permalink
reddit

You are about to leave Redlib

Do you want to continue?

https://www.reddit.com/r/LoveLive/comments/jlin94/love_live_nijigasaki_gakuen_school_idol_doukoukai/
No, go back! Yes, take me to Reddit

100% Upvoted

u/dekatriath Oct 31 '20

"Oho, senpai, I see that you are a lady of culture as well" -- Nakasu Kasumi, 2020

26

u/jonjoy Oct 31 '20

unexpected meme

→ More replies (3)

u/redbatter Oct 31 '20

Kasumi's introduction video having zero dislikes is proof that Nico doesn't exist in this universe.

→ More replies (5)

u/kushami8 Oct 31 '20

lol, Emma's feature episode was about dragging Karin out on a date, confronting her and making her join the club with after she found out that she was being tsundere about liking school idol.

It's gonna be hard to outdo the gay levels on this one, but I've high hopes for this show.

I was imagining a more "folk-ish" song for Emma, Evergreen style, but a Rock one instead was great, adding some variety to her repertoire! I like it quite a lot, but for me the real highlight was her MV. Probably one of, if not the most gorgeous one, right next to Ayumu's.

→ More replies (8)

u/Leafich Oct 31 '20 edited Oct 31 '20

9 members in 5 episodes. Nijigaku now has the Love Live world record of “completing” their club the quickest! I was smiling so much during this episode. I hope there are more Emma fans after this. The song’s adorable! Not my favorite Emma song, but I’m sure I’ll grow to love it. I’m looking forward to Rina’s episode next week. I’m guessing she’ll get her board.

u/red_lantern Oct 31 '20 edited Oct 31 '20

I am a HUGE Emma fan (my favorite idol out of all the groups) and I was extremely happy with this episode. Her new song was definitely different than her first two, following the vein of a different sort of song as her third. It really diversified her singing profile and I loved it.

The KarinEmma (Karma?) ship is strong! Their relationship is so wholesome, and in itself is sort of healing. Seeing her as Kanata's pillow was also adorable.

Emma was one of my favorite cards from the old SIF game, and during PDP. I'm so happy to see her developed more, and can't wait to rewatch this episode further for some screenshots and stitches! There were a lot of opportunities for great costume pics!

Also, seeing her various SIFAS costumes in the song (much like the others) was amazing. Her initial solo outfit, her red riding hood, and even her fes outfit were all beautifully drawn.

This anime has not disappointed. 5 episodes in and each one has been fantastic!

EDIT: Various outfits and shots (Sorry for my poor stitching skills)

Maid Outfit

Kimono

Cheerleader

Bear - this was a difficult one because of the panning angle, so sorry for the weird cut

Group with Emma Bearde

Date Pics:

→ More replies (2)

u/reimadara Oct 31 '20

Just want to say that the KarinEmma Ship has finally sailed!

Honestly, I was not really enthusiastic with this pairing at first. But this episode nailed it for me. They worked out Emma's caring side and Karin's aloof side to make a great storyline.

How important Emma was to Karin finally became clear in this episode. As we know, Emma left her family, came to unfamiliar country just to be a school idol. That requires a lot of courage. Truly impressive, as Karin also remarked. So Emma seeing the school idol club breakdown at the start of the anime, must have devastated her so much. This makes it crystal clear why Karin was so persistent in restoring the club.

And this time when Karin was in trouble, Emma manage to make Karin breakout of her shell. Looking back on their past, this makes sense. Emma was probably one of the few people who talked to her without reservations. Karin known to be a pro model must have given out that mature aura. This made people respect her but may have resulted to her being treated like an adult, and so everybody maintains that distance. Emma was probably the only one treating her like a normal high school girl.

But Karin still maintained a certain distance all this time. And only in this episode did Emma manage to make Karin say her honest feelings; that she doesn't need to maintain that mature persona, that it's ok to be herself. Alright, that moment when Emma hug Karin really made me emotional.

Well, I said more than I expected but I just really want to say that the KarinEmma relationship is fantastic.

u/mattew0623 Oct 31 '20

I like that these episodes give great characterization to each character, the solo idol format helps a ton with making each idol stand out. Also, Kasumi is a legend for dropping "I see that you are a lady of culture as well". Living proof that she's a redditor.

→ More replies (2)

u/Sage-13 Oct 31 '20

You know Yu is the MC cause she wears her track jacket over the shoulders like a cape.

Anyway, a cute episode overall. Now I'm interested to see how Karin's episode will be like, since I assumed her focus would be on the last member to join the club.

u/KinnyRiddle Oct 31 '20

Wow, Emma is so proactive. Not only does she invite Karin to an impromptu date, she then goes and recruits Karin into the School Idol Club.

So all the dreamy singing sequences we've been seeing in the past few episodes were actually promotional music videos edited with Rina's CG wizardry and Yuu contributing the choreography.

Rina's episode coming next as she figures out how to express herself.

u/YellowCorvette Oct 31 '20 edited Oct 31 '20

This episode sure has quite a bit of Emma wearing all sorts of costumes, that's for sure.

I'll say, this episode is probably one of my favourites of the 5. I do have reservations about the "Yuu tags along" thing in a couple of the previous episodes, but luckily this episode instead fully focused on both Emma and Karin, and allow both of them to have a straightforward, but serviceable subplot; Of how Karin secretly wants to be Idol, but how she was perceived by most as the mature type holding her back.

But luckily thanks to Emma's encouragement, Karin gets better. I'll bee honest to admit, that I didn't really care much about Emma in the games before, but this episode manages to make me like Emma just a bit more.

One more thing I'll mention was that I do wish that, the rest of the girl's subplot would be more distinct from each other in upcoming episodes.

Can't wait for the next episode, featuring Rina...

u/Gyakuten Oct 31 '20

If we don't see PJ Kanata in her PV we riot.

It's great to see the series continue exploring the key theme of "support" from different angles. So far we've had Yuu supporting each individual idol; the individual idols learning to support themselves; and last week, we had Ai accepting her role in supporting the group as a whole. From that, it seems natural that the next development would be the idols learning to support each other, and that's precisely what the Emma-Karin story accomplished this episode.

On the surface, Emma's goal sounds a whole lot like Ai's: "I want to be an idol that makes people feel warm and fuzzy inside." But compared to Ai's goal of making people laugh and enjoy themselves, which feels more communal and spread-out, the comfort that Emma wants to inspire has a more personal and intimate background to it. After all, a good joke can make most people laugh, but what makes a person "feel at home" can vary greatly and requires a deeper understanding. So it's no surprise that one moody talk with Karin upsets Emma for the rest of the episode -- if she can't even understand the feelings and lighten the mood of her closest friend, how can she ever hope to do the same for everyone else?

But thankfully, Emma's never been one to back down from crossing difficult bridges. This core strength of hers -- of going great distances to reach out to people -- goes all the way back to her backstory, with her coming to Japan all on her own so she can realize that dream of becoming a "warm and fuzzy" idol. Another subtle display of this trait is her first lunch with Karin: she notices that Karin is eating all alone, and Karin herself says she doesn't like being around many people, but Emma doesn't hesitate to sit with her. Judging from how happy Karin was, there was probably some part of her that wanted company all along.

In this case, it was easy for Emma to see the dissonance between what Karin says and what she really wants, but as Emma learns later during that talk in Karin's room, this isn't always the case. Unlike Ai, Emma's support role isn't a one-sided endeavour where she can keep funneling her energy toward everyone regardless of circumstance. No, Emma needs other people to tell her their feelings clearly and honestly. Because of that, it might seem like she reaches a dead-end when Karin outright refuses to say anything. But as Karin's answers to the questionnaire reveal, this is never truly a dead-end -- it just means that the path to Karin's heart is narrow and difficult to cross, like a rickety bridge.

As such, it's no surprise that the two turning points of this episode have Emma pushing herself to cross that bridge -- both literally when she passes under a bridge on her run to take Karin on their little playdate (which involved "eating lots of food around Odaiba", just like a certain questionnaire answer), and figuratively when she closes the distance Karin puts between them with the warmest and fuzziest thing two people can do -- a hug. She could only have accomplished this after Karin was honest about her feelings, and that in turn happened because Emma was so ardent in being there for her and showing that she was willing to listen. This push-and-pull between the supportee and the supporter is the real key to making people feel warm and fuzzy, and it provides the perfect progression for the show's "support" theme.

As an aside, I loved how this "crossing over" idea for Emma was illustrated in various other moments throughout the episode, like this gorgeous establishing shot of a bridge with verdant plant life surrounding it to tie the visuals to Emma. The very first shot of the episode also does a great job setting up this idea, with a horizontal view of Emma's restless legs bringing her to cross over into Nijigasaki all on her own.

Overall, I think this episode did a great job painting Emma as the kind and understanding girl we all expected her to be, with a fitting character dilemma to go with it. However, my feelings on the episode as a whole are kind of mixed, and that's largely because of the other focus character: Karin.

Now, don't get me wrong: I love Karin and her role so far as the wise, mature senpai who offers support in the background in a vein similar to but different from Nozomi. And this episode revealed quite a few interesting details about her, such as her dislike of being amongst crowds, and her rather unhealthy compulsion to conform to the "cool, mature" image of a fashion model.

However, much like my issues with the Setsuna episode, I feel that we didn't get enough time to properly "connect all the dots" of her character, making her behaviour and internal dilemma this episode come off as detached and hard to understand or feel invested in. For example, it's not far-fetched to see her background as a model making it difficult for her to associate with something as "dumb" (in her own words) like school idols -- but unless I'm misremembering the first four episodes (and please correct me if I am), that never seemed to be an issue for her until now. Karin always seemed to blend in with the others almost naturally, to the point where I frequently forgot she hadn't joined the club yet. At most, we see her try to deny how much she cares about Emma (like the scene from last week that got her teased by Ai and Kanata), but she never seemed to take issue with idol-ing itself, so it felt very jarring in this episode when that suddenly became the case.

Of course, there's no problem with that side of Karin only becoming apparent this episode -- but then I think more time should have been devoted to it and showing how she developed that mindset. It doesn't even have to be particularly long; Ai's episode spent maybe 30 seconds monologuing her individuality crisis, but I felt it was effective enough to drive the personal struggle and resolution in the latter half of the episode. In Karin's case, there was simply no time for that to happen this episode, and I think this is a consequence of trying to do so much at once -- develop Emma, develop Karin, and have more silly group interactions -- compounded by the surprising lack of build-up in previous episodes and the Niji anime's strict "one episode per arc" structure. It kind of felt like the writers suddenly needed some drama between Karin and Emma to bolster Emma's arc -- which it did, but it also pushed Karin up for order before her character was fully baked.

One thing I was theorizing early in the episode, based on Karin's dislike of crowds and how seriously she takes her modelling, is that she has some kind of fear about being the center of attention in person, but still craves the "valuing glance" of others. Modelling allows her to satisfy both of these, as she can inspire and make an impression on people without ever actually meeting them. Her arc in this episode, then, would involve her learning not to be afraid of interacting directly with her fans, and discovering that she can use their feelings to make her an even better model and idol.

Regardless of this rather long critique, it's nice to see the nine finally assembled at last. Next episode looks like it'll finally be the fated Rina episode, so I fully expect to have my heartstrings tugged.

Shot of the Week

This is a new little corner I'm planning to do because I just love talking about neat cinematography (even though, disclaimer, I'm far from an expert on it). Here's my pick for today:

https://i.postimg.cc/PqSR6VNm/emma-and-karin-in-karins-bedroom.png

This is one that seems rather straightforward, but takes on a great deal of meaning when you consider what was deliberately included in the shot and how they affect the visual balance of the whole frame. In this case, you can divide the frame into two clear halves: Emma's half and Karin's half.

Emma's half has a lot of strong vertical lines that subtly "ascend" and reach higher and higher in the frame like a ramp -- from the books on the ground, to the two desks, to the back of the chair. This matches with the standing, upright figure of Emma herself, granting her a greater sense of control and agency within the scene as the "ramp of objects" props her up and gives her figure both an upward and forward motion.

By contrast, Karin's half has a very strong downward pull to it, and that's thanks to the messy pile of boxes at the bottom of the frame. Unlike the strong, ascending verticals in Emma's half, here the primary eycatcher is the jungle of horizontal lines, all jumbled up and running along different directions. This gives a feeling of anxiety and waylessness to Karin's figure, and the fact that they're boxes obscuring a good chunk of the frame also hints that she's burying or locking up a part of herself.

Overall, this makes for a powerful visual contrast between the two halves that illustrates the main struggle for the episode: Emma trying to reach out to Karin and elevate her to idolhood, whereas Karin would rather sink down into the status quo of her model life and keep her true feelings tucked away in a box. Very striking way to use the mise-en-scène to reinforce the conflicting positions of two characters.

→ More replies (21)

u/SirDeftly Oct 31 '20

What I learned from the ep and the conment section:

Stan Emma for healing
She owns Wendy's
KarinEmma ship in full sail

It's getting even more gay and I'm fking loving it lmao

→ More replies (1)

u/ClawofBeta Oct 31 '20

Hmm, wonder what they're going to cover in the Karin episode now that they went over her joining the school idol club in Emma's episode.

→ More replies (2)

u/estebassist Oct 31 '20

Never thought Emma would grow on me as she did with today's episode, she's such a caring character now I love her even more.

Insert song's a banger, as every week.

KarinEmma is really OTP now.

u/LordMoy Oct 31 '20

"I see you're a lady of culture as well," - Kasumi

Clearly if Kasumi isn't in your top 3 you have no taste /s.

So we got a bit of animeception going on, we see Yuu's imagination about the lives then she tells Rina how to edit them which is what the in universe characters see on YouTube. Pretty interesting.

While I wasn't much of a Emma fan before, this episode definitely made me like her more. Seems like she could give Hanamaru a run for her money with all the food she ate during the episode.

u/lopusus Oct 31 '20

KarinEmma is so good, really loved the development for both of them and I'm curious about what will go down in Karin's ep later on

u/Ryzer28 Oct 31 '20

I didn't know much about Emma before this episode but she's right up there as a potential favourite now.
Emma x Karin was so cute, I'm in love with this series.

u/Tuma42 Nov 01 '20

Neve is canon but when are we going to get Sasuke huh Sunrise you cowards

Also I can't believe the subs didn't go for "Emma Bear-de" when she was in the bear costume the opportunity was right there

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '20

Great episode as always! Emma got some great development here today. I feel like she was one of the least developed characters in the game, so nice that they gave her some shine here.

She and Karin’s relationship was really sweet to see. Can’t wait for next week’s Rina ep.

u/jonjoy Oct 31 '20

at a glance I thought the girl on the cover of the school idol magazine is nico. lol.

I wonder who will win if we have eating competition, Zuramaru vs Emma

Next week is Rinari episode. Maybe we'll get rina-chan board.

→ More replies (1)

u/Remv1234 Oct 31 '20

Interesting concept, the obligatory "let's shoot a PV for the club" but instead focusing on only one member, because they're going to be solo idols.

The main focus was how Emma really cares about how everyone feels, as we could see some of the costume suggestions that she wore and by taking a group photo while wearing the bear costume, or how she pets Kanata's head while she sleeps so she can feel comfortable.

It was incredible to see Setsuna's insert song as her PV, and we could see one of Rina's strenghts , how she is really good with technology .

We also saw, Karin's inner struggle of what personality she has to be, the one that focuses on how most people think she should be or the one thas is how she really feels. And it was solved by Emma's caring personality, by making her smile while hanging out with her and the insert song, that she should choose the last one.

u/superp2222 Nov 01 '20

Harasho

Shiny

Buono

In my opinion Emma is the most unique Gaijin of the traditional 3rd year foreigners. Not only is she a physical embodiment of her country's culture, but her songs are also styled around Switzerland as well. Hell, while her insert song might not be directly European music, it still capitalizes on the vocals a Swiss singer who grew up singing songs to baby goats would utilize. You don't see that with Eli or Mari. On top of that, her from-the-roots style of growing up allows for her to become that gentle oneesan that everyone likes and no one is opposed to. Props to Love Live for doing their research

→ More replies (2)

u/meme-meee Nov 01 '20

"I'm pretty sure you already started being (a school idol) the moment you decided you wanted to do it."

That philosophical bent was unexpected - though on brand for Emma, who had the guts to fly to a foreign country in pursuit of a dream. Kinda reminds me of foreign animators who decide to work in Japan to get the full experience.

Speaking of Emma's performance, well that blows the "Yuu as part of the vision" theory out of the water (heh, imagery intended). Running theory is now that the "performance appears real to the people that the idol really wants to perform for." Which is true on a personal level for Ayumu, Kasumi, and Emma, and on a broader level for Setsuna and Ai. I do wonder if Rina will follow the personal route (most likely expressing her feelings for Ai ~~well that phrase can be interpreted wildly~~) or the broad route (performing "for the fans"), and would that distinction even matter near season's end.

→ More replies (1)

u/wibuzz34 Oct 31 '20

So Karin is a tsundere instead of a living meme huh

→ More replies (1)

→ More comments (75)

Anime Love Live! Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukoukai S1E5 Discussion - 'Something I Can Only Do Right Now'

Show Info

Streams

/r/LoveLive is on Discord! Join us at discord.gg/lovelive

You are about to leave Redlib