Love Live! Sunshine!! Season 1 Review

Anime fans you guys might not know this but I love idol anime and I know that saying that out loud can be a bad thing in the anime community but it's true. Heck I love it so much that i've seen every single season of the Love Live anime and it's sequel series plus i've seen the first movie and I plan on watching the second. I bring all of this up because for Christmas I got a special gift from the North Pole and that was the first season of Love Live Sunshine on DVD so you guys know what that means so here is my review of season one.

The basic premise for season one of the show is basically split into two because for the first half of the season the girls will try anything to get just one fan. In the second half however it takes the more familiar Love Live route and has the girls trying to save there school from closing down and it's also worth noting that this plot line would also carry on into season 2. If you ask me the show dropped the plot line that was a lot more interesting and different since in my opinion it would be alot more interesting seeing them try and get just one fan then it is seeing them try to save the school.

Now since i'm doing this review after getting the DVD I will of course be crediting the dubbed actors however when the series first aired I watched both seasons of the show both subbed and dubbed. So starring in the dubbed version of the show is Apphia Yu as Yo Watanabe , Jad Saxton as Chika Takami , Jamie Marchi as Mari Ohara , Jeannie Tirado as Riko Sakurauchi , Megan Shipman as Hanamaru Kunikida , Michelle Rojas as Kanan Matsuura , Morgan Berry as Yoshiko Tsushima , Morgan Garrett as Dia Kurosawa and Sarah Wiedenheft as Ruby Kurosawa. 

In terms of the acting I thought that it was really good what did worry me when I heard that this was getting dubbed was that it would turn out horrible like the first Love Live dub did. I only had those thoughts because when this was getting dubbed Love Live had just started releasing there episodes dubbed and it was bad but tho thankfully here everyone sounds exactly how you picture they would and all the girls do a good job in the series.

As with all things Love Live the animation for the show was done by Sunrise and what I found out was that this studio has several different studios within it depending on the show or film that's being worked on so when they say that this show was animated by Sunrise what they actually mean is that Sunrise Studio 8 worked on the show. As for the actual animation I thought it wasn't that bad all of the characters have some nice character designs and the country setting helps set this show apart from other anime in this genre.

When this show was first announced I like i'm guessing many other Love Live fans hoped that U's would make an appearance in the show. After seeing both seasons when they aired I have to say that i'm a little disappointed that they didn't show up at least in the first episode of the first season or if not then at least in the final episode of the same season but nope. Son now I hold out hope what little of it there is at this point that they would appear in the movie just because for me it would be rather fitting and it would serve as a great send of to both shows.

I didn't no this when I chose to review this season but there is an actual connection behind the scenes to the previous show and that's the fact that Caitlin Glass who played Maki Nishikino and who also wrote the English dub. She was the voice director for this series and after scrolling through her page and animenewsnewtwork.com I can say that even tho you won't know her name if your an anime fan you'll know the shows that she's worked on both behind the scenes and not because in terms of behind the scenes she's worked on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood , One Piece and Sakura Quest.

When it comes to starring in anime she's been in Absolute Duo , Attack on Titan , Black Clover , Dragon Ball Super , Fairy Tail , Love Live , Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood plus many more and when I say many more i'm not even half way through her animenewsnetwork page. That should go on to tell you how talented the people working on this dub are because they are true anime legends even tho the first Love Live had a talented voice cast the overall duality of the dub wasn't that good.

Like the previous show this show is full to the brim with drama like I think every other episode has some sort of drama in there. Which would be fine if this was the second season I wouldn't mind it as much since adding in drama there would make alot of sense but for the first season it doesn't make sense for them to have alot of drama so early on it would have made more sense to have the drama appear later on in the season because we would have had more time to get to know the characters but they do it very early on in this show and it's not as effective because we haven't had the time to get to know the characters.

Like the previous Love Live series both of the seasons for this show consist of thirteen twenty two minuets episodes. I have to say tho that even tho the episodes are the standerd anime length for some reason they actually felt alot longer then twenty two minuets and I have no idea why that is at all. I mean I didn't feel bored watching the series it's just really odd that the episodes would feel a lot longer then they actually are.

I'll admit when I first saw the show I was sad by the time episode thirteen of season one aired because this is a rather solid show and I was confused when in season 2 they seemingly changed the storyline. I say that because I forgot that they actually changed the story during the first season so that was one hundred percent my fault but tho with that being said I don't see any reason why they had to change the story the one they had with them just trying to get one fan worked but I guess they wanted to go back to what the fans knew instead of doing something new , different and interesting.

Now as we all know Love Live is basically a musical anime franchise and that means that there are songs a plenty to discuss. What makes the songs in idol anime stand out tho is that alot of them are sung by the actual actors and the same is true for Sunshine well kind of since it's the Japanese voice actors. Which is honestly really jarring at the beginning because the characters would go from speaking perfect English to suddenly speaking Japanese in my opinion if your going to dub an idol anime at least go all the way and dub the songs as well.

Not keep going on about the fact that the songs aren't dubbed but it's made even worse by the fact that two of the characters do sing in perfect English early on in the show I know why they couldn't do it but they have to realise that it be quite jarring. As for the actual songs themselves there pretty good all of the songs are pop songs and i'm not that big into pop music so alot of these songs aren't for me but the opening song "Aozora Jumping Heart" is a really good poppy type of song.

As is to be expected in the first season of a sequel series the show does a few call backs to the previous show. Those call backs mainly consist of the characters mentioning iconic locations from Love Live tho so if you havn't seen that show they could fly over your head but at the same time you should be able to understand what there referencing. Since i'm a fan of this song there is one call back that I really loved and it's in either episode two or episode three and it's where the main character talks about how she wants to be an idol because of U's and the song playing is freaking Start: Dash which when that started playing I just starting singing right away.

As with any Love Live anime this first season does spend alot of time getting the band together and of course that means there going to run into a pretty big cliche in the world of idol anime and that's the fact that the student council president hates idols and so will not allow them to make a school club. I cannot begin to tell you how much I hate this cliche and it's not just because it's boring and repetitive but it's because we know that in a few episodes that same character will be apart of the group so it makes that whole subplot seem like pointless filler.

Again as with anything to do with Love Live the show does have alot of humour in it and I might seem a bit bias here because i;m a fan of the franchise but tho in my opinion alot of the jokes really do work. Yes some of them might seem tired and repetitive but how they are done in this season of the show does somehow make them feel fresh and i'll admit I spent alot of the time watching this with a huge smile on my face which for me can only be a great thing.

Overall this first season was just as good as I remember it being but there were a few issues that I didn't notice the first time watching it but tho those issues didn't harm my overall enjoyment of the show it self. So Love Live! Sunshine!! season 1 gets a 6 out of 10 from me.