Love Live! Sunshine - Overall Series Impressions & Total Series Rating

[Kairin]

This thread is to be used for discussing the entire episodes of Love Live! Sunshine ... your thoughts about the show, overall impressions, expectations and hopes about Blu-Ray/DVD-exclusive footage etc.

A few subjects you might want to ramble on about:

• General impression of the series.
• Opinions on the overall story, writing & plot devices.
• Thoughts about the animation quality.
• Characters/Character Design
• Voice Acting
• Which kind of footage (Blu-Ray/DVD-exclusive) you feel you'd really like to see.
• What the show meant to you.
• What could the creators/animators/writers have done better.

And so on.

The poll represents your total series rating. In other words, how you would rate all the episodes combined (1-10)? If you'd rather rate the whole series by technical/artistic merits, you can do so. An example:

Animation Quality: 1-10
Voice Actors: 1-10
Script: 1-10
Soundtrack: 1-10
Editing: 1-10
Enjoyment: 1-10
Emotional Involvement: 1-10

Average = Total Series Rating

Or a combination of the two. Or your general gut feeling.

Feel free to discuss and more importantly, have fun

[Ulin]

A bit of disapointing for me. I more or less liked all the characters (probably except for Ruby, but it is just that I'm not into "cute but not much else" characters) but the story was so so. Too much similar in many places to the original (save the school, the order of the girls joining, the constant references to muse... The best episodes for me were those that had nothing to do with the og.

About the music, it is good enough (the op and the ed were my favourites of the season) but none of the insert songs got through me. I hope I get used to them now during SIF but turth is that none of them pop up in my head.
That said, I want to congratulate the voice acting, specially to Yohane's VA. They are overall good, but the changes she does between Yohane and Yoshiko are simply superb.

The animation was good. I really like this way they have to make the eyes sparkle


I have enjoyed it, but sadly not as much as I hoped. Maybe the expectations were too high

Animation Quality 8
Voice Actors 8-9
Script 6
Soundtrack 7
Editing NA
Enjoyement 7
Emotional Involvement 6

Average = 7

[SleepingTerror]

Animation - 9.5: The only reason this is not a 10 is CGI. Otherwise, I love their hair. I love their eyes. I love the gorgeous sunsets, train stations, and walks on the beach.. But I would also love at least one performance without CGI, and no, Saint Snow's does not count.

Soundtrack - 6.5: Easily biased in this area due to heavy exposure to all the songs not used in the anime. I like Kimete yo Hand in Hand, and I like the ending song. Kinda disappointed they did not use Koi ni Naritai Aquarium or Mattete Ai no Uta or any of the other songs with an aquarium theme.

Voice Acting - 10: Everyone has such musical voices, even when they don't sing. Chika and Yohane initially had my favorite voices, but now You and Mari do. I listen to Mari's "Oh my god" every day.

Plot - 7.5: It definitely had a slow start, and that was somewhat necessary. I love and hate how they hit rock bottom - Muse was both their reason for existing and for being held back. Going to get heat for this, but the show focused a little too much on the ChikaRiko ship. Not a bad ship at all, but the significance, I feel, was exaggerated given the fewer screen time the other characters ahem You received.

Characters - 8: Love Hanamaru, love Dia, love Yohane, and love love love You. Felt a little animosity towards Chika and Kanan, but they're very 3 dimensional and the character development they went through was beautiful. Especially Chika with Muse: not exactly outgrowing them, but moving on.

Enjoyment/Overall - 9: As much as I loved the performance in the last episode, Chika's shenanigans were a bit bizarre. I want more, which is good I guess. Definitely excited for a second season i will not take no for an answer

[Liddo-kun]

Animation Quality: 8
Voice Actors: 8
Script: 3
Soundtrack: 8
Enjoyment: 8
Emotional Involvement: 7

Giving an 8/10 total. Enjoyed most of it except for the zura and ruby parts. The song and dances are either good or very good, I still ocassionally listen to Jumping Heart and songs by Crayon - their Yozora wa nandemo makes me feel relaxed. Character designs are of course, very cute. It's an attempt to be better than the original, and they partially succeeded imo. Although things bogged down due to the ever constant references to the original, so I'm giving them a rotten 3 in the script department.

Voice acting.. of course have no complaints there. Yohane, Dia, and costume maker You. Hope to see you again in a season 2. ",)

Overall score = 8

[Triple_R]

There's something I'm going to say about Sunshine, something that might surprise some people. What I have to say is based on something happening right now in the real world, in the real anime fandom world.

Madoka Magica stands like a glorious towering colossus over the mahou shoujo world. I'm seeing this play out right now, here on Anime Suki, on the Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku series thread. Poor Ikusei Keikaku is getting totally swamped with critical Madoka Magica comparisons, for simply being anything like Madoka Magica. This is in spite of how the show is very different from Madoka Magica in multiple ways. Still, yes, you can clearly tell a couple areas where Madoka Magica inspired Ikusei Keikaku.

These thoughts crossed my mind - "I love Madoka Magica, but this is ridiculous. Madoka Magica is now over 5 years old. It's like you can't be a dark-toned magical girl show any more without getting criticized for being like Madoka Magica. It's sad and unfair."

Then it clicked for me... μ's is Madoka Magica. Aqours is like Ikusei Keikaku. μ's is to school idols in LL-verse what Madoka Magica is to magical girl shows in the real world.

Now I finally get what Sunshine was aiming for. It probably wasn't the most entertaining or emotionally satisfying route Sunshine could take, but it may well have been the most realistic one.

"Surely there must have been a truly noteworthy idol group arise since the time of μ's?" I once asked about Sunshine. Well, going by what the real world is showing with Madoka Magica... maybe not.

I think what hurts Sunshine a little is that we don't quite feel the 5-year time-gap (in-universe) between the OG and Sunshine. We don't feel it because it hasn't been 5 years for us. It's only 1 year for us (2 at most if you disregard the LL Movie). But this is where the Madoka Magica analogy is helpful to me, because Madoka Magica is in fact over 5 years old. I do feel the 5-year time-skip here. And that does make a difference.


None of the above changes my overall Sunshine experience. But it does give me a greater appreciation for what Sunrise was likely aiming for here, and for what Aqours was going through. And maybe it's something worth considering for us Love Live fans (particularly those of us who are also big Madoka Magica fans, like I am).

Anyway, I'll leave it at that, rather than get into a more conventional series breakdown. Just something I thought might be worth considering for us Love Live fans.

[Nork22]

Animation Quality: 9
What's there to say? Solid animation, occasion animation goof that gets fixed on the BDs, fantastic CG dancing animation, even better 2D dancing animation given a chance, and with enough details in the background art to give PA Works a run for their money. This is Sunrise's Studio 8 lovingly animated series.

Voice Actors: 8
With a majority of the seiyuus being new, it's surprising how much emotion and love they put into their characters, especially An-chan. But really if you follow the seiyuus as much as the characters they play, you'll understand that they will not waste this chance to showcase their talents and hopefully lead their careers into something bigger and shinier.

Script: 7
Let's get this out of the way, yes the writers rehashed the scenario and plot from S1, and yes the muse references are either jarring, stupid or overused depending on how cynical you are. Then again you can blame Jukki Hanada for being on the writing team that decided to make the story feel meta by comparing it to the fandom's slow acceptance of Aqours. At the end of the journey though, we had a fun ride coming to love Aqours as a group.

Soundtrack: 10
This will be different because I'm going to talk about the BGM and instrumentals used in the show, and not the songs. Can I say "wow!"? Sunrise knows that for an idol show, you can't really skimp out on the BGM, and boy did they pick a good composer to take over the role from the previous composer. Tatsuya Katou knows how to compose and set the mood for pretty much every scene. I guess it's no surprise he's good at that skill, looking at some of the shows he's worked on as composer.

Now for the songs, well I'll be honest, much like the OG's songs, most of them didn't seem that exemplary on the first listen and there's only been 1 song from each season that I like above all else cause it clicked for me from the get go. No Brand Girls, Dancing Stars on Me and now Yume de Yozora o Terashitai. I think it's the fact I can imagine how all these songs will be performed live, so maybe that's that.

Enjoyment: 9
Well it says something if I'm willing to stay awake to catch it as it's being broadcast. I'm thankful Sunshine was aired at a reasonable hour that's accessible to the mainstream as well.

Emotional Involvement: 7
Don't worry, it's just me. I don't get emotionally attached to everything, even for something as big as Love Live. This is my coping mechanism for when a series moves on and I can look back at it with fondness. One thing's for sure, I'm definitely be looking back at the Love Live franchise and say, yes that was a great time to be involved with this generation and it's fandom.

[iSuckAtWriting]

...these Aqours girls confused Nico sooo much! Why were they always talking about us? Why do the people at the Love Live! competition keep chasing us? Uh, Nico is flattered, but we wanted school idols to shiiiiiiiiinnneee!!!

I hope these girls can find what they're looking for. Like Honoka-chan would say, "FIGHTO DAYO!" And go out there with a smile. Nico Nico nii!

(P.S: Nico loooves Ruby's hairstyle!)