Love Live! Sunshine!! Episode 8: Isn’t it Frustrating?

The episode didn’t go exactly how I envisioned, but it was still what I wanted. This had to be the best episode of Sunshine yet. Lots of drama, and not cringey like the original Love Live. It felt real to me. Also

There she is. She really didn’t do much of anything this episode, but at least she appeared. More screentime for Kanan, please. Please, we hardly know this girl. Please!

After Saint Snow’s performance, I thought that Aquors would go on stage and freeze, from the discouragement they felt after that. But that didn’t happen. After we saw Saint Snow absolutely dominate with the next coolest song ever since Shocking Party, Aquors went up there and apparently they did really well. We didn’t see their performance but I don’t think it was necessary since we knew what song they were going to sing, and we saw it all anyway. However, we did get to see Saint Snow perform and god dammit why do the rival groups always get the better songs?! I LOVED their song, it was just so cool and badass and I was moving around to it the whole time they were singing it. I hope their song gets a full release, like A-RISE’s songs did. Their dance was cool, their clothes cute, adding some rap to the song was a nice touch. Maybe I just like their image. Idols are expected to be cute, but these girls are a little edgy. Very cool, I loved them. But as we find out later, they didn’t do as well as they wanted to.

Of course that’s nothing compared to Aquors. They cut off from Aquors walking onto stage, and after the OP, we see the girls in I guess Tokyo Tower gazing out from the top level, and you can tell by their voices and lack of movement and excitement that their show didn’t go well. We learn that they didn’t win the competition, and that’s why they’re so down. We see Chika being upset, but pretends it’s all fine by bringing the girls ice cream. And she reassures them that it’s fine, because they were invited to a large show in Tokyo and that they had their best performance yet. But we could clearly see that Chika was upset.

But what she said was true. A small group like them from the country, going to Tokyo and performing well in front of a lot of people is not bad. Gotta look on the bright side, right, even if they lost? But wait, it only gets worse. The woman that works with the school idol association calls Chika and the others to come back and get the results of the competition. Apparently, audience vote decided the winners. Saint Snow placed in 8th out of 30 groups, which is good, but not good enough to be in the winners group. Where was Aquors? Sadly, they were in 30th place. Dead last. And how many votes did they get? None. 0. No votes. AT ALL. And I think this happening is a lot worse than them bombing on stage, because they were still a little down but starting to look on the bright side and thinking “Hey! At least we tried our best!”. Until they look at the results and see that no one even batted an eyelash at them.

OUCH.

That really was a painful to see. Just imagine, supposedly you’re getting really popular, to not get any votes by the public in a competition. So how on Earth can they think to take part in Love Live after this? This really discourages them. As they look at the results, the girls from Saint Snow appear and tell them how pretty their song was, but they were blunt and said that they shouldn’t take Love Live easily, with one of them even crying, while also telling them that they should quit. And I was like YES! MMM!! THANK YOU!

Because that’s what I was feeling. I felt like the girls, Chika especially, was taking all of this too lightly. She always going on about Muse, how much she admires Muse, how much she basically wants to be like them, and how naive I felt she was. Just simply liking school idols and making others feel happy isn’t enough. It’s a lot of hard work. We could see just from their performance that Saint Snow was on a whole other level than Aquors, You could see it, and I think Chika could see it as well. Ever since A-RISE and Muse, school idols have become such a huge and popular thing now that thousands of groups are out there, and the expectations for these groups have gotten higher and more strict. Just simple being good singers and dancers isn’t enough, and that’s why Aquors did so horribly. It was a complete failure.

This is why Dia was so against the whole school idol thing. She didn’t want the girls to fail, like she and Kanan and Mari. Dia explains basically what we all know. The three girls made their own group, but that’s because at that time there was also a rumor that Uranohoshi was going to close and combine, so they made an idol group to save the school. They did well enough to get invited to perform in Tokyo, like Aquors, but the sheer pressure of performing on that stage in front of so many people freaked them out too much, and they couldn’t even sing. Ever since then, it’s created this rift among the third years.

Lots of drama and tears this episode. In the only few moments Kanan was there, all we really know about her is that she’s adamant about giving up and never going back to any idol business. Mari wants to go back to the happy days, to that sweet and precious feeling she had with her best friends, but Kanan is having none of it and Mari is devastated. This was the first time we saw Mari like this and we really know what her motives are. She just wants the happy days with her friends back, but none of her attempts seem to be working. Kanan decides giving up is better to do, and Dia…well, I feel like she’s kind of the same way. I would be thrilled if we had an episode focused on only the third years, and we might get that next week.

Chika’s breakdown at the beach was probably the best part of the episode. I would have been bored if they just went on being happy and okay with everything. I’m glad Chika got mad and frustrated, because it was such a real reaction. Like she said, they practiced a lot, sang a lot, excercised a lot, made costumes together, made a video together, and to get 0 votes? I would have had the same reaction, so I’m glad Chika got all of that out of her system instead of pretending everything was all right when it really wasn’t. In the end, of course, they’re going to work harder.

What an intense episode. Honestly the best episode so far. I saw Kanan in the preview for next week’s episode so please…I’m begging you…I want more Kanan. Please please please, stop ignoring her!