sometimes I need to listen to them more for me to like them. That’s not exactly a good thing so I hope that changes. That hasn’t been the case with all of their songs, though.

Sunshine!! got a good start, I’m excited to see more of it. I was never following the manga or the drama CDs because to me, the anime counts. I didn’t really know anything about the girls before this, so I hope these girls can really separate themselves from Muse plot-wise and character-wise. Let’s hope for the best for these girls.

Possibility of watching: Of course

Possibility of blogging: This is all mine.