English Dub Review: Love Live! Sunshine! “Next Step”

You can’t be a school idol group if you don’t have a school.

Overview:

Aqours reunites after losing the regionals, and are looking forward to the school’s upcoming open house. However, Mari regretfully announces that open house is canceled, for the school will be closing down, and merging with another school at the end of the year.

Our Take: 

The school exhibition where the girls are supposed to perform (or at least it’s implied since the series never really clarifies it) is suddenly canceled, and the main cast worries about how they’re going to put themselves out there. It’s terrible for them, but from an economic standpoint, the school’s decision makes a lot of sense. Uranohoshi is a private school, which means that they survive off tuition from their students. According to the girls, the prospective students used to be zero and has recently climbed to ten. While this is a win for them, the amount of tuition that ten new students can pay isn’t nearly enough to sustain a whole school. Considering that the school was hardly successful in the first place, there’s no way it would stay afloat without a network of generous investors. Merging with another school is actually a good financial decision. Not like that matters though, because the girls’ idol dreams are at stake.

It’s not all bad. The large group of friends all avidly support each other, and I’m always happy to see more media where girls have dreams, want to achieve them, and have a great support system in their friends. Girls encouraging girls is always great to see! However, a good 20% of the general dialogue is sound effects or giggling, and the focus seems to be on the girls’ quirks as opposed to their substance.

Chika gets the most screentime, being the most invested in the group. Unfortunately, despite her enthusiasm, she spends most of the time looking sad and claiming that she’ll find a miracle, rather than doing anything. It probably doesn’t help that half the episode is already gone before the plot starts to kick in.

Overall, I’m not really seeing the appeal. The girls are cute, but that seems to be just about it. This series is probably a fantastic treat for avid fans of the game who want to see their favorite characters animated, but it’s really bland for those without a significant investment in the series.

At least the animation budget is incredibly high. All that mobage income is being put to good use!