please listen to this as you read for a more full experience.
This is gonna be another short piece but I've been thinking about Love Live! a lot lately and got the bug to talk about it more. Recently I've watched through most every season of each anime series in the greater franchise; those being School Idol Project, Sunshine, and Superstar. I haven't gotten around to more than a few episodes of Nijigasaki but I liked what I saw of it a lot.
Owing to my weird watch order the last part i saw was the Sunshine movie, and it honestly might have one of my favorite songs in all of Love Live: Believe Again, by Saint Snow. I never fully came around on Margarete in Superstar and barely even remember A-RISE as rivals in School Idol Project (mostly owing to how strong μ's was as a central group, seriously I love each and every one of those girls so dearly.) Given all that I was not primed to like the rival group in Sunshine especially considering how strong Aqours is as a unit. But the second season arc with Leah and Ruby working together on a song for their respective big sisters honestly changed my senses ?! Maybe it's their aesthetics and musical styles being right up my alley, maybe its their sisterly bond... Leaving my personal moe fixations aside their arc is just genuinely well written !
The plot conceit is a really clever twist on the first-years' arcs we'd been getting in the prelude to the third-years' graduations. We'd already seen Yohane paired up with Riko as the latter overcame her fear of dogs, so the next arc changes the "pairing formula" before it can establish itself. Sunshine excels at developing the Aqours girls' characters outside of different pairings in the group itself; while they're already used to being the hometown heroes to the other girls at school I adore how they go to cheer their former rivals on in Hokkaido. It's a great spot for a travel episode and it leads to a lot of unique gags, especially in comparison to another beach episode for our usually-seaside-anyway heroines. For the characters, it gets at a greater creative community aside from the fun hype moments of competition–no, its more than that, isn't it ? Aqours are there for them even though they're competing, and for both group to have the bond that ends up forming from the care they showed means so much to me my eyes are welling up. I love these girls so much !!
You have this amazing setup, executed so interestingly–where Dia's watching her little sister Ruby grow up before she graduates and leaves for college and the rest of Aqours are scared to lose Ruby to Leah's new idol group, which they imagine as "Saint Aqours Snow". Ruby, probably the easiest member of Aqours to read, has to keep a surprise she's working really hard for. Meanwhile Leah and Ruby are running into personality conflicts while also bonding over what their respective big sisters mean to them and how desperately they want to make that gratitude felt. For Leah to let her guard down around someone as painfully shy yet earnest as Ruby takes a lot of work, as it does for Ruby to not be scared off from Leah's thorniness. They put that work in for the people who never scared them–their sisters. It ultimately concludes in a Christmas live show that's a more than worthy successor to Snow Halation. This being a Christmas special it makes the family togetherness of the songs and general good will between Aqours and Saint Snow hit that much harder while being low-key enough to be a shot of festive warmth any time of year. The cherry on top for me is found in the credits where it's revealed that their song was credited to "Saint Aqours Snow," turning what was a sign of fear of loss into an accomplishment.
By the time of the movie it could be said that this lesson is forgotten. I don't agree with that–a lot of the movie is about this suddenly-realizing-what-you'd-been-perpared-to-lose sense that kind of... lingered, as I watched the final episodes of Sunshine. But it could be said, and I could understand it. I tend to (wrongly) think of sequel movies as additions to the TV anime; the one for School Idol Project was kind of filler-ey but a little too emotionally punchy to be called "skippable" for me. The Sunshine one felt necessary. I could not have said goodbye to that school so gracefully, not if it were really goodbye to everything it meant to be Aqours. I know they said they'd carry the name on but on its own that's just a bittersweet statement of intention to me. Once I've actually seen Aqours continue–they just make me so proud, full stop.
Leah is in an entirely different place when she and Sarah go to meet the new Aqours. She's still very close to her sister, pretty aloof to everyone else but a little warmer to Ruby. It almost feels like, being a side character, she's been abandoned by the writers, and I was worried for one of my niche favs getting her due in the end. I've thought about it a lot though, the movie did something really important for a "rival" group with their stylings and specifically for a character like Leah. Her troubles getting close to people aren't just a hurdle for the protagonists or a burden they have to talk her past, but something she continually has to work within to accomplish her goals. I genuinely think there's a really interesting story to be told about Leah putting together another idol group, differentiated from Saint Snow while still honoring what she bult with her sister, and navigating idol drama with her avoidant tendencies. But what we got is more than I was expecting and plenty on its own. Seeing Sarah performing one last time after she fell on-stage in the regionals is, quietly, very emotionally satisfying. With as much as I have to say about Leah I feel for Sarah; as a group that's become entwined with Aqours it only feels right they have their story told with full empathy and dignity. It's really important to me that Saint Snow got a proper goodbye.
As for the the song itself, I guess I just really appreciate a pump-up jam specifically about starting again, from zero... very fitting for Sunshine's whole "zero-to-a-one" theme. If you've been reading my revamped blog it's probably pretty clear how much I've been struggling with restarting lately, or no, for the last few years really. Whoops! I think I've finally got ahold of getting better nowadays.
This is nothing new, just a lesson I constantly need to re-teach myself. I still don't write enough to make myself happy. Having to work for an actual accomplishment... I want to do it ! But that "wanting to do it" is the kind of thing continually making my eyes well up with frustration at a starting line over and over again, feeling farther behind my past self. I recently realized I'm not significantly worse with words or dumber or anything, I just feel like a worse writer when I'm not writing. And that's bad ! I haven't changed ! It's just my confidence ! Obviously I see a lot of myself in Sarah about this. But either way, "watching anime and writing about it" is a part of me. It's the only part I made for myself and at the end of the day its what I know I'm best at. Whether or not my thoughts and words are worth anything compared to the better, smarter, more practiced writers around me... I try to write like its no competition, since it isn't. My blog is a labor of love and that earnest feeling is all I need to know that I said it right. It's hard to have that unwavering faith, that this is really what I'm best at, when I don't write enough, and in writing nothing, fail. Fall on stage again and again. I really feel for Sarah more than I've said; I hope it's clear.. Eespecially when the world sees being an anime blogger or a school idol as just playing around. How can that be your calling ? That's what gives you purpose ? It has to be felt, to be believed; it has to be felt again, to be believed again. Whether or not Leah learned to move on yet, Sarah deserved to answer that calling again.
All that is to say, the recursive character arc that Leah experiences is a good thing. Genuinely one of the most clever ways to write a continuation movie for this series in particular. (If for no other reason than "someone else liked the Leah/Ruby arc in season two as much as I did.") If I had one complaint about that storyline it was how quickly it resolved, with such complex buildup it left the ending, while cathartic, also a little worrying. I care about and relate to Leah a lot... Moving on as a school idol without her sister is a big change, and the circumstances under which it happened are even harder to deal with. I can understand why she was so abrasive to Aqours very easily, I feel like empathizing with her through her avoidance is kind of key to following the plot at all. The movie exploring how she struggles to open up to a new idol group makes it very clear to that she's scared of forming that kind of connection with someone who isn't her sister, and just as scared to lose it again. There's always the possibility of burnout, or injury, or failure, but even still Leah can pick herself back up and "Believe Again". With those speciifcs in mind and just how damn good this song is at getting me fired up... well, it moves me so much I edited my landing page about it.
I'm not sure if Saint Snow are really my favorite Love Live group, in the end. Jukki Hanada thankfully went way harder than strictly necessary when writing them, and I think about Saint Snow about as much as I do Aqours (so, a lot.) That's my usual favorites metric. At the very least I think Sunshine is the most emotionally honest Love Live. Leah's bluff is called with Ruby's kindness and her own hard work, and no one has any real rivals, just other girls trying to understand life, put it to words and make people shine. for some reason i really like it when edgy-styled abrasive characters get the chance to be earnest and loving and human, for some reason. either way ! i look forward to writing more about the legitimate emotional complexities of my cute girls anime; speaking of which, i'm currently rewatching mahou shoujo lyrical nanoha and cannot wait to share my extended thoughts on that masterpiece with y'all. thank you very much for reading ^___^