English Dub Review: Love Live Sunshine “The Time Left”

You can’t win everything.

Overview:

The girls are advancing into the final rounds, but they fail to get enough applicants to save their school.

Our Take:

The girls encounter a major problem: even though they’re moving on in the competition, they still didn’t get enough applicants to save their school. Without the necessary hundred people, Uranohoshi will continue to be merged with the other local schools.

While it’s sad to see all the girls so disappointed, having them fail at this is definitely a good thing for the story. My recent criticisms of the series haven’t really been with the girls themselves, but that they succeed so easily. Chika goes on about miracles, and how despite them being underdogs, they can grab a miracle to save their school and win Love Live. Thing is, miracles are miracles because they’re rare, and don’t happen very easily. With the exception of the last competition, Aqours’ successes this time around have been framed as everything happening to come together at the last minute. Those in itself are miracles, and luck will run out. Chika says this episode that she wanted them to struggle, and that’s the thing– they haven’t really struggled, at least not involving the competition. It all just happened to work out. As characters they have, but from what we’ve seen, not really.

This is their first real failure, and Chika doesn’t take it very well. The other girls aren’t satisfied either, but they recognize that at this point, winning the Love Live for themselves is more important. Up until now, Chika has been nothing but endless optimism, but now we see that she isn’t just optimism, but more naïveté. She refuses to accept bad results and sulks when she doesn’t get her way in the face of things outside of her control. Chika has been the least developed so far this season, so it’s nice to see another side of her. It’s not just optimism, but she also can’t handle failure, or the fact that sometimes she’s powerless in the face of larger influences.

However, as the rest of their classmates remind the girls, the loss of their school won’t be a total failure. If they win Love Live, they can at least immortalize Uranohoshi’s name in the final results. It’s not the same as saving their school, but it’s at least preserving its memory. Honestly, that’s a clever way to go about it.

Also, don’t apply to a school at 3AM.