English Dub Review: Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club “Ai Love Triangle”

Overview:

Karin meets Ai’s big sister-like friend: Misato Kawamoto. Ai wants to cheer Misato up by livestreaming a concert and performing a duet with Karin.

Our Take:

It’s amazing how many characters this show manages to introduce. To be honest, it’s hard for me to keep track of all of them sometimes. Nevertheless, two new characters are introduced in this episode.

The main focus is Misato Kawamoto. She’s Ai’s neighbor and is like an older sister to her. She’s been in the hospital for a long time and was recently released. Ai takes her out to celebrate and they run into Karin, whom they invite to celebrate with them.

Regardless of how much fun they have, it’s clear that something is bothering Misato. She says the she feels like everything has been passing her by while she was in the hospital. She feels stuck and has no idea what to do about it.

Ai doesn’t know what to do to help her at first, but Karin snaps her out of her funk by using reverse psychology. Then Ai asks Karin to perform with her at a concert that would be livestreamed. Ai already had this concert idea and Karin had been asked to perform a group number, but turned down the idea. She says she’s more interested in competing with the others rather than performing alongside them.

Once Ai presents the idea as a form of competition, Karin agrees to it. The concert is a success and naturally, it encourages Misato to pursue her own dreams.

We also learn that the school’s idol festival and cultural festival will be coinciding with one another. Not only that, but Shioriko Mifune will be overseeing both events.

This leads to the second new character we see in this episode: Shioriko’s sister. Granted, we only get a glimpse of her at the very end of the episode. However, it’s safe to assume that she’ll be playing a bigger role moving forward.

This is a fine friendship episode. Nothing new for the show and the whole Lanzhu arc isn’t even touched on here. That’s not really a bad thing since the other characters need focus too, but that is arguably the most interest thing going on in the series right now. Regardless, this is a light-hearted episode. Not uneventful, but nothing that pushes the envelope.