The two-parter set in Hakodate was a nice way to tide uses over before Sunshine!! gets to the Love Live finals. That said, there are still four more episodes to go so it’s a still while before the show returns to the competition. This episode takes place around New Year’s. Aqours invites Saints Snow over to Uchiura to help train them for the finals. To be honest, I initially thought Sarah and Leah were here to celebrate New Year’s with Aqours. The show had me fooled for a bit when all of Aqours wore kimonos before changing to their usual attire for practice. Considering that Aqours managed to get this far on their own, I’m not sure what pointers Sarah and Leah can offer at this point but I suppose this is a good excuse for these two to show up again. I love how Kanan is consistently the only one who can keep up whenever the girls do a new training regimen. It’s a simple visual gag but I find it hilarious.
In the middle of training, Mari reveals that her father has asked her to become the director of Uranohoshi’s successor. The girls assume that Mari would have to repeat her third year of high school though I’d imagine she could just, oh I don’t know, work solely as the school director after she graduates. The semantics don’t really matter however as Mari explains that she declined the offer, wanting to instead study abroad in Italy. Later that evening, and after Sarah and Leah head back home, Dia reveals that she’ll study at a university in Tokyo and Kanan will go overseas to receive a diving instructor’s license. It’s looking like the third years will be going their separate ways again after the Love Live finals. On the flipside, I’m glad that it’s an amicable split. No one is leading each other into a certain direction like Kanan tried to do two years ago. Everyone came to their respective decisions on their own and they respect each other’s decision once they find out. It goes to show how much better the friendship between these three have been since joining Aqours.
Bookending this episode is a plot in which Mari, Dia, and Kanan try to wish upon a star, their wish being to stay together forever. The three of them tried to this once when they were kids, only for the weather to get in their way (though I think they also didn’t wait until it’s dark enough to see any stars). In the end, they settled with drawing a shooting star on Mari’s star chart, which Mari still has in her possession. It’s cheesy but it’s also really darn cute. Realizing that they never actually tied up this loose end, the third years decide to go stargazing with their underclassmen to make the same wish. Just like before, the weather isn’t exactly cooperating. Why exactly the girls don’t just wait for a rainless and clear night is beyond me but I suppose emotions are high right now and Mari really wants to show off her newly acquired driver’s license.
I have one question for this scene: how the hell does Mari’s car fly up in the sky? I’m not making this up and the featured image for this post is indeed from this episode. Mari’s car actually flies in the air at one point in this scene. How? Why? I don’t know. It’s most likely that the girls are imagining this. Either that or they got high. It could be a stylistic choice but that’s a weird move on the staff’s part. Stylism is usually reserved for the insert songs. Really, your guess is as good as mine. The girls don’t question it. No one explains it. The car just takes a page from E.T. and Harry Potter and the show then cuts to the girls back on the ground with zero acknowledgment of what just happened. Chika then rallies everyone to will the rain to stop and that somehow works but that just seems normal compared to Mari having a Radbug (that’s a reference no one is going to get). I can at least chalk that up to luck. The flying car? Not so much. All I know is that this wasn’t on my bingo card for this show.
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