Love Live! School Idol Project

Episode 2 and its already way better then the previous show. This episode focused on Riko. Plenty of amusing moments, and underwater song composing. Yeah.

Yohane was a no show. Dia's knowledge of µ's is kinda scary.

So I was basically right about Dia. Ruby is pretty amusing still, but I hope they don't play up the shyness gag too much and make her a repeat of Hanayo. She and Yoshiko are still my favourites, though we haven't seen much of Kanan, nor the foreigner. Hanamaru's already out of the running for me due to "zura". They are continuing to make You into Kotori 2.0 by having her draw and create the costume, and while I thought this during the first episode I forgot to mention it, I reckon she's going to have to choose between Aqours and her swimming career at some point much like Kotori. Riko's pretty cool, I imagine with the ED and this episode the yuri fans have already made her and Chika a major pairing.

Its hard to say for sure how the characters will act about it. In the Love Live universe, taking a break from something doesn't seem to be a big deal. Kanan isn't even going to school right now, Yohane disappeared, and Mari hasn't even been properly introduced yet. Kotori's problem was she wanted to go to a completely different school entirely.

The problem is more that she got an offer out of the blue to further her career as a clothing designer, and that required her to go overseas. Thus far, Riko and Kanan seem to be the only one with real responsibilities, but Kanan works locally (You, who wants to succeed her father, also plans on working locally.) Still though, being an idol could totally get in the way of You's swimming, assuming she decides to become an athlete instead of taking over her father's business.

I dunno, I just wish the show's creators would distance the characters more from m's legacy.

Yeah, I hope they don't rehash too much from the original series, because I really like how this series is going so far.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-07-14/funimation-to-dub-d.gray-man-servamp-zestiria-danganronpa-3-arslan-love-live-sunshine-more/.104290 well f*** NISA I guess. That's pretty rude considering how much they supported Love Live!, one of very few anime releases they handled well...

It sucks that the dub will probably not redo the songs. There are English people who can sing and act.

The Zestiria dub better have the game's cast, though if I remember correctly the Vesperia prequel anime had the game cast.

God, while episode three was very enjoyable, this is getting very stupid.

Mari is just Nozomi: carefree, mischievous, Dia's foil, groper, and Yoshiko did the Nico face-mask thing. Ruby is shy like Hanayo, Hanamaru is her steadfast friend and says zura instead of nya like Rin. Chika is Honoka, You is Kotori, Kanan is probably gonna end up like Umi since she seems to be the mature and serious childhood friend, even though Riko is part of the second year trio she is too similar to Maki.

A lot of their traits are traded around in different combinations, like Mari being the foreigner instead of Dia the prez, Dia being the idol maniac with inflated standards instead of Yoshiko (though Dia still plays the opposing student council president role,) Yoshiko is a childhood friend of Hanamaru instead of being familiar with the third years, and you've got Kanan being a third year with Riko as a second year and Yoshiko being a first-year...Otherwise the similar characters are all in the same years as their counterparts, too.

The number of similarities is not great.

There's definitely traits from the original characters present here, but I think most of them are better.

I can't really agree with that. There are some differences, but in my opinion they're either for the worse or not big enough to matter.

Considering that Ruby and Yoshiko interest me the most right now when I wasn't a fan of Hanayo or Nico, that is a big change. Thus far Hanamura doesn't seem to have a lot of personality though which is the opposite of Rin. Dia is trying as hard as possible to make herself as irredeemable as Nico, and I'm skeptical that she's going to have a good backstory like Eli to make up for it. While I get that Mari has stepped in to play Nozomi's role of supporting the other girls' early development, I also feel that she was a lot more aggressive about it, almost to the point of being mean-spirited, rather than the motherly figure that Nozomi was.

Kanan is still nothing to talk about. Chika is weird because she's arguably the most similar to her m's counterpart, but I also find that she is indescribably quite different, like I don't think "Honoka 2.0" when I look at her unlike other characters.

Thus far I think Riko and You have had the strongest development, in that order, but You's development relies on playing second fiddle to Chika. While Riko is again one of the characters most directly similar to her m's counterpart, I do appreciate that her personality is a lot different from Maki's aloofness, she's currently in my top three. (With my m's top three being Nozomi, Eli and a tie between Maki and Rin.)

Now they're just shoving it in our faces, Dia and Ruby said that they like Eli and Hanayo respectively, Hanamaru is Reading Rinbow and even her zura at the end of the episode sounds like one of Rin's nya sentence-enders.

I realize that "inspired by m's" is one of the core concepts of Aqours' design, but it feels like they're just making each character go through the exact same personal crises, just in a different context, and that's bad writing.

What the heck is a zura? Google is not helping me here.

Quote :

She refers to herself as either "ora" or "Maru", and ends all of her sentences with "-zura" because of her Shizuoka dialect.

There are a shitton of Japanese dialects that include completely different words for personal pronouns. I would hazard a guess and say that -zura is similar to characters who frequently end sentences in desu. Nozomi for example has a Kansai dialect, so a lot of words she says end in -yan.

There are some dialects that are considered more obscure and often define a character. Kansai-ben is pretty common so nobody really makes a big deal about Nozomi, only for more outspoken or aggressive characters where it's super noticeable (like Kawachi from Yakitatte! Japan.) The new girl in Digimon Tri uses certain words exclusive to the Tottori region which only TK understands because he has family there, and Hibiki from Idolmaster... "Because she is from Okinawa, she sometimes can't control her dialect, and often uses words that confuse people, for example "Nankurunaisa" (we can work it all out) and "Haisai" (hi there)."

You'll notice that Hanamura tends to correct herself when she says "ora" instead of "ore" or something else. It's kinda like how southerners have a propensity to say "ya'll" and people in Atlantic Canada say "youse guize" or (from women) "ma luv" a lot.

I fucking hate Atlantic Canada.

English dub of episode 1 is out today. Here's a clip of it. Sounds pretty good, I guess. My dub senses are kinda shot after watching subbed anime for several months.

http://colbert-238.tumblr.com/post/148286580589/the-first-episode-of-funimations-love-live

The foley isn't great, but that dub is fucking fantastic.

The school closing plot is back. But they're just going to a school in Tokyo instead?

Are you fucking serious. Wasn't "a seaside town" one of the core components of this show? I guess "inspired by m's" has overridden it.

Baka Chika, stop mentioning Moose too much. Or reuse many points.

Oh wait. Sunrise. There's a Char in every damn Gundam.

Latest ep just made me go wat and half of my brain is already saying "Stick for the comedy and ZuraMaru and Wuby cuteness"

At least goddamn Cinderella Girls didn't feel the same. Even though I disliked compared to 765, I applaud it for having a somewhat different take and how events unfold compared to its predecessor. And Smileducer had character development than Broducer, even if he still is a damn tape recorder.

I want a You hat tho.

Prinny, it's Numazu, the city they live just outside of.

Anyway, I was right about Dia failing as a school idol in her first year. Ruby had a Hanayo TAIHEN! moment. The third years seem to have a weird backstory and I feel they're taking too long to explain Kanan's deal, especially with how she somehow snuck into Mari's place from the ocean but Mari claims to be HER stalker, but apparently Dia wants a piece of the yuri doujinshi pie? Mari's weird pronounciations are distracting and I wish Riko's fear of dogs wasn't a running gag because she's great otherwise, and they peaked with her balcony leap anyway. Ruby and Hanamaru are kinda stealing the show at this point.

At the start, I like Riko, but I ended up liking the Kurosawa sisters more. Dia and Ruby are too cute and entertaining.

So far, I'm enjoying the comedy and shenanigans more than the drama or idol performances. At least the third years got their crap sorted out now (ep. 9)....just like S1 of Muse....where Eli joins by ep 9....

Dammit Sunrise.

Yeah, I really didn't like episode 8. Did it really have to be 0? They spent so long on that drama only for Chika to just do her usual this-is-why-I'm-a-school-idol thing. Also the obligatory rivals are lame.

They spent way too much effort on making Kanan seem like a total b****, they were really at the tipping point before episode 9 resolved their conflict. I was actually surprised by how acceptable her reason for quitting was, I was expecting something super dumb and meaningless. The song at the end started out pretty weak but became very powerful.

As far as my favourite characters are concerned, as I expected Yoshiko is annoying me now because her little devil quotes are such one dimensional gags the writers stuff in between exposition. Her wrestling the sisters was pretty humorous though, I wish she was more of a tomboy character instead since You really isn't filling that role.

Ruby is my still favourite, Dia became cute once Mari made her get off everyone's cases but Riko is my second favourite character for now despite the dumb dog gags, but that may change now that the third years aren't a drama engine. Hanamaru is probably fourth for me, maybe tied with Mari.

I finally got caught up. I think what they did for episode 8 worked really well. Chika tried to keep her feelings inside and have a confident facade, but she eventually caved and said how she really felt.

9 was great, too. Mari and Kanan are totally an item. I really liked how they developed their relationship.

Gonna get diabetes from Ruby.

Oh hey another episode where we don't do any training at all and just hang out at the beach, lol.

This episode has cemented Ruby in my waifu zone.

Also the last line of dialogue in the episode, ooh~.