While Sunshine!! has established the final goalpost for Aqours, there are seven episodes left in Season 2. The show isn’t getting to the Love Live finals anytime soon. So what can the show do for the time being? Well for now, Sunshine!! has Aqours heading over to Hakodate to watch Saint Snow compete at the regional qualifiers for Hokkaido. I’m still a bit perplexed at the turnaround between these two groups. It just feels like it mostly happened offscreen. I thank Sarah then for finally elaborating on her being friendly with the gang. Aqours proved her wrong and she acknowledges that her “advice” back then was uncalled for. Rather than look down on Aqours, she now sees them as worthy rivals and also good friends. Right before the performance, Sarah tells Chika and the others that she looks forward to competing with them during the finals. Fast forward a bit and Sarah might want to eat her own words.
As it turns out, Saint Snow does not make it to the finals. They don’t lose because the competition was that much better than them. That would be contrived. Rather, the two make a mistake that causes them to fall to the floor and lose a lot of votes. While certainly surprising, I’ll admit that I’m not that disappointed that Aqours and Saint Snow won’t be competing against each other in the finals. The rivalry between these two groups hasn’t been very pronounced and beating Saint Snow was never really a goal for Aqours. Not having Saint Snow participate in the finals isn’t a real loss for the story. That said, if Saint Snow aren’t going to compete in the finals, then the show needs something else for them to do. Fortunately, the remainder of this episode gives us some idea.
Naturally, Aqours feels bad for Saint Snow and they want to talk to them about the qualifiers. The girls get the chance to do so when they visit a restaurant that just so happens to be run by Sarah and Leah’s family. Sarah is bummed over how the qualifiers went but she accepts her and Leah’s blunder and the results for what they are. Conversely, Leah is upset, so much so that she decides to quit being a school idol altogether. Aqours wonders if Leah has lost her confidence but Ruby thinks that because Sarah will soon graduate from high school, Leah blames herself for screwing up the qualifiers and she doesn’t want to continue being a school idol without Sarah.
That Ruby is empathetic to Leah is awfully fitting. When you think about it, these two are in the same boat. They’re first years who perform alongside their older sister. In a few months, their older sister will retire as a school idol and they would have to continue their school idol career without them. Now that I think about it, both Ruby’s and Leah’s character designs are also pretty similar to each other, what with both of them having short twintails. I would call that on the nose but to be fair, it’s only this far into the show that the connection is made apparent. At least these two aren’t similar in personality (though I suppose both girls are introverted).
I really like the heart-to-heart between Ruby and Dia. These two have always been charming together but it has been a while where they have a big, meaningful scene together. Last episode, Aqours talked about performing in the finals for the third years’ sake and that might be especially important for Ruby, judging by her dialogue in this particular scene. She loves being a school idol with Dia and technically speaking, they’ve only performed together for a short period of time. She doesn’t want Dia to retire once the latter graduates.
Leave it to Best Girl Dia to turn the conversation around. While Dia shares the same sentiment as Ruby, she makes it clear that she’s also happy that she got to be a school idol at all and that she got to perform with her little sister. More importantly, Dia is proud of Ruby, proud that her little sister found something she really wanted to do and proud of how much she’s grown over the past couple of months. It may be a short period of time but as far as Dia is concerned, Ruby has so far made it count. It’s also thanks to Dia that Ruby realizes that Sarah might feel the same way, that she’d be content with retirement so long as Leah is happy.
At the end of the episode, Ruby meets up with Leah to talk about the latter’s feelings. The fact that Ruby initiates the conversation says a lot about her. I don’t think Ruby would’ve done something like that at the start of the series, let alone with someone as standoffish as Leah. Even more surprising is when Ruby actually argues with Leah over which one of them has the cooler older sister. Ruby is definitely more assertive than she used to be, at least more than she gives herself credit. With both girls aware of their common ground, Ruby proposes to Leah that they perform a song together in dedication to Dia and Sarah for Christmas. Not going to lie, I thought the episode would end with that insert song and I couldn’t believe that wasn’t the case when the ED played. Oh well, at least that’s something to look forward to next episode.
Watch Love Live! Sunshine!! on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Tubi
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