Love Live! Superstar!! – 10

「チェケラッ!!」 (Chekera!!)
“Check It Out!!”

Rap your heart out. This is nonfiction!

Leilla takes a short surprise when they find out, this year more than ever, thousands of applications were sent to compete in the Love Live. how will they stand out?! The school integrity is on the line, as well as their own feelings, they must absolutely win this Love Live, right? They have to, their whole image is on the line here. But more importantly, Sumire has to deal with her overbearing feelings of not being good enough. Throughout her life, she has dreamed of being the center of any production she’s been on. But she has been cast to the side and made to play roles like Villager 1, Best Friend, The comic relief with one or two lines. Her whole persona is a tough act put on by herself so that other people would think higher of her, because that’s what she wants, that’s the outward image she desires to portray, but the reality is very different. Her participation in Miss High School should paint that clear. And now that she has the ability to actually play out that dream, she stumbles and wonders to herself if she really can do it. Of course, she can. She needs to believe in herself first, and her little animosity was caused because the rest of the group believed in her first, before she even believed in herself.

I think Keke sees right through Sumire’s act, though that’s why her personality crash so much, even more so in this episode. But Keke, she’s being made to go back to Hong Kong after a set amount of time, Sumire finds this out by using a translation app on her phone, the drama intensifies within the group, and this time it’s up to Keke to put Sumire’s feelings at rest, making sure she feels like she actually can, is actually good enough, and believe in herself.

This episode just flew by, there were so many good moments when the girls try to actually rap, but can’t achieve it. It’s only when Sumire actually takes hold of the reigns and makes a little rap that it impresses the other girls, even though it was probably the same length as something like Chisato did, except without the B-Boy dancing. The girls were impressed with Sumire because she managed to come up with that rap on the spot, so that little show of her adlib allowed her to go into the spotlight and become the center of this one song. But I reckon that every girl in the group is going to get her moment in the spotlight. It’s a novel idea, changing the center of the group for each performance, that way the group is equitable and all the girls have their time to shine during a performance. I wish more groups would do this, but as we saw in this episode, it would come with a lot of fan backlash, people would show outcry and reveal towards that specific person, placing a little bit of turmoil and anxiety on them. But like Sumire, the center person shouldn’t really care what other people think, if they’re inside the group it’s because they have some talent, and when the time comes, they should put it up and display it. They are all idols and should be treated as such. People will always have their favorites, but switching centers every once in a while for specific performance because that person has a more natural talent for that specific theme. Seems like a logical standoff in my opinion. Besides, it makes for more variety and keeps things fresh.

Overall the episode spent some time dilly-dallying on shenanigans with the girls during the A part of the episode, but it quickly transition into a dramatic flair between Sumire and the group. I really like this black and white balance the show has, especially in this episode, it really allowed Sumire’s character to shine, and she was able to grow as a person and a performer as well.

I don’t know if she has a glamorized idea of how show-business works, but her career path seemed pretty normal to me, even though she beat herself up because she had never won anything in her life, it’s normal for people to get to play the side character, the tree in the background or the best friend, and slowly make their way up from B roles until they catch their big break. In this case, Sumire’s was able to show her skills during the prelims of the Love Live.

Making a great debut as the center a spectacular show of rap battle skills. The song itself was more sing-songy than rap, but I’m not complaining, as the jazz-pop rhythm with soft string and musical energy that matches that of actual musicals was very enjoyable to listen to and see the performance on a tiara-cinderella-princes, Disney inspired stage. I can’t wait for the song to release on Spotify so I can have it on repeat. In the meantime, you can have a youtube link. It felt the song was shorter than most though.

Once again, leave it to Love Live to soften a genre like rap into a dreamlike pop-esque song, with subtle hints of what the original intent was supposed to be. Aren’t all songs supposed to rhyme regardless of genre? Rap was always had a very different meaning in the east than it has in the west. Commercially anyway. It’s only when an artist takes inspiration from western rap artists that they break the mold of what the genre means to the people that listen to it.

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