I would have been REALLY mad if they all just decided to give up on Love Live just because they’re school is going to be gone. The fact that they even considered it and pretty much almost decided on it made me want to throw my laptop across the room. You’re telling me that you guys busted your asses off, almost fucking killed yourself with that backflip, got your selves to the final round of the Love Live, and just because your school is going to be gone you’re going to throw all that hard work away and not perform?! That’s telling me the only reason why you guys became school idols was really only because of the school, and not because you genuinely enjoy school idols and being one. I was shocked that they all thought that way, especially Chika when she wanted to “shine and be great” and all the crap they told us for the 100th time last episode. But of course Chika has to be selfish and whiny all the damn time and throw away all the hard work they did like it was nothing. She doesn’t care about their “radiance” and finding it (even though I thought they did last episode?) because she only cares about herself. You guys haven’t struggled enough? Chika, honey, you almost killed yourself last week! I think you and the others have struggled plenty! From starting out clueless, to getting 0 points and making fools of yourselves, to getting into something a little over your head, to creating new songs and dances, to getting along with each other. Struggling both physically and emotionally. When you look back on Aqours’ journey, they’ve actually gone through a lot. And…they all almost threw it away. I said last week that I felt bad about picking on Chika all the time but I don’t care anymore, this episode just reminds me why I just can’t stand Chika. Even Honoka wasn’t this selfish.
One thing I found absolutely hilarious was the fact that Mari’s father gave a last minute extension from midnight to 5am after hearing Aqours made it to the finals. I thought Mari’s father was being cheeky with them because when you think about it, what middle school kid is going to be up applying to a high school between midnight and 5am? I’m sure there were students that came to the Open House and knew about the deadline and made their decisions at the last minute, but they didn’t know there was an extension so how on Earth did they manage to get more students during that time? Also, again, WHO WOULD BE APPLYING THAT LATE? They’re kids, they’re sleeping on their school night! Honestly I thought this whole scene was unnecessary and a bit laughable when you think about the logic, that’s all I was thinking in the first half. I felt it was just a dragged out scene that should have never been there. And even though the applications were closed, I bet when Mari’s father is going to see the 98 prospective students, he might even change his mind and stop the school from combining. Because it’s 98, he wanted 100 but two students away from that isn’t bad. Even though I’m actually glad with how the show is taking the plot.
Look at this realistically. In this screenshot alone, there are 71 students. When you add Aqours, it’s 80 students. Looking at the grade groups, which maybe the animators didn’t care all that much about coloring, but adding Aqours into the mix, there are only 13 first year students (which may not be right but that’s what I counted here), 26 second year students, and 41(!!!) third year students. Which means the first years only have one tiny class, the second years only have one standard size class, and the third years probably have two different classes of 20/21 students respectively. And yet this school is pretty big, with a giant pool, a baseball/softball field, etc. Which makes no sense to me at all, but when you look at a school with only 80 students, with half of them graduating soon, leaving the school with 39 students, of course shutting it down and merging it with another school makes sense. Mari’s father wanting 100 more makes a lot of sense too. You can imagine how tiny and insignificant the staff of this school is too, so insignificant that a student is the Director! If I were any of the girls, I would have thought about that. It sucks because you love the school so much, but like whoever said in the episode, not many girls are going to go so far as to go to a school with less than 100 students in a tiny town just because of Aqours. They’re losing their school, but it’s not like they’re going to lose each other. It’s not like they still can’t be Aqours.
I do understand the anger and frustration of failure, as we’ve seen from them before. I actually did like Chika’s outburst from the first season. In fact, I loved it. But this time it was frustrating. But I also didn’t like that the other girls were on board on dropping out of the Love Live finals. I thought Dia would have come out saying “Don’t take school idols lightly! If you’re going to quit just because we failed on saving the school, that means you never took this seriously. Have everything we done all been nothing to you for you to throw it all away?” It kind of reminds me when Honoka quit Muse temporarily from all the awful drama from the very first season. Basically, I wanted Dia or someone to smack Chika in the face like Umi did to Honoka. But for some reason….everyone wanted to just quit. What the hell.
None of it makes sense to me, but at least now they’re going to continue on with Love Live and try to win so they can carry Uranohoshi’s name into the history books or whatever. Well, duh. Not my favorite episode. Sometimes when Sunrise tries to handle drama in this series, it’s just really…bad. And now Kanan appeared in the ending of the ED so no Kanan episode, rip me. Next week looks like it could be a Hanamaru episode, or a Ruby one. Frankly I’d love both, but since I’ve been so hellbent on the whole “getting out of the bus” thing in the EDs, it can’t be Hanamaru. Hm. :/
