Love Live! Sunshine!! S2 – 08

「HAKODATE」 (HAKODATE)
“HAKODATE”

God, I can’t get enough of this slightly darker and more serious tone that Sunshine has been adamantly been pushing on us.

General Impressions

With our Aqours girls safely awaiting their chance to perform on the big stage at the Akiba Dome, I was wondering what the show was going to do as it built up to that final moment. Luckily, we got an opportunity to fill that time with an unexpected appearance of our favorite rival group Saint Snow. Thinking back on it, it’s kind of crazy that we haven’t seen much of them this season. I guess it makes sense that they don’t really have much of a reason to appear since they’re competing in a totally different bracket because of their school’s location, but it would have been great if we could have seen a little more of their progression before getting such a heavy Saint Snow episode.

Minor gripes aside, I was really surprised to see the story show us that Saint Snow isn’t the invincible duo that they were painted as last season. As rivals to our girls, you’d assume that they’d be this incredible force that they’d have to eventually deal with when they reached the finals. But just like every other twist that the show’s thrown at us, you couldn’t have been more wrong if you thought that Saint Snow was going to make it to the end. Messing up their chance at making it to the finals with a misstep at the beginning of their performance, I remember feeling super down as I thought about how they lost it all with a simple mistake. But after taking some time to think things through, it’s moments like these that truly help someone grow into the best possible version of themselves. As with anything in life, nothing is guaranteed and while it’s great to see how someone handles success, I think it’s even more enthralling to see how someone handles failure. And if there’s something that this second season has demonstrated time after time, it’s that it can handle a failure story in the most entertaining way possible.

At this point in the post I would have loved to talk about the resolution that Ria would have come to, but it looks like we’ll have to wait until next week for the answer. Hopefully we’ll get to see something amazing like some kind of Aqours x Saint Snow performance or something!

See you guys next week!

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