Wonderful Stories - A Look into Love Live's Insert Songs
Love Live, as an idol anime, lives off the music tied to the series and the idols who sing them. Watching Love Live for the first time, I'd never have expected to cry so much watching a show about cute girls dancing and singing songs. Now, as someone who's rewatched the series as a whole so many times I’d still never have expected to cry so much watching a show about cute girls dancing and singing songs.
While the music is wonderful and there's an absolute boatload of slapping songs to fight god to, the plots of these series and how the music directly ties into them are what keeps me coming back again and again.
The music in Love Live is something I’d consider a huge part of its “multimedia” aspects and appeal; there’s so much to get into as a fan of the series. Keeping up to date with the seiyuu on social media, watching the lives, or even those adorable Nijigasaki dramas I literally cannot get enough of. The easiest way to get yourself into Love Live, however, is by dipping your feet (and eventually submerging yourself in) the most universally well-known part of Love Live: its anime.
Since the anime tends to be a lot of people’s first look into the series, including songs in the anime is a great way to get people invested in the multimedia. At a glance, it’s easy to think that the songs are included for solely that reason, but there’s a lot more going on here than you’d first think. Something as simple as the anime’s inserts mean a lot more for the series; its characters, themes, plots, and even the fans themselves are heavily influenced and connected through the songs and performances.
Today there’s a lot to talk about, especially since there's so many bangers in this series. Join me as we take a look into the Love Live anime's insert songs!
Before all that, a quick warning. This entire article will go in-depth about the plot of the entire Love Live series as a whole. I'll be talking in-depth about School Idol Project (SIP), Sunshine, and Nijigasaki's first season, so if you haven't watched them yet I absolutely recommend you go take a look at them for yourselves. I get very excited talking about things and I'd hate to be the reason someone was spoiled out of how much the anime means to me.
With that out of the way, music... start!
Some of the most powerful insert songs take a whole episode, or even more, to build up to. There are two huge examples that I first think of. The first and most obvious is Start Dash. μ's begins as nothing more than a single girl discovering school idols and wishing to save her school. Honoka convinces her friends Kotori and Umi to become idols, spend an episode seeking out Maki as their composer, and finally earn a name for themselves from Nozomi. All events build up from the very start of the very first episode, and lead up to their performance a couple episodes later.
This buildup is exciting and gets you interested in the series right away. There’s a clear goal and Honoka starts with almost nothing, just the desire to become an idol. But by the end of it, all nine members of μ's witness that performance of Start Dash in the school auditorium.
So with how good Start Dash is, why do I consider Yume no Tobira, my second example, to be superior?
I consider Yume no Tobira to be one of the best insert songs in all of Love Live in terms of how it's inserted. It's built up for three episodes from the beginning of season 2 of SIP and it’s one of the first times where a lot of the plot progression of Love Live is directly related to an insert song. That makes it feel so much different from having a song in an episode of the anime just to fill some quota or sell more music. Yume no Tobira has a really important presence in the plot and thus, it’s a great example of just how wonderful Love Live is at using its insert songs as major events in its story.
What I love about Yume no Tobira is how it’s the culmination of a rivalry that forms between μ's and A-RISE. Honoka and Tsubasa even form a bond as leaders of their groups after the performance. You could argue it’s an even bigger build up than the one we see in Start Dash, as we see and hear the opinions of A-RISE from every member of μ's during SIP’s first season.
From the very beginning, A-RISE has been an inspiration to μ's. The two-time champions of the national Love Live competition were the reason Honoka was inspired to make μ's in the first place. Throughout the first season, μ's rises in popularity and A-RISE takes notice, starting a rivalry between the two groups. A-RISE is determined to keep their crown, and μ's is just as determined to take it, even if it means going up against the champions they admire.
There’s a beautiful contrast between A-RISE’s professional nature performing Shocking Party and μ's singing their feelings in Yume no Tobira, being united by a simple dream. During practice for their performance, μ's learns that everything every member does is for the benefit of the whole group. They learn to work together, split into smaller groups to work in unity, and share their experience to make the work easier. During the first season the members of μ's see A-RISE as this professional group they look up to, like a wall they can’t overcome. Only by practicing and learning how each member works and how to work together can they create a song they can win against A-RISE with. The group holds the music, lyrics, and costumes in their hands, and performs in A-RISE’s turf, the rooftop of UTX High. They manage to not only take another giant step towards performing at Love Live, but finally surpass their rivals as well.
Not only is Yume no Tobira built up for so long throughout the series due to A-RISE’s inclusion, but the events of the performance are relevant for a lot more of the series after μ's manages to beat A-RISE. We see Tsubasa approach Honoka for discussion multiple times throughout the rest of SIP, a clear sign Honoka’s won Tsubasa’s respect.
The performance’s relevance doesn’t end with SIP however, as we see Chika take a large inspiration from Yume no Tobira in the early episodes of Sunshine, handing the song's lyrics to Riko in order to explain her love for μ's. To be honest, hearing Yume no Tobira in Sunshine, I completely forgot it was a song in SIP and thought they just introduced a new μ's song for her to play. It’s kinda funny how the song was so important in the first few episodes of Sunshine that I just happened to forget it was in SIP.
If you're a fan of Love Live, I don't think I have to explain to you the sheer amount of impact Snow Halation has in the community. Even outside of it, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Snow Halation is one of the most well-known and universally loved anime songs out there. When so many people think of Love Live's music, they think of Snow Halation whether they're fans of the series or not.
Instead of spending a lot of time telling you how good or catchy the song is or how good the moments in the story are, which you likely already know if you’ve watched the episodes, I want to highlight just what Snow Halation means for our little Love Live culture.
Snow Halation is one of the several songs to have a cultural impact on the community outside of just being a simple song in the anime as well. In fact, the trend we see so well-represented of using certain colours of penlights for certain parts of Love Live songs seems to have originated with Snow Halation. Yeah, that part of Snow Halation where the lights above μ's turn orange? That wasn't just a flashy effect that debuted in the anime. It's an idea decided by fans that's continued to be ingrained deep into our culture. Snow Halation debuted in the anime as an insert song around the middle of 2014, but after the events of μ's first Live, a sea of orange lights became synonymous with the song and its solo by the time the New Year Live swung around in 2013.
There’s a wonderful post from Lucia Hunter detailing the history of how fans started this idea. One of the coolest parts was it was all through word of mouth, through pure dedication. The fans all came together, without the seiyuu or staff, to turn the whole audience from white to orange. The trend continued as Snow Halation was performed at more and more lives, eventually making the sea of orange synonymous with the performance of the song. It’s no doubt that μ's has seen and embraced this support. Especially since the most devout of fans would use UOs: ultra orange lights that were so powerful and bright they couldn’t even last a whole song. But who needed that longevity when the support shown was just as strong as the song itself? For something like Snow Halation, you gotta go all out.
u/xIceArcher's post about the incident during Aqours First Live:
u/iKji's translated Anchan interview:
While the music is wonderful and there's an absolute boatload of slapping songs to fight god to, the plots of these series and how the music directly ties into them are what keeps me coming back again and again.
The music in Love Live is something I’d consider a huge part of its “multimedia” aspects and appeal; there’s so much to get into as a fan of the series. Keeping up to date with the seiyuu on social media, watching the lives, or even those adorable Nijigasaki dramas I literally cannot get enough of. The easiest way to get yourself into Love Live, however, is by dipping your feet (and eventually submerging yourself in) the most universally well-known part of Love Live: its anime.
Since the anime tends to be a lot of people’s first look into the series, including songs in the anime is a great way to get people invested in the multimedia. At a glance, it’s easy to think that the songs are included for solely that reason, but there’s a lot more going on here than you’d first think. Something as simple as the anime’s inserts mean a lot more for the series; its characters, themes, plots, and even the fans themselves are heavily influenced and connected through the songs and performances.
Today there’s a lot to talk about, especially since there's so many bangers in this series. Join me as we take a look into the Love Live anime's insert songs!
Before all that, a quick warning. This entire article will go in-depth about the plot of the entire Love Live series as a whole. I'll be talking in-depth about School Idol Project (SIP), Sunshine, and Nijigasaki's first season, so if you haven't watched them yet I absolutely recommend you go take a look at them for yourselves. I get very excited talking about things and I'd hate to be the reason someone was spoiled out of how much the anime means to me.
With that out of the way, music... start!
Some of the most powerful insert songs take a whole episode, or even more, to build up to. There are two huge examples that I first think of. The first and most obvious is Start Dash. μ's begins as nothing more than a single girl discovering school idols and wishing to save her school. Honoka convinces her friends Kotori and Umi to become idols, spend an episode seeking out Maki as their composer, and finally earn a name for themselves from Nozomi. All events build up from the very start of the very first episode, and lead up to their performance a couple episodes later.
This buildup is exciting and gets you interested in the series right away. There’s a clear goal and Honoka starts with almost nothing, just the desire to become an idol. But by the end of it, all nine members of μ's witness that performance of Start Dash in the school auditorium.
I'm going to keep believing in us. And you know what? Maybe no one will ever give us a shot. Maybe we'll never get any support at all! But I'm not giving up. We still wanna work hard and give people whatever it is we're able to give them!
I consider Yume no Tobira to be one of the best insert songs in all of Love Live in terms of how it's inserted. It's built up for three episodes from the beginning of season 2 of SIP and it’s one of the first times where a lot of the plot progression of Love Live is directly related to an insert song. That makes it feel so much different from having a song in an episode of the anime just to fill some quota or sell more music. Yume no Tobira has a really important presence in the plot and thus, it’s a great example of just how wonderful Love Live is at using its insert songs as major events in its story.
What I love about Yume no Tobira is how it’s the culmination of a rivalry that forms between μ's and A-RISE. Honoka and Tsubasa even form a bond as leaders of their groups after the performance. You could argue it’s an even bigger build up than the one we see in Start Dash, as we see and hear the opinions of A-RISE from every member of μ's during SIP’s first season.
From the very beginning, A-RISE has been an inspiration to μ's. The two-time champions of the national Love Live competition were the reason Honoka was inspired to make μ's in the first place. Throughout the first season, μ's rises in popularity and A-RISE takes notice, starting a rivalry between the two groups. A-RISE is determined to keep their crown, and μ's is just as determined to take it, even if it means going up against the champions they admire.
There’s a beautiful contrast between A-RISE’s professional nature performing Shocking Party and μ's singing their feelings in Yume no Tobira, being united by a simple dream. During practice for their performance, μ's learns that everything every member does is for the benefit of the whole group. They learn to work together, split into smaller groups to work in unity, and share their experience to make the work easier. During the first season the members of μ's see A-RISE as this professional group they look up to, like a wall they can’t overcome. Only by practicing and learning how each member works and how to work together can they create a song they can win against A-RISE with. The group holds the music, lyrics, and costumes in their hands, and performs in A-RISE’s turf, the rooftop of UTX High. They manage to not only take another giant step towards performing at Love Live, but finally surpass their rivals as well.
We'll wait to start practice until they wake up. Our hardest yet...
The performance’s relevance doesn’t end with SIP however, as we see Chika take a large inspiration from Yume no Tobira in the early episodes of Sunshine, handing the song's lyrics to Riko in order to explain her love for μ's. To be honest, hearing Yume no Tobira in Sunshine, I completely forgot it was a song in SIP and thought they just introduced a new μ's song for her to play. It’s kinda funny how the song was so important in the first few episodes of Sunshine that I just happened to forget it was in SIP.
Notice how neither of these gifs have been from the actual episode Yume no Tobira is performed in? It's that meaningful.
If you're a fan of Love Live, I don't think I have to explain to you the sheer amount of impact Snow Halation has in the community. Even outside of it, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Snow Halation is one of the most well-known and universally loved anime songs out there. When so many people think of Love Live's music, they think of Snow Halation whether they're fans of the series or not.
Instead of spending a lot of time telling you how good or catchy the song is or how good the moments in the story are, which you likely already know if you’ve watched the episodes, I want to highlight just what Snow Halation means for our little Love Live culture.
Snow Halation is one of the several songs to have a cultural impact on the community outside of just being a simple song in the anime as well. In fact, the trend we see so well-represented of using certain colours of penlights for certain parts of Love Live songs seems to have originated with Snow Halation. Yeah, that part of Snow Halation where the lights above μ's turn orange? That wasn't just a flashy effect that debuted in the anime. It's an idea decided by fans that's continued to be ingrained deep into our culture. Snow Halation debuted in the anime as an insert song around the middle of 2014, but after the events of μ's first Live, a sea of orange lights became synonymous with the song and its solo by the time the New Year Live swung around in 2013.
There’s a wonderful post from Lucia Hunter detailing the history of how fans started this idea. One of the coolest parts was it was all through word of mouth, through pure dedication. The fans all came together, without the seiyuu or staff, to turn the whole audience from white to orange. The trend continued as Snow Halation was performed at more and more lives, eventually making the sea of orange synonymous with the performance of the song. It’s no doubt that μ's has seen and embraced this support. Especially since the most devout of fans would use UOs: ultra orange lights that were so powerful and bright they couldn’t even last a whole song. But who needed that longevity when the support shown was just as strong as the song itself? For something like Snow Halation, you gotta go all out.
TODOKETE!!
I'll be linking two great articles about this topic at the end of this article: the aforementioned post by Lucia Hunter about the significance of Snow Halation's orange penlights, and another by shukamod of saito-shuka explaining glowsticks, penlights, UOs, and their significance.
The use of penlights during an idol performance is nothing new and nothing Love Live can say it invented. Even still, the idea of using different colours of lights in different ways has developed further into more and more songs from the series, becoming heavily linked to the lives by their fans. Some notable examples are some of Aqours' most iconic songs among their fans. A recent favourite of mine is known as the No.10 Rainbow. Fans of You or Kanan will know exactly what I mean with Koi ni Naritai Aquarum’s Yousoroad and Happy Party Train’s Kanarail. It’s amazing to see how devoted fans are, enough to surprise the seiyuu with their support. There’s a fantastic video of the AqouRainbow where you can see how surprised the seiyuu are during the performance, which also I’ll link at the end of this article.
It's uncommon for an insert song to have such a massive cultural impact in the general fandom, and outside of the anime as well. As an insert, Snow Halation is a highlight of one of the best parts of School Idol Project. μ's has a conflict about wanting to write a love song, as the group has no experience and decided they don’t need to reinvent themselves. However, they realize that being together as μ's is what they cherish most. Nozomi simply wished for the group to create something they’d cherish together.
The group continue their training and as a snowstorm makes performing at their final event nearly impossible, their school and supporters rally together to help them get to the venue and to see them perform. Snow Halation not only stands as the crown jewel of iconic Love Live songs. It’s a massive symbol of both idols and their supporters coming together to enjoy a performance onstage they'll be sure to never, ever forget. I think that’s what being a fan of Love Live is all about.
A lot of people are quick to point out the similarities between the beginning of both School Idol Project and Sunshine, and how Sunshine following the same story for the first several episodes is a detriment to the show's appeal. As we move from talking about School Idol Project's inserts to Sunshine's inserts, I want to draw attention to a certain insert song that never seems to get the attention it deserves. To be honest, I was no different.
I didn’t pay much attention to this song at first. It was Aqours First Live that made me remember it. Going back and watching the insert in the anime again, I started to see what I was missing.
I was missing Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu.
The song performed for the 2nd years live show very early in the first season could be easily compared to Start Dash. You could even claim that it's less of an interesting part of the story due to its success when compared to Start Dash's failure. Aqours did fill the entire gymnasium, accomplishing their goal and allowing their idol club to earn the support they needed. While it wasn't without any hitches, they succeeded, performed their first live, and took their first step to forming their club.
Where Start Dash is like the first step for μ's to become idols, saying they'll push forwards no matter what, Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu shouldn't be compared to it. It's a perfect example of how even though Aqours follows the trail of μ's, they do it so much differently. Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu is about taking that chance to try something new and how destiny will take charge and light the way. As long as they still have their passion for what they do, they'll be okay.
Even when the power goes out during the performance, in the pouring rain, people see how passionate these girls are. They’re inspired by this passion to help. They find emergency power generators just to get the lights back on, and fill the gym with people in the pouring rain.
μ's creates the trail no one's travelled before. Aqours follows that trail and believes things will work out if they believe in themselves. It's an incredible example of setting up the recurring theme of Love Live Sunshine: working through failure.
The lights go out and they struggle to even get a few words out but by the end of the night they're performing as loud and proud as they can be.
Even without the same immediate emotional effect that the initial failure from μ's did, it has its own. The scene where the power goes out and they're struggling to even continue, and the single line Chika is able to sing before crying is about how they'll be alright and need to push forwards. It may be controversial, but I think that scene makes this one of the only songs where I can confidently say the recorded insert in the anime is better than a version performed live.
I'll make sure we're equally pumped up some day, I'm feeling fine...
A nice touch is that it brings together the nine of Aqours, just like μ's in Start Dash, but in a different way. Yoshiko, who’s been staying away from school and wearing a disguise in public, comes into the gym to see the second-years perform. Ruby and Hanamaru, the ones too shy or self-conscious to join in, admire from the audience. Dia and Mari oversee the show as the student council president and school director respectively, both at war with each other to deny or approve the idols. Kanan stays out in the rain, not even willing to go inside.
When the power goes out, it’s clear to the viewer Ruby and Hanamaru run off to look for a generator to turn the power back on. However, we then see a power generator covered by the shadow of an umbrella. Dia turns the power back on, and we see two generators hooked up next to her. Ruby and Maru were the ones to find the first, but Kanan was the second. Even in the early moments of Sunshine with Dia and Kanan against Aqours and against Mari, they still show their support back then in their very first live.
The first few episodes of Sunshine are wonderful and have subtle ways of building the themes of the entire show: believing in destiny, trying your best, and dealing with failure. They shouldn't go underlooked.
Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu shouldn’t go underlooked.
Season 1’s Episode 9 might be one of the most iconic episodes of Sunshine for a lot of people. Mijuku Dreamer is such a powerful moment, one of the most well known in the show.
The episode doesn't even start with the typical "Last time on Love Live!" but rather a flashback from the third years where Kanan officially quit being a school idol. The entire second half of the first season of Sunshine is where the show spreads its wings, really showing how different it is from SIP. This way of starting the episode is a great way to show the viewer there's going to be a lot of heavy conflict between the girls as the focus of the episode. It's the perfect lead into everything else.
The Aqours Six are invited to a fireworks festival and while the group is wondering how to perform, Chika’s mind is still stuck on a conversation with Kanan. Turns out, Kanan used to be a school idol just like them.
According to Ruby, the third years performed in Tokyo just like the six of them, which started the whole mess, breaking them apart for the next two years.
The more they learn, the more questions the group has about just what happened between the third years. More specifically, between Mari and Kanan. Their lack of communication severed their bond. Kanan sabotaged their performance for what she believed was the greater good, and Mari never understood how Kanan was doing it to look out for her the whole time.
Everything finally connects, the third years’ Tokyo performance and now. We’ve learned who these girls are, we’ve learned how genuine their struggles and conflicts are. They’ve both just wanted to cherish and look out for each other. After two long years, the girls hug, tears in their eyes, finally having reconciled. This scene of the two reconciling and realizing they’ve cared for each other all this time makes me cry in a way no other scene in Love Live does.
All Kanan has ever done is worry about you and your well-being. About how you fit in. About your feelings. And... about your future.
Dia and Chika have a short talk outside the school gates in a wonderful moment for Dia’s character as well. Up until now she’s sort of been that antagonistic student council president, against the idea of an idol club, and against Ruby joining it. We see moments of her softer side, comforting Ruby after the Tokyo performance and reassuring the group that they didn’t outright fail. Now that we know all the events that happened, we see the reasons why and the way Dia approached the new Aqours makes a lot of sense. After experiencing her two best friends going through such a long fight, Dia just wanted to protect her sister and the other girls. Her conversation with Mari before the Aqours Six went to Tokyo makes a lot of sense. Dia knew the group would fail like they did, and Mari tells her that if they can’t deal with that they won’t get any stronger. It turns out that from the very start, Dia was looking after everyone as well. As Mari and Kanan finally join Aqours, Ruby is the one to hand Dia her costume. Now the complete group of nine can finally stand on stage together.
In one of the best inserts in the whole series, Mijuku Dreamer encompasses the group's journey. It represents their pains and struggles, and how they finally come together and learn to understand each other. The entire episode builds up to the song's performance, and the song perfectly represents the episode. The fireworks performance isn't anything incredible or flashy, but it doesn't need to be. The performance is about the feelings behind the song more than anything, and the fireworks are the cherry on top.
To end the episode, we see the voting results from the recent Tokyo performance, Aqours' 0 votes, hung up in the clubroom. It’s the sign the group has moved past both the group of six and group of three's failures in Tokyo, and will start to move together as their final group of nine starting from now.
♪ When we do that, I'm sure we'll see new light ♬
As the nine of them stand on stage after their performance, the group learns that Aqours also happened to be the name of the group the third years had two years ago. While it could’ve just been a coincidence, it turns out Dia was the one to give the new Aqours its name, writing it in the sand for the second years to find. Intentional or not, it turns out the rest of them were played like fiddles, to reunite the old “Aqours” the third years had left behind.
Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare is an incredibly important song for the real life Aqours, a contrast to its simple inclusion in the anime.
Aqours has an insane track record of doing something new and amazing every live. The girls brought a train into their lives. They’ve performed on entire ships. They brought in a whole entire orchestra. They’re the group known for performing a backflip on stage. If you’re watching an Aqours live, you can bet on something being there to blow you away.
But at the start of it all, during their first live, Aqours would perform Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare live on stage. The best part? Rikyako, Riko’s seiyuu, would be playing the piano live.
Being serious for a second, I don't believe it's respectful of me to go into details about what happened during this performance. There’s a great post written by u/xIceArcher on the topic that I’ll leave at the end of this article. However, the gist of the situation was that during the song, Rikyako was unable to play. The rest of Aqours comforted her, and the crowd was there cheering for her the whole time. The sheer amount of overwhelming support for Rikyako from the fans in the audience, and especially from Aqours themselves was incredible. It’s amazing how much it still means to the community four and a half years later. It's absolutely beautiful to see and it's one of those things I truly think separates Love Live from anything else out there.
As idol fans we love to show our support for our idols during their lives with fun call-and-responses, different coloured lights, even things like the previously mentioned Snow Halation orange lights. Not only is it part of the experience of being a Love Live fan, it transcends Love Live and represents enjoying something, anything in your life. Using that enjoyment to support the seiyuu like Rikyako or whoever else you support, it's a beautiful thing.
The sea of pink visible in this part of Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare is a representation of our love and support for Aqours as fans. Hell, the events of the first live are such an important part of the community that if you type "aqours first live" into your search bar, you'll get "aqours first live incident" as the first search suggestion.
Aqours pulls through with their fans supporting them, and they continue the live, ending without any further hiccups. But the best part of this story isn’t the performance itself or what happens during it. The best part is how the group moves past it and becomes even better.
During their fourth live, Sailing to the Sunshine, Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare had returned for the first time since their first live. Rikyako sits at the piano, looking out over a familiar sea of pink lights. She looks down at Anchan, who cheers her on and gives her a smile. She then looks down at Shuka, who does the same. She begins to play the piano, but something’s different. Rikyako gets up from her seat, and joins the rest of Aqours on the stage, performing the song together as a group of nine.
The performance ends perfectly, with Rikyako nearly in tears saying that Omoi has always been a song for eight people, without her. Ever since their first live, she’s wanted to perform it again alongside everyone and mentioned how hard Aqours and their staff worked to make her dream come true. After their first live, Rikyako stated she wanted to continue to do her best to show the group’s fans a stronger version of herself. Now that she’s joined the group in performing the song that led to that incident, she’s shown everyone how strong she and all of Aqours truly are.
Long time fans of Aqours hold these feelings deep in their hearts, I’m sure. Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare isn’t just another insert song in Sunshine. It represents Aqours growing and learning, and what it means to be a fan of them and support them through all these years. It's truly something special, symbolized by something as seemingly simple as the colour pink.
Damn you, Love Live. making me cry when I look at colours.
Aqours WAVE is the episode that leads into the later half of Sunshine’s second season, and precede the heaviest events in the entire show. After the group performs My Mai Tonight and Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru Kai at the Love Live qualifiers and their school’s open house respectively, only 57 out of the 100 students they need to save their school have applied. Their next event, the regional prelims, are announced less than a month away on the same night as their application deadline. If Aqours can’t convince 100 students to apply to their school by the day of the prelims, their school will be closed down for good. Their last chance is here.
So many of these songs could be considered great character study moments and offer a lot of character development for the character(s) in question. Chika’s development through Miracle Wave is a great way of showing just how Love Live Sunshine separates itself from School Idol Project. Even though both start out in very similar ways with similar main characters, you’re left with something absolutely completely different at the end of each.
In order to understand Miracle Wave, we first have to understand Chika Takami.
Chika is the driving force behind Aqours, the one who brought everyone together, and the reason everyone can stand on stage as nine and accomplish their dreams together. She isn't as normal as she thinks she is and Miracle Wave is her way of learning that. She believes she hasn't tried hard enough and she owes all her success to the other members because she hasn't done anything.
She tries so hard to learn the secret technique for Miracle Wave and fails every time. The thing that allows her to push past that and finally succeed is learning that the group has come together because of her. Learning how much she’s contributed and how much she’s done for everyone. Every character’s growth at this point has been because of Chika.
You was able to find something to enjoy with her best friend and see the light she saw in the rest of the world.
Riko was able to regain her passion for the thing she loved after her struggles kept her away from the stage she enjoyed.
Ruby was able to become something better than herself, to show those around her they didn’t need to worry about her anymore.
Hanamaru was able to find confidence in herself and enjoy something despite how she saw herself.
Yoshiko was able to embrace who she really was and love herself as someone who was just a little bit different from everyone else.
Dia was finally able to see those around her be happy: her sister, able to be proud of who she was, and her childhood friends, who were finally able to reconcile after two years.
Mari was able to keep fighting for her home and the school she loved.
And Kanan was not only able to finally see her dream realized in the biggest idol competition in the country, but was able to cast aside her fears of hurting those she cared about.
Aqours are just normal high school girls out there trying to make a difference and Chika especially doesn’t see herself as anything special. She’s followed in the light of μ's because she didn’t have her own to follow. But through forging her own path with Aqours she’s created her own light and uses it to do the one thing she’s always wanted to: to shine. To be someone special, to try her best at something.
These inserts have a fantastic way of easily showcasing these ideas: visually. It turns out the secret technique in the choreography was a backflip, the first and only time one has ever been in the choreography for a LL song. Through realizing her strength and how bright she really shines, she pulls off something no one in the entire series has been able to accomplish, or has ever since.
The nine of them performed a miracle on stage that couldn't be accomplished before. It couldn’t be accomplished by only the third-years, and it couldn’t be accomplished if it wasn’t for Chika standing on stage with them.
This miracle is present even outside the anime as well. While writing this, I recently got the chance to watch the live performance of Miracle Wave during Aqours 3rd live tour. When the music starts to play, you can hear the crowd in anticipation. Everyone knows that flip is coming. Aqours does a lot to revolutionize what Love Live choreography was after μ's shot the series into popularity. There’s so many unique ideas in their songs and it shows during their lives. During the performance, you can see how tense Anchan is as she prepares for the flip. You can see how tense the other members are, watching her as the music slows down and she takes a breath. She takes the leap, and she lands it perfectly.
I don’t think there’s anyone more perfect to play Chika. Anchan is just like her, powered by this passion and love for what she does, able to do amazing things on stage. It feels fated, in a way, to have someone who’s such a big μ's fan to become the leader for the next generation of Love Live. It feels fated to have someone who claimed she’d even consider quitting becoming a seiyuu had she not passed the audition end up creating miracles on stage. There’s someone out there who felt unconfident in her abilities to play someone like Chika but was able to do such amazing things. I think that’s a miracle in and of itself.
It isn’t hard to see the excitement and pride from the other members when Anchan succeeds, raising their fists in the air and cheering on their leader. It’s hard to not get emotional seeing Anchan push back her tears as she continues to sing. The entire time the group is worried about if they’ll pull it off, but there’s no doubt a miracle happened on stage that day. There’s something special about how the group huddles together after the song, a few of the members in tears. With both performances of Miracle Wave, Chika, Anchan, and the rest of Aqours have shown how far they’ve come since the events of their very first live, and how far they’ll continue to go.
After all, a Miracle Wave brings miracles.
Over the months on my Twitter, I've brought up Wonderful Stories every so often saying it's my favourite Aqours song, but I don't think I've ever really gone in-depth as to why that is, so I want to take some time to gush about exactly that.
I feel sort of the same way about this song as I do with Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu. It's so great at culminating all of the moments and themes and ideas that make Sunshine such an amazing story. How else would it accomplish this other than playing through every single insert we've seen in the story so far? Wonderful Stories presents itself as one of, if not the most visually diverse inserts the series has seen. Love Live’s inserts are fantastic at delivering the mood of a scene through their connection with the music and the lyrics. While this is true for nearly every insert, Wonderful Stories utilizes Love Live’s incredible direction and subtle attention to detail, two visual elements the series is amazing at using to deliver emotions and ideas, to set itself apart. I’ll do my best to highlight each of these to show off how much thought and consideration went into such an amazing insert. Either that, or I’ll be reading between the lines way too much.
We start with the girls singing and dancing in the gymnasium, then cutting to the classroom. You might be quick to say, what’s the point? Seems like these are just common “high school anime” settings. Instead, it acts as a reminder and a subtle nod to the fact that the very first scene in Sunshine was in Chika’s classroom, seeing Riko walk in as a transfer student. A 12-second scene at the very beginning of the first episode ends up being important not only when Riko is fully introduced, but again at the very end of the show.
The scenes are more recognizable as we cut to see the girls dancing down the hallway, as well as in the courtyard and sitting on the bench in that courtyard. This is a pretty easy reference to Kimeta yo Hand in Hand, the show’s first insert song.
They even brought back the bench! You guys remember the bench, right? From episode 2! I think Chika sat on it once!
We then return to the gymnasium, nearly empty. Not only as a reference to Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu, but to juxtapose this small audience of only a few people with the previous stage Aqours performed on: the Love Live finals. A great detail is that everyone appears in this scene as they did during that old performance of Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu. Yoshiko is wearing her coat and glasses, Maru’s holding the school idol club poster, and most importantly, Kanan’s holding an umbrella, and there’s an emergency power generator next to Dia. Remember when I said to keep this detail in mind? It’s a nice showcase of how the series has been dropping little visual clues and references ever since the very beginning. It fits well in an insert full of them.
Fun fact! In my notes I just had this part screenshotted and gushed about how I wanted to talk about everything in this.
Next we see the third years in their old Tokyo outfits from their past performance, as well as the first and second years performing in Yume de Yozora wo Terashitai. I love how serious Kanan’s expression is here, contrasted with Mari and Dia’s simple smiles. It reflects that there’s more going on in Kanan’s head than just a simple performance. While the third years aren’t part of Aqours yet, they perform Yume de Yozora wo Terashitai which allows them to become more popular and earn an invite to perform in Tokyo themselves. These two performances are connected by seeing the first years in their Tokyo outfits. This whole Tokyo arc is ended by transitioning quickly into Mijuku Dreamer, the song that could only be performed once the group reconnected and performed as nine. A nice touch is that it’s common for parts of Aqours songs to be sung in groups of three, and it’s no different here. The third years begin this section of the song and the second years transition over to the first years during Yume de Yozora, allowing the focus to shift to the first years as the scene in their Tokyo outfits connects these scenes together. The music actively compliments the visuals of the insert in a way you might not pick up on at first and continues to follow that trend of how Aqours songs are divided up.
All jokes aside, these transitions are beautiful and flow incredibly well. It's so cool seeing them bring up the Tokyo outfits to transition into Mijuku Dreamer, where they moved past their failures in Tokyo together.
Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare might have the most impactful detail of them all. The group performs without Riko as a group of eight. The camera moves around Chika to see the group in front of a sea of pink lights, and cuts to Riko playing the piano. It’s implied this is a reference to the events of Aqours First Live, and showcases once again how far Aqours has come. It's followed by another chance to see the iconic camerawork of Mirai Ticket once again, closing out the first season's inserts.
My dad was actually the one who pointed out the sea of pink in this section of the song. A big thanks to him for sparking my interest to research more!
Starting Season 2's inserts, Mirai Ticket is followed by a sequence of all these performances involving Aqours climbing the ladder to reach the Love Live finals. Performing My Mai Tonight and Miracle Wave allowed Aqours to advance to the finals, Awaken the Power gave them the courage to approach the finals despite whatever events would happen afterwards, and Water Blue New World allowed them to write their school’s name in Love Live history.
There’s a part in the middle of the song where the group stops singing, and Chika speaks from her heart. As it turns out, all the hard work and training Aqours did throughout the entire story was what made them special. The steps they took and the amount of struggles they went through became the very radiance they’d been searching for all along. The whole time Aqours had gone through failures and struggles they only continued to shine brighter.
The performance for Wonderful Stories could be seen as a rough synopsis of the entire plot of Sunshine. It summarizes the entire show so well to the point where it wouldn’t be outlandish to claim that someone new to Love Live could watch this single insert and have a simple understanding of the entire 2-season anime series. We see how far Aqours has come since the very beginning, a reminder of how every single character has grown and become stronger. It perfectly delivers that feeling at the end of the journey where you’ve finally made it despite all your hardships.
Really, the only insert not represented here is Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru Kai, which can be forgiven as it has its own complete PV as their first single. KimiKoko is sort of its own thing where I wouldn't fully consider it an insert.
As you can see, it’s not only the performances to advance Love Live that they highlight, and it isn’t just the performances to get the nine of them together. Sometimes it's not even a performance at all, it's even showing off some of my favourite outfits in Sunshine. Wonderful Stories doesn’t just represent the songs of Love Live Sunshine. It represents everything that makes Love Live Sunshine what it is.
It represents everything that makes Aqours what it is.
Love Live Sunshine’s themes are those of failure and regret. They’re about how the world isn’t always fair and how even after struggling you might just end up with a zero. A zero that can be turned into a one. Then, maybe even something greater.
Sunshine teaches us how to move past those failures or regrets and how to grow stronger from them. It teaches us how to believe in ourselves and become stronger, accomplishing things we never thought we could. It teaches us that we can be just like Chika. Just like the rest of Aqours.
Near the end of Sunshine, Uranohoshi Girls’ High School closes. Aqours fails to save their school even with how hard they struggled and everything they’ve learned. However, as their fans and supporters, we don’t see them as failures in the slightest. They’re incredible and shine bright with a radiance they can call their own. They won Love Live and wrote their school into history. They’re champions.
School idols are amazing because they’re just like ordinary people, but they can stand on stage and shine bright together to inspire others.
Love Live Sunshine teaches us that even through failure, ordinary people can do amazing things.
When discussing the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, often shortened to Nijigasaki or just “Niji”, it’s worth clarifying that the group is structured a lot differently. Niji is a group of solo idols who don’t perform together as a group very often. A lot of the songs released under Niji are typically solo songs performed by a single girl, making them very character-focused with little to no connection to other characters or the events of a general plot. Often the plot will surround the characters itself, and the songs are a way of showcasing that character and the growth they experience through that plot. It’s rather unlike School Idol Project and Sunshine, where the songs themselves were often a vehicle for change.
That being said, there’s a single song I would consider to be an exception. Setsuna Yuki’s CHASE is easily the most iconic song from Nijigasaki as a whole.
Part of this impact came from the huge amount of appeal the song had. The Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Shuffle Festival, or Niji Shuffle Fes, was announced as a live where the Nijigasaki members would be performing each other’s solo songs. I heard how excited people were, not only for the idea of the girls performing each other’s songs, but specifically for CHASE. If everyone swapped solos, then who would be performing CHASE? I even heard people joking that Shuffle Fes would just be votes for everyone to perform it.
It’s arguably the most popular song for Nijigasaki, even more than their first PV, Tokimeki Runners. It was voted by the attending fans to be the encore for the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club First Live “with You” alongside Setsuna winning the vote for headliner for the live. It’s uncertain exactly what the headliner role determined besides having her icon on a fancy medal for winning the popularity vote, but it made it clear that Setsuna was the most popular character in Niji.
The other aspect of what makes CHASE so iconic is something more generally applicable that doesn’t just relate to character popularity. The other half of CHASE’s iconic status is its insertion into the anime.
CHASE is the first step the Niji anime takes to start running, establishing the entire precedent for the anime in a single insert. Because of Niji’s history with the mobile game, School Idol Festival All Stars or SIFAS, fans had uncertainties about the Niji anime’s plot. The plot of SIFAS starts with a broken Nijigasaki High School Idol Club that needs reforming, and ends with the goal to perform at the School Idol Festival. The anime follows this as well, but we’re shown three minutes into the first episode that things are going to be different as Setsuna starts to performs CHASE.
♪ The moment that the world shines with brilliant colors, I want to see that with you, those feelings are my answer. Your emotions that take off running will make you stronger! ♬
In SIFAS, Yuu Takasaki’s introduction to school idols is through a joint live between μ's and Aqours in order to introduce those characters to the Nijigasaki plot. It’s a great way of connecting everything together, but μ's and Aqours don’t exist in the Niji anime like they do in SIFAS. Therefore, Yuu’s introduction has to come internally from Niji, which happens during Setsuna’s performance of CHASE. This instantly establishes that μ's and Aqours don’t exist to pull that beginning plot along in the anime, and tells the veteran Love Live fan that μ's and Aqours aren’t being involved with this anime. This is something completely new.
It makes a lot of sense for CHASE to be the song Setsuna performs, since only Niji’s first solos were performed before we even knew who Yuu was. In SIFAS, Yuu takes the role of Niji’s songwriter, giving the girls new songs to perform. Outside of writing a new song for Setsuna to perform, CHASE would be the only existing song that would make sense to perform before several events in Niji’s plotline. This establishes the idea that Yuu hasn’t become a songwriter for the club before they perform songs, and that it’s possible this is a trend that will continue further. It sets up for Ayumu’s performance of Dream with You later in the episode without it feeling strange or unnatural.
All of this information is conveyed in the first five minutes of the first episode, by the time the performance ends. This doesn’t happen through any kind of dialogue or exposition, nothing is directly explained to the viewer. It’s simply there to intrinsically establish its setting and separate itself from the rest of the series in case there was any confusion.
CHASE is both the red thread connecting SIFAS to the anime, as well as a way to help carry the plot together during the anime’s first few episodes. The song specifically helps cement the idea that Niji is different from the other groups because of its different tone. It’s the most iconic song of the group but it’s more somber, and expresses the feelings of running away and wanting to find yourself. It’s a lot different when compared to the most iconic songs of the other groups. Snow Halation is a love song written about the things you enjoy, and a song like Aozora Jumping Heart is upbeat and energetic. It wonderfully highlights the differences of the Niji anime that could be important to a Love Live veteran, and their expectations.
Outside of CHASE, the Niji anime takes a different stance on how each performance is inserted as they don’t occur as actual stage performances. This is the case for the first half of season 1’s inserts. The setting of each performance is heavily linked to who these characters are. Shizuku performs in a stage play, Kanata performs on a stage for her sister as a fellow school idol, and Rina has the very first scheduled live performance of the season.
Often the Niji episodes are specifically based around a single character, and allow for development of that character individually. While she’s no exception, I think the way Rina’s is handled and the kind of character she is makes it a lot more impactful. Rina is quickly introduced as someone quiet, standoffish, and seemingly distant. While she’s actually caring and eager to make new friends, her inability to express her emotions makes her seem disinterested in the world around her. Ai is the only friend Rina has, and the only person who can understand her emotions just by looking at her and as Ai approaches the School Idol Club to experience something new, so does Rina. Seeing Rina open up and learn to find worth and pride in herself despite her inability to express her emotions is wonderful. It seems to be common opinion that Rina’s episode is one of, if not the best episodes in the Niji anime, but there’s something specific that makes this episode and its insert special to me.
There’s a few select frames during the performance of Tsunagaru Connect that stand out to me where we see Rina sing and smile underneath her board. It’s commonly seemed to me like people either see Rina with or without her board, treating the two almost like completely different characters. This entire episode and performance does a great job at displaying how there’s no difference between the two by detailing Rina’s feelings and difficulty with expressing herself. She still feels emotions as she curls into a ball under a cardboard box, the same way she feels emotions being in the clubroom every day. As a solution, the board isn’t meant to give her those emotions, it’s to help display them. If she smiles, the board will smile, and this shot in Tsunagaru Connect helps remind us of that. It’s a small but important detail of her character that feels overshadowed by the rest of the growth in the episode and I wanted to draw attention to it. It’s easily my favourite part of the episode.
After seeing KimiKoko in Sunshine’s season 2, it's likely in the future that we'll see Hajimari wa Kimi no Sora as an insert song in Love Live Superstar at some point, and with the building hype of both Liella fans and Love Live fans in general, it makes me so glad to say that we're bound to continue seeing some inserts that'll leave just as strong of an impact.
There’s so much amazing music in this series and it’ll only keep continuing as Liella continues to grow alongside Aqours and Nijigasaki. I’ve only scratched the surface by talking about a few of my favourites. I haven’t even mentioned how great a lot of inserts in the Love Live movies are, like how the Sunshine movie has one of my favourite inserts in the whole series or how good Saint Snow’s inserts in Sunshine are, or the myriad of character growth highlighted in these inserts or… you get the idea.
Love Live is amazing at delivering so much through a single song. At a first glance it might be seen as just another anime with idol girls but there’s such an inspiring attention to detail here. Under the surface, Love Live shows an immense amount of passion and care for such Wonderful Stories I’ll continue to cherish.
The use of penlights during an idol performance is nothing new and nothing Love Live can say it invented. Even still, the idea of using different colours of lights in different ways has developed further into more and more songs from the series, becoming heavily linked to the lives by their fans. Some notable examples are some of Aqours' most iconic songs among their fans. A recent favourite of mine is known as the No.10 Rainbow. Fans of You or Kanan will know exactly what I mean with Koi ni Naritai Aquarum’s Yousoroad and Happy Party Train’s Kanarail. It’s amazing to see how devoted fans are, enough to surprise the seiyuu with their support. There’s a fantastic video of the AqouRainbow where you can see how surprised the seiyuu are during the performance, which also I’ll link at the end of this article.
It's uncommon for an insert song to have such a massive cultural impact in the general fandom, and outside of the anime as well. As an insert, Snow Halation is a highlight of one of the best parts of School Idol Project. μ's has a conflict about wanting to write a love song, as the group has no experience and decided they don’t need to reinvent themselves. However, they realize that being together as μ's is what they cherish most. Nozomi simply wished for the group to create something they’d cherish together.
The group continue their training and as a snowstorm makes performing at their final event nearly impossible, their school and supporters rally together to help them get to the venue and to see them perform. Snow Halation not only stands as the crown jewel of iconic Love Live songs. It’s a massive symbol of both idols and their supporters coming together to enjoy a performance onstage they'll be sure to never, ever forget. I think that’s what being a fan of Love Live is all about.
A lot of people are quick to point out the similarities between the beginning of both School Idol Project and Sunshine, and how Sunshine following the same story for the first several episodes is a detriment to the show's appeal. As we move from talking about School Idol Project's inserts to Sunshine's inserts, I want to draw attention to a certain insert song that never seems to get the attention it deserves. To be honest, I was no different.
I didn’t pay much attention to this song at first. It was Aqours First Live that made me remember it. Going back and watching the insert in the anime again, I started to see what I was missing.
I was missing Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu.
The song performed for the 2nd years live show very early in the first season could be easily compared to Start Dash. You could even claim that it's less of an interesting part of the story due to its success when compared to Start Dash's failure. Aqours did fill the entire gymnasium, accomplishing their goal and allowing their idol club to earn the support they needed. While it wasn't without any hitches, they succeeded, performed their first live, and took their first step to forming their club.
Where Start Dash is like the first step for μ's to become idols, saying they'll push forwards no matter what, Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu shouldn't be compared to it. It's a perfect example of how even though Aqours follows the trail of μ's, they do it so much differently. Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu is about taking that chance to try something new and how destiny will take charge and light the way. As long as they still have their passion for what they do, they'll be okay.
Even when the power goes out during the performance, in the pouring rain, people see how passionate these girls are. They’re inspired by this passion to help. They find emergency power generators just to get the lights back on, and fill the gym with people in the pouring rain.
μ's creates the trail no one's travelled before. Aqours follows that trail and believes things will work out if they believe in themselves. It's an incredible example of setting up the recurring theme of Love Live Sunshine: working through failure.
The lights go out and they struggle to even get a few words out but by the end of the night they're performing as loud and proud as they can be.
Even without the same immediate emotional effect that the initial failure from μ's did, it has its own. The scene where the power goes out and they're struggling to even continue, and the single line Chika is able to sing before crying is about how they'll be alright and need to push forwards. It may be controversial, but I think that scene makes this one of the only songs where I can confidently say the recorded insert in the anime is better than a version performed live.
When the power goes out, it’s clear to the viewer Ruby and Hanamaru run off to look for a generator to turn the power back on. However, we then see a power generator covered by the shadow of an umbrella. Dia turns the power back on, and we see two generators hooked up next to her. Ruby and Maru were the ones to find the first, but Kanan was the second. Even in the early moments of Sunshine with Dia and Kanan against Aqours and against Mari, they still show their support back then in their very first live.
It's a lovely detail to see Kanan and Dia still supporting the second years in their own ways. Keep it in the back of your head for now, there's something kinda cool later on.
The first few episodes of Sunshine are wonderful and have subtle ways of building the themes of the entire show: believing in destiny, trying your best, and dealing with failure. They shouldn't go underlooked.
Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu shouldn’t go underlooked.
Season 1’s Episode 9 might be one of the most iconic episodes of Sunshine for a lot of people. Mijuku Dreamer is such a powerful moment, one of the most well known in the show.
The episode doesn't even start with the typical "Last time on Love Live!" but rather a flashback from the third years where Kanan officially quit being a school idol. The entire second half of the first season of Sunshine is where the show spreads its wings, really showing how different it is from SIP. This way of starting the episode is a great way to show the viewer there's going to be a lot of heavy conflict between the girls as the focus of the episode. It's the perfect lead into everything else.
The Aqours Six are invited to a fireworks festival and while the group is wondering how to perform, Chika’s mind is still stuck on a conversation with Kanan. Turns out, Kanan used to be a school idol just like them.
According to Ruby, the third years performed in Tokyo just like the six of them, which started the whole mess, breaking them apart for the next two years.
The more they learn, the more questions the group has about just what happened between the third years. More specifically, between Mari and Kanan. Their lack of communication severed their bond. Kanan sabotaged their performance for what she believed was the greater good, and Mari never understood how Kanan was doing it to look out for her the whole time.
Everything finally connects, the third years’ Tokyo performance and now. We’ve learned who these girls are, we’ve learned how genuine their struggles and conflicts are. They’ve both just wanted to cherish and look out for each other. After two long years, the girls hug, tears in their eyes, finally having reconciled. This scene of the two reconciling and realizing they’ve cared for each other all this time makes me cry in a way no other scene in Love Live does.
She cares more than anyone. She showed you all the time. You just never bothered to see it.
Dia and Chika have a short talk outside the school gates in a wonderful moment for Dia’s character as well. Up until now she’s sort of been that antagonistic student council president, against the idea of an idol club, and against Ruby joining it. We see moments of her softer side, comforting Ruby after the Tokyo performance and reassuring the group that they didn’t outright fail. Now that we know all the events that happened, we see the reasons why and the way Dia approached the new Aqours makes a lot of sense. After experiencing her two best friends going through such a long fight, Dia just wanted to protect her sister and the other girls. Her conversation with Mari before the Aqours Six went to Tokyo makes a lot of sense. Dia knew the group would fail like they did, and Mari tells her that if they can’t deal with that they won’t get any stronger. It turns out that from the very start, Dia was looking after everyone as well. As Mari and Kanan finally join Aqours, Ruby is the one to hand Dia her costume. Now the complete group of nine can finally stand on stage together.
In one of the best inserts in the whole series, Mijuku Dreamer encompasses the group's journey. It represents their pains and struggles, and how they finally come together and learn to understand each other. The entire episode builds up to the song's performance, and the song perfectly represents the episode. The fireworks performance isn't anything incredible or flashy, but it doesn't need to be. The performance is about the feelings behind the song more than anything, and the fireworks are the cherry on top.
To end the episode, we see the voting results from the recent Tokyo performance, Aqours' 0 votes, hung up in the clubroom. It’s the sign the group has moved past both the group of six and group of three's failures in Tokyo, and will start to move together as their final group of nine starting from now.
As the nine of them stand on stage after their performance, the group learns that Aqours also happened to be the name of the group the third years had two years ago. While it could’ve just been a coincidence, it turns out Dia was the one to give the new Aqours its name, writing it in the sand for the second years to find. Intentional or not, it turns out the rest of them were played like fiddles, to reunite the old “Aqours” the third years had left behind.
Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare is an incredibly important song for the real life Aqours, a contrast to its simple inclusion in the anime.
Aqours has an insane track record of doing something new and amazing every live. The girls brought a train into their lives. They’ve performed on entire ships. They brought in a whole entire orchestra. They’re the group known for performing a backflip on stage. If you’re watching an Aqours live, you can bet on something being there to blow you away.
But at the start of it all, during their first live, Aqours would perform Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare live on stage. The best part? Rikyako, Riko’s seiyuu, would be playing the piano live.
Being serious for a second, I don't believe it's respectful of me to go into details about what happened during this performance. There’s a great post written by u/xIceArcher on the topic that I’ll leave at the end of this article. However, the gist of the situation was that during the song, Rikyako was unable to play. The rest of Aqours comforted her, and the crowd was there cheering for her the whole time. The sheer amount of overwhelming support for Rikyako from the fans in the audience, and especially from Aqours themselves was incredible. It’s amazing how much it still means to the community four and a half years later. It's absolutely beautiful to see and it's one of those things I truly think separates Love Live from anything else out there.
As idol fans we love to show our support for our idols during their lives with fun call-and-responses, different coloured lights, even things like the previously mentioned Snow Halation orange lights. Not only is it part of the experience of being a Love Live fan, it transcends Love Live and represents enjoying something, anything in your life. Using that enjoyment to support the seiyuu like Rikyako or whoever else you support, it's a beautiful thing.
The sea of pink visible in this part of Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare is a representation of our love and support for Aqours as fans. Hell, the events of the first live are such an important part of the community that if you type "aqours first live" into your search bar, you'll get "aqours first live incident" as the first search suggestion.
Aqours pulls through with their fans supporting them, and they continue the live, ending without any further hiccups. But the best part of this story isn’t the performance itself or what happens during it. The best part is how the group moves past it and becomes even better.
During their fourth live, Sailing to the Sunshine, Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare had returned for the first time since their first live. Rikyako sits at the piano, looking out over a familiar sea of pink lights. She looks down at Anchan, who cheers her on and gives her a smile. She then looks down at Shuka, who does the same. She begins to play the piano, but something’s different. Rikyako gets up from her seat, and joins the rest of Aqours on the stage, performing the song together as a group of nine.
The performance ends perfectly, with Rikyako nearly in tears saying that Omoi has always been a song for eight people, without her. Ever since their first live, she’s wanted to perform it again alongside everyone and mentioned how hard Aqours and their staff worked to make her dream come true. After their first live, Rikyako stated she wanted to continue to do her best to show the group’s fans a stronger version of herself. Now that she’s joined the group in performing the song that led to that incident, she’s shown everyone how strong she and all of Aqours truly are.
Long time fans of Aqours hold these feelings deep in their hearts, I’m sure. Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare isn’t just another insert song in Sunshine. It represents Aqours growing and learning, and what it means to be a fan of them and support them through all these years. It's truly something special, symbolized by something as seemingly simple as the colour pink.
Damn you, Love Live. making me cry when I look at colours.
Aqours WAVE is the episode that leads into the later half of Sunshine’s second season, and precede the heaviest events in the entire show. After the group performs My Mai Tonight and Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru Kai at the Love Live qualifiers and their school’s open house respectively, only 57 out of the 100 students they need to save their school have applied. Their next event, the regional prelims, are announced less than a month away on the same night as their application deadline. If Aqours can’t convince 100 students to apply to their school by the day of the prelims, their school will be closed down for good. Their last chance is here.
So many of these songs could be considered great character study moments and offer a lot of character development for the character(s) in question. Chika’s development through Miracle Wave is a great way of showing just how Love Live Sunshine separates itself from School Idol Project. Even though both start out in very similar ways with similar main characters, you’re left with something absolutely completely different at the end of each.
In order to understand Miracle Wave, we first have to understand Chika Takami.
Chika is the driving force behind Aqours, the one who brought everyone together, and the reason everyone can stand on stage as nine and accomplish their dreams together. She isn't as normal as she thinks she is and Miracle Wave is her way of learning that. She believes she hasn't tried hard enough and she owes all her success to the other members because she hasn't done anything.
You're the reason I became a school idol. It's because of you, Chika! You were the one who brought all of us together.
We're here... because of you. Don't belittle that. Don't let it go.
She tries so hard to learn the secret technique for Miracle Wave and fails every time. The thing that allows her to push past that and finally succeed is learning that the group has come together because of her. Learning how much she’s contributed and how much she’s done for everyone. Every character’s growth at this point has been because of Chika.
You was able to find something to enjoy with her best friend and see the light she saw in the rest of the world.
Riko was able to regain her passion for the thing she loved after her struggles kept her away from the stage she enjoyed.
Ruby was able to become something better than herself, to show those around her they didn’t need to worry about her anymore.
Hanamaru was able to find confidence in herself and enjoy something despite how she saw herself.
Yoshiko was able to embrace who she really was and love herself as someone who was just a little bit different from everyone else.
Dia was finally able to see those around her be happy: her sister, able to be proud of who she was, and her childhood friends, who were finally able to reconcile after two years.
Mari was able to keep fighting for her home and the school she loved.
And Kanan was not only able to finally see her dream realized in the biggest idol competition in the country, but was able to cast aside her fears of hurting those she cared about.
Aqours are just normal high school girls out there trying to make a difference and Chika especially doesn’t see herself as anything special. She’s followed in the light of μ's because she didn’t have her own to follow. But through forging her own path with Aqours she’s created her own light and uses it to do the one thing she’s always wanted to: to shine. To be someone special, to try her best at something.
It's time for a new Aqours WAVE! You think you're ready?
These inserts have a fantastic way of easily showcasing these ideas: visually. It turns out the secret technique in the choreography was a backflip, the first and only time one has ever been in the choreography for a LL song. Through realizing her strength and how bright she really shines, she pulls off something no one in the entire series has been able to accomplish, or has ever since.
The nine of them performed a miracle on stage that couldn't be accomplished before. It couldn’t be accomplished by only the third-years, and it couldn’t be accomplished if it wasn’t for Chika standing on stage with them.
This miracle is present even outside the anime as well. While writing this, I recently got the chance to watch the live performance of Miracle Wave during Aqours 3rd live tour. When the music starts to play, you can hear the crowd in anticipation. Everyone knows that flip is coming. Aqours does a lot to revolutionize what Love Live choreography was after μ's shot the series into popularity. There’s so many unique ideas in their songs and it shows during their lives. During the performance, you can see how tense Anchan is as she prepares for the flip. You can see how tense the other members are, watching her as the music slows down and she takes a breath. She takes the leap, and she lands it perfectly.
I don’t think there’s anyone more perfect to play Chika. Anchan is just like her, powered by this passion and love for what she does, able to do amazing things on stage. It feels fated, in a way, to have someone who’s such a big μ's fan to become the leader for the next generation of Love Live. It feels fated to have someone who claimed she’d even consider quitting becoming a seiyuu had she not passed the audition end up creating miracles on stage. There’s someone out there who felt unconfident in her abilities to play someone like Chika but was able to do such amazing things. I think that’s a miracle in and of itself.
It isn’t hard to see the excitement and pride from the other members when Anchan succeeds, raising their fists in the air and cheering on their leader. It’s hard to not get emotional seeing Anchan push back her tears as she continues to sing. The entire time the group is worried about if they’ll pull it off, but there’s no doubt a miracle happened on stage that day. There’s something special about how the group huddles together after the song, a few of the members in tears. With both performances of Miracle Wave, Chika, Anchan, and the rest of Aqours have shown how far they’ve come since the events of their very first live, and how far they’ll continue to go.
After all, a Miracle Wave brings miracles.
Over the months on my Twitter, I've brought up Wonderful Stories every so often saying it's my favourite Aqours song, but I don't think I've ever really gone in-depth as to why that is, so I want to take some time to gush about exactly that.
I feel sort of the same way about this song as I do with Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu. It's so great at culminating all of the moments and themes and ideas that make Sunshine such an amazing story. How else would it accomplish this other than playing through every single insert we've seen in the story so far? Wonderful Stories presents itself as one of, if not the most visually diverse inserts the series has seen. Love Live’s inserts are fantastic at delivering the mood of a scene through their connection with the music and the lyrics. While this is true for nearly every insert, Wonderful Stories utilizes Love Live’s incredible direction and subtle attention to detail, two visual elements the series is amazing at using to deliver emotions and ideas, to set itself apart. I’ll do my best to highlight each of these to show off how much thought and consideration went into such an amazing insert. Either that, or I’ll be reading between the lines way too much.
We start with the girls singing and dancing in the gymnasium, then cutting to the classroom. You might be quick to say, what’s the point? Seems like these are just common “high school anime” settings. Instead, it acts as a reminder and a subtle nod to the fact that the very first scene in Sunshine was in Chika’s classroom, seeing Riko walk in as a transfer student. A 12-second scene at the very beginning of the first episode ends up being important not only when Riko is fully introduced, but again at the very end of the show.
The scenes are more recognizable as we cut to see the girls dancing down the hallway, as well as in the courtyard and sitting on the bench in that courtyard. This is a pretty easy reference to Kimeta yo Hand in Hand, the show’s first insert song.
We then return to the gymnasium, nearly empty. Not only as a reference to Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu, but to juxtapose this small audience of only a few people with the previous stage Aqours performed on: the Love Live finals. A great detail is that everyone appears in this scene as they did during that old performance of Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu. Yoshiko is wearing her coat and glasses, Maru’s holding the school idol club poster, and most importantly, Kanan’s holding an umbrella, and there’s an emergency power generator next to Dia. Remember when I said to keep this detail in mind? It’s a nice showcase of how the series has been dropping little visual clues and references ever since the very beginning. It fits well in an insert full of them.
Next we see the third years in their old Tokyo outfits from their past performance, as well as the first and second years performing in Yume de Yozora wo Terashitai. I love how serious Kanan’s expression is here, contrasted with Mari and Dia’s simple smiles. It reflects that there’s more going on in Kanan’s head than just a simple performance. While the third years aren’t part of Aqours yet, they perform Yume de Yozora wo Terashitai which allows them to become more popular and earn an invite to perform in Tokyo themselves. These two performances are connected by seeing the first years in their Tokyo outfits. This whole Tokyo arc is ended by transitioning quickly into Mijuku Dreamer, the song that could only be performed once the group reconnected and performed as nine. A nice touch is that it’s common for parts of Aqours songs to be sung in groups of three, and it’s no different here. The third years begin this section of the song and the second years transition over to the first years during Yume de Yozora, allowing the focus to shift to the first years as the scene in their Tokyo outfits connects these scenes together. The music actively compliments the visuals of the insert in a way you might not pick up on at first and continues to follow that trend of how Aqours songs are divided up.
Starting Season 2's inserts, Mirai Ticket is followed by a sequence of all these performances involving Aqours climbing the ladder to reach the Love Live finals. Performing My Mai Tonight and Miracle Wave allowed Aqours to advance to the finals, Awaken the Power gave them the courage to approach the finals despite whatever events would happen afterwards, and Water Blue New World allowed them to write their school’s name in Love Live history.
At first it was a little hard to fit Awaken the Power in with the rest of these inserts, but it's a pretty important arc that takes place at a good time. It addresses not only Ruby and Dia's futures after graduation, but pretty much everyone's. It's just as important, even if it's not another step in something like a regional event.
I've been struggling to find it for what feels like forever, but now I see it! It was always there, from the very beginning! Everything we did, every single step we took and the long hours of hard work we put in... that was our radiance! Shining from inside of us, as a part of Aqours!
The performance for Wonderful Stories could be seen as a rough synopsis of the entire plot of Sunshine. It summarizes the entire show so well to the point where it wouldn’t be outlandish to claim that someone new to Love Live could watch this single insert and have a simple understanding of the entire 2-season anime series. We see how far Aqours has come since the very beginning, a reminder of how every single character has grown and become stronger. It perfectly delivers that feeling at the end of the journey where you’ve finally made it despite all your hardships.
Really, the only insert not represented here is Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru Kai, which can be forgiven as it has its own complete PV as their first single. KimiKoko is sort of its own thing where I wouldn't fully consider it an insert.
As you can see, it’s not only the performances to advance Love Live that they highlight, and it isn’t just the performances to get the nine of them together. Sometimes it's not even a performance at all, it's even showing off some of my favourite outfits in Sunshine. Wonderful Stories doesn’t just represent the songs of Love Live Sunshine. It represents everything that makes Love Live Sunshine what it is.
It represents everything that makes Aqours what it is.
I just want to say: I think Love Live Sunshine ends beautifully. The curtain after Wonderful Stories is the cherry on top.
Love Live Sunshine’s themes are those of failure and regret. They’re about how the world isn’t always fair and how even after struggling you might just end up with a zero. A zero that can be turned into a one. Then, maybe even something greater.
Sunshine teaches us how to move past those failures or regrets and how to grow stronger from them. It teaches us how to believe in ourselves and become stronger, accomplishing things we never thought we could. It teaches us that we can be just like Chika. Just like the rest of Aqours.
Near the end of Sunshine, Uranohoshi Girls’ High School closes. Aqours fails to save their school even with how hard they struggled and everything they’ve learned. However, as their fans and supporters, we don’t see them as failures in the slightest. They’re incredible and shine bright with a radiance they can call their own. They won Love Live and wrote their school into history. They’re champions.
School idols are amazing because they’re just like ordinary people, but they can stand on stage and shine bright together to inspire others.
Love Live Sunshine teaches us that even through failure, ordinary people can do amazing things.
When discussing the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, often shortened to Nijigasaki or just “Niji”, it’s worth clarifying that the group is structured a lot differently. Niji is a group of solo idols who don’t perform together as a group very often. A lot of the songs released under Niji are typically solo songs performed by a single girl, making them very character-focused with little to no connection to other characters or the events of a general plot. Often the plot will surround the characters itself, and the songs are a way of showcasing that character and the growth they experience through that plot. It’s rather unlike School Idol Project and Sunshine, where the songs themselves were often a vehicle for change.
That being said, there’s a single song I would consider to be an exception. Setsuna Yuki’s CHASE is easily the most iconic song from Nijigasaki as a whole.
Part of this impact came from the huge amount of appeal the song had. The Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Shuffle Festival, or Niji Shuffle Fes, was announced as a live where the Nijigasaki members would be performing each other’s solo songs. I heard how excited people were, not only for the idea of the girls performing each other’s songs, but specifically for CHASE. If everyone swapped solos, then who would be performing CHASE? I even heard people joking that Shuffle Fes would just be votes for everyone to perform it.
It’s arguably the most popular song for Nijigasaki, even more than their first PV, Tokimeki Runners. It was voted by the attending fans to be the encore for the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club First Live “with You” alongside Setsuna winning the vote for headliner for the live. It’s uncertain exactly what the headliner role determined besides having her icon on a fancy medal for winning the popularity vote, but it made it clear that Setsuna was the most popular character in Niji.
The other aspect of what makes CHASE so iconic is something more generally applicable that doesn’t just relate to character popularity. The other half of CHASE’s iconic status is its insertion into the anime.
CHASE is the first step the Niji anime takes to start running, establishing the entire precedent for the anime in a single insert. Because of Niji’s history with the mobile game, School Idol Festival All Stars or SIFAS, fans had uncertainties about the Niji anime’s plot. The plot of SIFAS starts with a broken Nijigasaki High School Idol Club that needs reforming, and ends with the goal to perform at the School Idol Festival. The anime follows this as well, but we’re shown three minutes into the first episode that things are going to be different as Setsuna starts to performs CHASE.
It makes a lot of sense for CHASE to be the song Setsuna performs, since only Niji’s first solos were performed before we even knew who Yuu was. In SIFAS, Yuu takes the role of Niji’s songwriter, giving the girls new songs to perform. Outside of writing a new song for Setsuna to perform, CHASE would be the only existing song that would make sense to perform before several events in Niji’s plotline. This establishes the idea that Yuu hasn’t become a songwriter for the club before they perform songs, and that it’s possible this is a trend that will continue further. It sets up for Ayumu’s performance of Dream with You later in the episode without it feeling strange or unnatural.
All of this information is conveyed in the first five minutes of the first episode, by the time the performance ends. This doesn’t happen through any kind of dialogue or exposition, nothing is directly explained to the viewer. It’s simply there to intrinsically establish its setting and separate itself from the rest of the series in case there was any confusion.
CHASE is both the red thread connecting SIFAS to the anime, as well as a way to help carry the plot together during the anime’s first few episodes. The song specifically helps cement the idea that Niji is different from the other groups because of its different tone. It’s the most iconic song of the group but it’s more somber, and expresses the feelings of running away and wanting to find yourself. It’s a lot different when compared to the most iconic songs of the other groups. Snow Halation is a love song written about the things you enjoy, and a song like Aozora Jumping Heart is upbeat and energetic. It wonderfully highlights the differences of the Niji anime that could be important to a Love Live veteran, and their expectations.
Outside of CHASE, the Niji anime takes a different stance on how each performance is inserted as they don’t occur as actual stage performances. This is the case for the first half of season 1’s inserts. The setting of each performance is heavily linked to who these characters are. Shizuku performs in a stage play, Kanata performs on a stage for her sister as a fellow school idol, and Rina has the very first scheduled live performance of the season.
Often the Niji episodes are specifically based around a single character, and allow for development of that character individually. While she’s no exception, I think the way Rina’s is handled and the kind of character she is makes it a lot more impactful. Rina is quickly introduced as someone quiet, standoffish, and seemingly distant. While she’s actually caring and eager to make new friends, her inability to express her emotions makes her seem disinterested in the world around her. Ai is the only friend Rina has, and the only person who can understand her emotions just by looking at her and as Ai approaches the School Idol Club to experience something new, so does Rina. Seeing Rina open up and learn to find worth and pride in herself despite her inability to express her emotions is wonderful. It seems to be common opinion that Rina’s episode is one of, if not the best episodes in the Niji anime, but there’s something specific that makes this episode and its insert special to me.
There’s a few select frames during the performance of Tsunagaru Connect that stand out to me where we see Rina sing and smile underneath her board. It’s commonly seemed to me like people either see Rina with or without her board, treating the two almost like completely different characters. This entire episode and performance does a great job at displaying how there’s no difference between the two by detailing Rina’s feelings and difficulty with expressing herself. She still feels emotions as she curls into a ball under a cardboard box, the same way she feels emotions being in the clubroom every day. As a solution, the board isn’t meant to give her those emotions, it’s to help display them. If she smiles, the board will smile, and this shot in Tsunagaru Connect helps remind us of that. It’s a small but important detail of her character that feels overshadowed by the rest of the growth in the episode and I wanted to draw attention to it. It’s easily my favourite part of the episode.
♪ My heart is bouncing! Excitement takes flight! Now, let's connect! ♬
After seeing KimiKoko in Sunshine’s season 2, it's likely in the future that we'll see Hajimari wa Kimi no Sora as an insert song in Love Live Superstar at some point, and with the building hype of both Liella fans and Love Live fans in general, it makes me so glad to say that we're bound to continue seeing some inserts that'll leave just as strong of an impact.
There’s so much amazing music in this series and it’ll only keep continuing as Liella continues to grow alongside Aqours and Nijigasaki. I’ve only scratched the surface by talking about a few of my favourites. I haven’t even mentioned how great a lot of inserts in the Love Live movies are, like how the Sunshine movie has one of my favourite inserts in the whole series or how good Saint Snow’s inserts in Sunshine are, or the myriad of character growth highlighted in these inserts or… you get the idea.
Love Live is amazing at delivering so much through a single song. At a first glance it might be seen as just another anime with idol girls but there’s such an inspiring attention to detail here. Under the surface, Love Live shows an immense amount of passion and care for such Wonderful Stories I’ll continue to cherish.
Thank you so much for reading! If you're interested in more of what I write, feel free to follow me on instagram or twitter at @akari_uehara!
As promised, here are the links to the articles and clips mentioned so you can take a look at them!
LuciaHunter's article about Snow Halation's orange lights:
Shukamod's article about UOs and other kinds of lights:
The AqouRainbow clip:
The Miracle Wave performance during Aqours 3rd Live:
Now onto my thoughts about this article!
This is the first article I've finished writing in seven months, and there was so much that went into writing this. I could've easily written an article's worth for every song I've talked about here, and it started out as a large daunting project that might have just been too much to take on at once. I originally wanted to finish this by the end of May before Superstar started airing and well, now it's August.
Thank you so much for being so patient with me. I kept wanting to rush this out to not keep people waiting and it resulted in needing to rewrite over half of my original draft because simply put, it was awful. The fact people were kind enough to tell me they would wait for me to finish this meant so much.
A huge thanks especially to Jack for being my beta reader again. Not only were you okay with reading the huge article I initially wrote, you really helped guide me afterwards. It's thanks to you that I didn't give up on this article after the mess it was before and you gave me great criticism to better my work. Thank you for working through this with me, and especially for also beta reading this final version. I'm surprised you went through it so quickly seeing as it was longer, but the feedback you gave me afterwards brought me to tears.
Another huge thanks to Lastu for finally convincing me to watch the Aqours lives! There's so many references I've made to the lives in this article and none of them would be things I'd even be aware of if it weren't for you getting me into them. It's meant so much to me having you not only get me to watch the lives, but support my writing. You have no clue how much it's helped me when you said you'd continue waiting for me to finish writing and to take my time.
At this point I suppose this article is like a gateway for getting into the lives. If you're into Love Live and you've only watched the anime, consider watching a couple of them. Buy some tickets to some upcoming ones, or get one of the blu-rays. I always see the anime as the first step to getting into Love Live as a multimedia project, and the lives are really what push people to get into other aspects. They're great ways to learn about the seiyuu and the announcements they have during the lives get people excited to engage in other parts of Love Live, like the mobile games.
I was someone who only ever paid attention to the music in the anime before I started playing School Idol Festival, and even now there's so much I haven't gotten into. Since the anime is something I've rewatched so many times I figured I'd write about that. I was a little split on ideas so I actually asked people on Twitter if they wanted to see an article about Sunshine or an article about the insert songs! Here's the tweet if you're curious.
Since there was still some interest in both I wanted to write about more inserts for Sunshine than SIP or Niji, in order to just gush about my love for Sunshine.
So many of the inserts in Love Live tie directly into its plot and character development and there are so many small details you may have missed. I encourage you to go through and rewatch your favourite inserts and find something you may have missed before! I mean it when I say I've barely scratched the surface because there were several songs I planned to talk about and just didn't write in. Topics like how Bokura no Live Kimi to no Life was the first Love Live single that only sold a few hundred copies, and how great Awaken the Power is at character development are things I absolutely wanted to include but couldn't find the space. Whether I've talked about them or not, they're all fantastic and it doesn't mean I think any less of them if I didn't mention them.
To close out this article, I mentioned on Twitter recently that I want to write different things and find those things I'm passionate about. I have a lot of ideas for writing about Love Live in general, but I never want to feel like I'm writing out of necessity. I want to write about a lot of varied topics related to Love Live and talk about interesting things, and I hope that desire comes through in this article. There's a lot of neat topics related to Love Live's culture, things like UOs and different coloured lights during different songs and call and responses and live events that I want to explore more. I'd love feedback on any of these topics!
With that being said, I hope you'll continue to support my writing wherever it goes, and however long it takes. Because apparently these can take a while sometimes.
<3
ReplyDelete-Lastu
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHehe, only if you readers saw the original draft.
ReplyDeleteI am glad none of you have to read it and are reading this awesome article here today! It was a trial for Kouri but pushing her to write the best version of her idea pays off.
I enjoyed reading this more than ever. Always remember to revise and edit with your writing.
Much love,
Jack