At the end of the second episode last week, Mari had gotten a phone call from her father. We find out now that the open house has to be postponed until the next week. Which is a huge problem for them because it’s the same Sunday as the Love Live qualifiers. The conflict of this episode is figuring out how they’re going to perform for both events.
They all go over many things such as buses, helicopters, and boats to reach their destination. The qualifiers are first and the girls are finding ways to return to the school in time to do their performance. Dia also brings up the possibility of them performing in the qualifiers first so they have plenty of time to return to school but the way to decide the order is through a lottery. And like anyone could have guessed, it turned into a Nico situation again. The girls can’t decide who should go up. First they say Chika should go because she’s the leader but Riko checks her horoscope and it says very bad luck. They ask Mari but no, then they suggest You which I thought was a fine idea. But then Yoshiko pipes up and says she’ll use her fallen angel powers to get them the first spot and this is when I knew things would go badly. They all know that Yoshiko has bad luck so why in the world did they think it was a good idea to let her do the lottery? They should have just sent You in to do it but they all screwed up and got a spot in the 20’s. At this point the girls are at a complete loss and have no idea what to do. It’s either perform in one thing and not perform in the other, with Love Live being the winner. But then we have our usual ChikaRiko moment because You doesn’t exist at all and then they have an idea where they’ll split up. Some of them will perform at the qualifiers and the other half will perform at school. Which doesn’t sit well with anyone.
But in the end when Chika, Riko, and You are hanging out after school Chika gets an idea related to the mikan oranges. Turns out someone from her class owns the mikan fields and Chika asked her if, after running through the mountains, they could take a ride on their mikan cart thing. Which they did and it was crazy but efficient when Kanan broke it. They all managed to make it in time and performed for their school. It was a miracle!
Before I get into specifics, I just need to say that MY Mai TONIGHT is officially one of my favorite Aqours songs and it’s definitely the best insert song. I’ve always had an affinity for idol songs with a traditional Japanese style to it, which I showed when I said Mijuku Dreamer was my favorite song of the anime last season. However, MY Mai TONIGHT steps up the traditional Japanese vibe even further with the music, with the girls singing with the traditional vibe where I feel that Mijuku Dreamer is more typical idol style. The outfits are absolutely gorgeous and I was stunned with how beautiful Dia looked. Stepping up the traditional Japanese style with the outfits and the hairstyles was a huge plus and Dia looked like the star, and I think she was the center in this song with Ruby which I’m so happy for, especially since we had a special scene between them before the performance. Of course I can’t disregard Mari and Kanan, I was in love with Mari’s hair and I’m glad finally Kanan had an alternate hairstyle, and I liked Hanamaru’s hair loopies. To fit with the theme, though, I wish the others had the same hairstyles. I’d really love to see Ruby without her pigtails (though I have plenty of that in SIF) and Riko and Yoshiko have long enough hair to do something different. I suppose one reason for this is that they didn’t want to overshadow Dia, but since it looks like Ruby is the shared center of the song they could have done something equally special with her too. Either way, I loved everything about this performance and I couldn’t stop rewatching it. I really look forward to the full version when it comes out!
The song they sang for the open house was Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru Kai, which we’ve had a PV for for a while now because it was their first single. I was about to call it boring but then I remember Muse did the same thing with Borarara, but what was special with that was that the original PV had the old designs and wonky art and the new Muse art made it look great. Aqours just used the scenes from the PV so it wasn’t anything new.
However, the whole time I was watching the episode I was just wondering why they were making it so much more harder on themselves. One solution I thought was, if they couldn’t perform in both places and the Love Live qualifiers was going to be their top priority, why couldn’t they just livestream the performance for the open house? I understand that performing for them live was what they wanted, and it makes the experience more personal for the upcoming students but when things don’t work out you have to work around it, and streaming it on a giant screen for everyone to watch in the gymnasium could have been one way to do it. They would have had enough time to set that up if they planned that before. So, they could perform at the qualifiers and at the same time perform for the open house students. Or, the most logical option: A car. Where’s their family? Is Love Live such an anti-adult world that their parents can’t help them out with a ride? First off we saw both of Chika’s sisters drive from the qualifiers and back to the school in their truck, a truck which could have fit all of them. A couple of them could have squished in the front with the rest in the back of the truck. Chika’s short-haired sister looks like a crazy driver, I think she could have gotten them there in time. Or someone else’s mom or dad! Why do they have to worry about buses when they could have just asked of their moms or dads to drive them? If it’s because we can’t show men in Love Live for some reason (shoutout to Honoka’s dad), and their moms are too busy at work or something, there’s was no reason why Chika’s sisters couldn’t drive them. Them running in the mountains and riding the mikan cart was so unnecessary. Entertaining, but ahhh…logic sometimes doesn’t coincide with anime.
Either way, it was still an enjoyable episode and I just can’t get over MY Mai TONIGHT, it was amazing. It looks like next week we’ll be getting a Dia-centric episode and that makes me pretty excited! Dia is definitely one of those characters I felt an indifference to, or just did not like. But she’s grown a lot for me in so little time and having an episode about her just makes me excited.
