Since Ren has joined the idol club, I was curious if she’d switch over to the general curriculum like Chisato did earlier in the show. As you can tell in this episode, Ren now wears the general curriculum uniform though this is due to a new decision by the director to allow students to wear whichever uniform they want to improve solidarity within the school. Ren is technically still in the music program. That briefly made me question Chisato’s decision to transfer. I mean, if Ren can juggle between student council duties, the music curriculum, and school idol practice, then surely Chisato can as well. Then again, Chisato made the switch to show she’s over her desire to be self-sufficient and limit her time spent with Kanon. I’m curious if Ren’s workload will be brought up in a later episode because it frankly sounds insane.
So at long last, Superstar!! re-establishes the Love Live competition. Considering that this show will be three seasons long, I doubt the Yuigaoka club will get very far in Season 1’s iteration of the event but for now, the concern is the preliminaries. In the last episode review, I wondered if Superstar!! would once again have the characters compete in Love Live to save the school. Evidently, the girls do bring up that schools have been saved from closure as result of their idols winning competition but it only lasts for a few seconds. In fact, none of the girls explicitly say that this is their ticket to saving Yuigaoka. It’s weird but to be fair, Superstar!! is the third series in the franchise to pull this plot again. I can understand downplaying it at this point. The show also doesn’t namedrop any of the franchise’s past idol groups, not even μ’s (and they’re the only named group who did save their school), though Superstar!! has been very self-contained from its predecessors so that decision isn’t terribly surprising.
Naturally, everyone is keen on competing in Love Live. There is just two problems here. The first is that they need a new song for the preliminaries. Kanon agrees to write the lyrics while Ren is tasked with composing the instrumentals (she apparently studies the piano). The second and more prevalent problem is what on Earth the girls should call themselves as a group. This story is nine episodes deep and the main characters are finally realizing that they don’t have a group name.
The girls immediately get to brainstorming. Keke pitches using syllables from each of their names like with Kuukaa, coming up with “Chikerekasu”. It’s a cute approach but it’s definitely a lot sillier now that there’s five members. Imagine Keke trying this later when more girls join the club. Chisato pitches “Maru Maru Circle”. Apparently, this girl is obsessed with circles. It kind of feels like the show is trying to figure out on what to do with Chisato outside of her dancing. Evidently, they’re settling on making her one of the weird ones. Ren has a few ideas but she’s too shy to share them; the cheekiest one is “Nine” considering that it was Love Live‘s go-to number for the size of their main idol groups. Hilariously, Sumire isn’t allowed to pitch a name. Poor girl keeps getting snubbed.
When the brainstorming fails, the girls try to get some outside help. First, they open a suggestion box though they receive nothing, with some of their classmates later admitting that it’s hard to pitch one since the club is so new and varied. This does, however, help Kanon come up with a name for the club. The girls also try livestreaming to ask fans for help and to familiarize themselves with the activity in general. Unfortunately, the stream goes south very quickly. I particularly like how shy Ren is while streaming and how upset she gets when Kanon tries to avoid it, accusing the latter of a double standard. It’s refreshing to see Ren act so flustered for a change and it’s cute to see her attitude used more for comedy.
After the livestream, the girls take a break from brainstorming to work on the song. Ren is waiting for Kanon to finish the lyrics first but Kanon is struggling to write something (again) so the gang hilariously locks her up in one of Ren’s rooms until she’s done. Poor Kanon actually has to run away and lie to her friends to get them off her back. It’s all a bit extreme but I find it funny and it’s a nice interlude since there was no way Superstar!! could spend an entire half-hour on just the origin story of the girls’ group name. Fortunately, the lyrics materialize the same time Kanon pitches a name for the group. There is an insert song that plays at the end of the episode though I don’t think that’s intended to be the song Kanon just wrote.
If you’ve paid close attention to the credits or you simply googled it ahead of time, then you already know that the official name for the Yuigaoka idols is Liella!. That said, this episode provides a cute origin story for it, with Kanon going through her father’s language dictionaries and basing Liella! off of the French word for “connect”. Not only does this harkens to Ren’s mother’s dream for Yuigaoka, it also represents Kanon’s desire for the club – to connect in spite of how different they are from one another. I’m not sure how Keke managed to create a giant banner with Liella! printed on it when she displays it seconds after Kanon pitches it to her and the others but whatever. There’s been weirder moments in Love Live!.
Watch Love Live! Superstar!! on Crunchyroll and Funimation.
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