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First of all, Love Live! Sunshine!! is a show that needs you to pay attention and to understand it, which is kind of interesting considering most of these types of shows are pretty straightforward, but this one needs you to understand the message it starts building up at the very beginning and that it concludes really well. Hopefully this will erase all the misconceptions about this show that you might have seen anywhere else on the internet. I'll have a TL;DR section at the end if any of you wishes to skip the explicit content.

Also, it is not completely necessary to watch the predecessor series, ... Love Live! School Idol Project, to watch Sunshine since they follow two different groups, but as a recommendation, you should check it out if you still haven't. It presents references that enhance the experience if you have seen the first series. :)



STORY: 8/10

Contrary to what some believe, Sunshine!! does not follow the journey of Aqours after its creation, the entirety of this season shows us the background of the group, the reason why it is created, their motivations, the relationships the members develop, why they are different from Muse, etc. This is a much more character driven plot than the one in School Idol Project S1, which was a bit more story driven.


It follows Chika Takami, a normal high school girl who finds a dream to follow, and that is to shine as a School Idol being influenced by Muse, our protagonist group from Love Live! School Idol Project. Chika creates her School Idol group in Uranohoshi Girls High School, with the goal of being just like Muse and recreating their story, however... will that really wield any good results...?


The story in Love Live! Sunshine!! is simple and yet needs you to understand it. I'm so tired of the "Aqours is just a carbon copy of Muse" thing that makes this show really underrated and that it's been driving me nuts, so let's just get that out of the way first.

Sunshine!! CONSCIOUSLY draws parallels between School Idol Project and Sunshine!! , yes, consciously. They adress this openly and honestly in the anime, Sunshine is intended to reflect and to mirror School Idol Project's setting, just to then get past this comparisons and show us how different the situation is. This is where everything starts to build up, and is at the very beginning of the show, and why? Because the whole message of the show is that "Aqours is not Muse, and they'll never be", and "Be Yourself". Which is explained and shown later in episodes 8 and 12.


"Why did they take so long to acknowledge something like that" you ask? Because the purpose of this show never was to show us Aqours journey right after it is created with all 9 members, but rather to have a season where the torch of the Love Live franchise would be passed from the first generation to the second (done symbolically in episode 12 with Chika catching the feather) and to form the bonds of the members of Aqours. The last shot in episode 13 tells us that the TRUE story of Aqours is beginning now (in the really probable second season and onwards), since the shot replicates the picture that marked the beginning of Love Live! Sunshine!! and Aqours as a multimedia project back in 2015. So, this is the message that the show conveys to us, that they are different, the reasons why they are different, that is important to be yourself and that you can still be influenced by someone but you can walk your own path.

This is a huge misconception in the franchise so I wanted to get it out of the way first, that Aqours and Sunshine are just blatant carbon copies of its predecessors, trust me, they are not. The show consciously draws this parallels and breaks all the expectations they created in the first half of the show by showing us that they are indeed really different (I'll talk about the characters in the later part). That is the reason why I say this show needs you to pay attention and understand it. This plot point can be seen building up since episode 1, and then reaching its breaking point at a certain episode, which is a complete turning point to the series.

This first season servers as a set-up season to kick off with Aqours' Love Live story in the future.



ART: 8/10

There's not much to talk about here, an obvious improvement in terms of animation and art compared to the previous TV Anime seasons and that holds a resemblance with the art used on the movie which is just as good. Granted better budget, more to spend on animation and art, but the experience of the animation team clearly shows here too. Art is subjective indeed, so you can like it or dislike it depending on your standards, but it is clean and crisp.



SOUND: 9/10

Kind of the same as the art, another improvement which is to be expected since the team has now experience and a bigger budget. The OST has some quite nice tracks that can convey emotions really well.

One thing to note is how the series captures the sounds of a small and silent seaside town. The squawk of the seagulls, the sound of the waves hitting the shore, it really helps to the immersion and it sounds clean.

In terms of Music and insert songs, is subjective. I like my idol music, so I enjoyed all of the songs, not only here, but on the franchise as a whole. However, Aqours has a distinguishing feature, and is that their singing voices blend together really well and they harmonize a lot.

Coupled with the music and insert songs is the fact that the musical performances are usually linked to character development and plot progression, which is a constant of Love Live that we've seen in previous seasons. So, if you haven't seen it or you thought of them being out of place, I'd recommend you to watch them with subs or look for the lyrics of those songs, since they usually work as an extension or conclusion to a certain topic.



CHARACTER: 8/10

This. This section is probably the most important besides "Story".

Love Live! Sunshine!! is the successor to Love Live! School Idol Project, and Aqours is the successor to Muse, they are part of the same franchise and as such, Dengeki G's Magazine, Sunrise and Lantis need brand continuity to ensure continued profitability and success. This and the fact that they still have the same artist lets us know why are some of the girls similar in design. Is the same as other brands, for example, how the leader of a Power Ranger's team is always a really strong guy, and he becomes the red ranger, this applies the same way here. Similar character archetype and design, yet definitely different characters.

The girls are intended to be mirrors and reflections of the girls in Muse so people can remember that even though it is a new season, with a new group, it is still Love Live, it is the same franchise, thus, if you come into it looking for similarities in their characters' personalities and design, you will find them on the surface.

HOWEVER, that's all you get, since the show draws parallels between the current cast and the past cast, again, to move past them and then break those expectations and start developing them even further, to the point where they are completely different characters, yet working as a reflection of their predecessors, which is really hard to achieve. And all of them actually have reasons to act how they do which are shown in each girl's character development episodes.

Character development, although there is just a little bit because, again, this is a set-up season, is clean and easy to relate, the drama is well handled and is not forced since all of it has a proper build up, and the character interactions feel natural (except for two characters). Something that helps to this is how the relationships are formed within this group. We have childhood friends in almost every year group, and even between them. We have a pair of sisters as well, etc. All of them, except for Riko, are connected to at least one of the members even before the creation of their group, and it makes sense since they live in a small seaside town, you know that unlike in the big cities, is more likely that most of the population of a small town gets to know each other.



ENJOYMENT: 9/10

This kind of story was really enjoyable to me, giving such a nice message of "Be Yourself", with a cast of funny eccentric characters while still making them relatable due to the realistic and harsh situations they are put in that will most likely make us cheer for them or feel sympathy towards them if we had experienced it before. If Sunshine was your first entry into the Love Live franchise, I'd kinda bet that you may have enjoyed it as well.



OVERALL: 9/10

Love Live! Sunshine!! is a very underated show because it comes after the juggernaut that Muse was (and still is of course), and the huge popularity that they and School Idol Project attained, thus making quite a number of people not wanting to understand it and care for it.

However, that is no reason to just blindly hate on it and give it an unfair, superficial judgement. Its story is sweet and simple, yet it has a really deep meaning to it. Its characters are very lovely, enjoyable and relatable, once you get to know them well on the inside, you can see all the development they go through. The music is on point, the drama is very well handled, and my only complaint with the series would be that they wasted a big chunk of the last episode and how it kept forcing Chika and Riko in our faces, overshadowing and throwing aside the rest of the cast, but it still had some nice touching scenes and musical performances.

Looking and analyzing at how it was handled and executed, Sunshine surpasses School Idol Project S1 in almost every aspect, and that's not a bad thing, fellow fans, that's how it should be. With the extra experience and capital the production team has, they are now able to provide better storytelling, better art and animation, better production values on the whole. If they hadn't grow and learn from their mistakes in the past and improved this second time around, it would have been a big failure for the franchise.

This doesn't mean that you must enjoy one more than the other because it is better made in terms of production, enjoy whatever you want, both series are similar yet different with its own charm, and both are really, really enjoyable. But you should at least acknowledge the effort put into this series to take the anime adaptations of the franchise to a higher level.





TL;DR: Don't trust all the negative bias and superficial judgement this series has. It shows a story of self-discovery and self-appreciation with characters that are enjoyable, lovely and very different from their predecessors when you get to know them. It is by no means a carbon copy as some call it out to be, and the series shows this with facts throughout its run, addressing this openly and honestly, drawing parallels to its predecessor to then break them all and develop their cast and plot even further, and get past those comparisons as the series advances.