Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club: Next Sky

Huh, so this got dropped on Crunchyroll out of the blue, not that I mind since I love the Love Live Nijigasaki anime, flaws and all, so I'd been looking forward to this. Nijigasaki fans are eating good, since not only do we have a sequel OVA, Love Live Nijigasaki School Idol Club Next Sky, we're getting a trilogy of sequel films that'll take place immediately after the OVA. Can't wait to see what those'll be like. The OVA takes place immediately after the end of the second season, with the Nijigasaki girls welcoming Ayumu back home from her overseas trip to London...and are surprisedto find that she brought a friend with her, Isla, who wants to become a school idol herself. On the side, Shioriko worries that she's too rigid to be a school idol and isn't sure what to do about it. Yeah, the OVA is true to the series' ethos of not having a lot of stake and preferring a more laid-back, "cute girls doing cute things" approach rather than the over-the-top melodrama of previous seasons. Speaking of previous seasons, Next Sky flat-out makes open references to both the original Love Live anime and Love Live Sunshine, so there's some Easter eggs for you Love Live fans out there. Before I get into the review, there is one thing about this OVA's marketing that baffles me: For some reason this was aired in theaters, even though it's the same length as your usual TV anime episode, only 22 minutes. I know Japan's movie theaters are allowed to show more than just movies, but I really can't see why this OVA warranted a theater screening when you can easily either air it on TV or put it on home video. But I know nothing about how Japanese movie theaters work, so I'm not gonna harp on it too much. Next Sky's animation retains the same level of quality as both TV series, CGI dancing sequences included, and I didn't notice anything that looked off. I do think the ending theme's visuals were cute, having cute drawings of the Nijigasaki girls in polaroid photographs of live-action locations (Very likely to be Odaiba). I will say that I am rather surprised that Next Sky's songs lean heavily into hip-hop and techno to an extent. Eh, I found the songs to just be okay. To be honest, I do think the story is where Next Sky suffers. While I did like the idea of the focus being on Ayumu's new friend Isla, the end result came off as rather shallow. Her whole conflict feels really mealymouthed and cheesy, mainly in that it just gets easily resolved with the power of friendship, even though it flat-out acknowledges that England's school clubs are nothing like those of Japan and that England has a different view of school idols. Next Sky really should have delved deeper into that and actually explored how other countries view the concept of school idols and showed how starting up a school idol club would be hard in any country that's not Japan. Then again, you don't really go into Love Live expecting down-to-earth, realistic conflict, you're here to see cute girls sing about following your dreams. That being said, I think Next Sky's B-plot is much better in that it focuses on Shioriko and fleshes her out just a bit more. She had some time in the series, sure, but Next Sky explores Shioriko contemplating her place in the Nijigasaki idol club and wondering how she can better connect with her fans. Plus, she gets some degree of development where her solution to Isla's problem, cheesy and admittedly stupid as it is, goes against her previously established principles...though how 13 girls in the same club were able to all get permission to leave school early without teachers or the principal being suspicious of their motives, I couldn't tell you. Furthermore, with the advent of the movie trilogy due to come out in the next few years, we might get to see some follow-up on Shioriko's development and see whether she can actually commit to her changes. Oh, and for the person on MAL who wondered why Isla has a darker skin tone than all the Nijigasaki girls: Did you grow up under a rock? There are plenty of British people with naturally dark skin of all different shades. Not every anime has to adhere to the same generic anime character design. Do your research. In the end, Next Sky tries, but it doesn't really add anything new to Nijigasaki's narrative and doesn't rise beyond average.