Anime fans as you may or may not know i'm a huge fan of the Love Live! franchise i've seen every episode of both shows , i've seen the first movie and played the game. So to say I was excited for this movie will be like saying Avengers: Endgame is a good movie and as of a few days ago i had the chance to watch it and i'm not passing it up so here is my review of Love Live! Sunshine!! The School Idol Movie Over The Rainbow.
The plot of the movie as far as I can work out is the third years Kanan , Dia and Mari go missing in Italy and it;s up to the rest of the group to find them. Now i'm going to let you all know right now that that plot line is fully resolved within the first hour of the movie with the rest of the movie having to do with one of the girls from Saint Snow wanting to join Aqours. If i'm being honest the first storyline was alot more interesting because it was so different from anything Love Live! has done in the past but for some unknown reason they chose to resolve it early on in favour of a plot line that was better suited for an episode of the show.
The only thing that really ties both plots together is another plot line which sees the six remaining members trying to decide if they want to continue in the group or not. I didn't mention this when I first mentioned the plot because it's something that's only brought up once or twice when in reality if you combined it with the first story with the third years going missing then it would have made for an interesting plot.
Most of the actors who are in this film are returning from the show and so starring in this movie is Ai Furihata as Ruby Kurosawa , Aika Kobayashi as Yoshiko "Yohane" Tsushima , Aina Suzuki as Mari Ohara , Anju Inami as Chika Takami , Arisa Komiya as Dia Kurosawa , Kanako Takatsuki as Hanamaru Kunikida , Nanaka Suwa as Kanan Matsūra , Rikako Aida as Riko Sakurauchi , Shuka Saitō as Yō Watanabe , Asami Tano as Sarah Kazuno and Hinata Sato as Leah Kazuno. In terms of what I thought about the acting it's not that bad but I felt that it could have been better and i'm honestly not sure why that is. There was also a few new characters introduced but as I couldn't find who played them I couldn't list them and the same goes for there acting it could have been so much better.
If you know anything about this franchise then you'll know that the animation was done by Sunrise who have worked on everything to do with Love Live! from the very beginning. The animation here tho to me didn't feel like it belonged in a movie it felt like the kind of animation you'd see in an episode of the show which in some ways is a good thing but in others it's not because if I wanted to see something that looked like an episode of the show i'd load up my season 1 DVD.
There was a Marvel style end credits scene at the end of this movie which if i've read it right means were getting another Love Live! series but I might have read into it wrong. I'd be more then happy for another series if that is the case but I really do think that they should try and mix up the setup a little bit just to keep things fresh like maybe have a few male members in there or have them all be the same age or something like that.
Unlike the previous movie which only featured the main characters this one has a whole bunch of returning characters and that was something that I applaud the film doing. Since in the first movie it felt like it was kind of ashamed to admit that it was based on a TV show where as here it fully embraces it to the point where I have to say that if your not a fan of this franchise then I wouldn't recommend watching this movie.
I also say that you shouldn't watch the movie because the movie really doesn't tell you who the characters are and what there relationship to each other really is. That is something that I could very easily see putting alot of people of but at the same time if your watching this movie and your not a fan then you kind of have yourself to blame really but for myself and alot of fans I can't see this becoming a big issue.
I don't think i'm giving that much away when i;m saying this but this movie really does feel like a good send of for the third years by that I mean they get there chance to say goodbye to there friends and not to choose what they want to do in the future. I will admit that it was a great move on part of the film makers to just have the three older girls leave the group since it was something different but even in this movie it comes almost out of know where.
Incase you haven't noticed yet I prefer the first movie just for the fact that it had one storyline running through it and not three. I cannot stress that enough because it's such a strange thing it would have been ok if this was an anthology movie but it's not so it comes across as rather jarring it honestly feels like the script writer had three different ideas and asked the director which one he liked and instead of choosing one they chose all of them.
In a rather strange move they did what normally would close the movie at the start of it by having a big town wide musical sequence which in all honesty wasn't that bad but it felt like the movie blew it's load to early since whatever happens next is always going to fail in comparison. I will say tho that the songs and the humour of the movie were both pretty spot on I don't know the names but my two favourite songs was the opening number and one of the songs that Saint Snow sings.
Overall I can't say that this is a bad movie because it's really not but at the same time it's not a good one either the only thing I can say for sure is it's better then Tolkien. This movie is by no means better then the first one and it doesn't feel like it's the end of this group of characters so the movie gets a 4.5 out of 10 from me.