English Dub Review: Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club “Dreamland Is Now Open!↑↑(*’▽’)”

Overview:

Shioriko proposes that the drama club puts on a pre-show performance for the upcoming festival. Shizuku asks Yuu for help, but Yuu remains secretive about it. This makes Ayumu suspicious, so her and Setsuna follow them to an amusement park.

Our Take:

The girls have even more performances to look forward to now. The drama club will be putting on a play as an introduction to the school idol festival. Shizuku asks Yuu for advice on the script and she also reveals that she wants Ayumu and Setsuna to star in the play.

Ayumu worries that Yuu is pushing herself too hard, so she wants to hang out. However, Yuu turns down her offer because she has other plans. In typical Ayumu fashion, she follows Yuu around and becomes seemingly jealous when she sees Yuu with Shizuku.

Ayumu behaved this same way in the previous season as well. I understand that she cares about Yuu and they’re best friends, but I find this behavior to be pretty annoying. It’s like Yuu can’t spend time with anyone else if Ayumu’s not there. I see that hasn’t changed and that’s unfortunate because Ayumu is one of my least favorite characters with this being a main reason.

Setsuna runs into Ayumu and gets dragged along on tailing Yuu and Shizuku. Shortly after they all arrive at their destination, Ayumu and Setsuna get spotted. They come up with an excuse and it gets blown off, which I expected.

The girls have fun at the amusement park and Shizuku explains the play, which Setsuna and Ayumu agree to. Then the girls check out a school idol exhibit, where they run into Lanzhu.

Once again, Lanzhu tells Yuu she shouldn’t be in the school idol club. She heard Yuu’s song and she thinks Yuu is being held back from her dream of becoming a musician. Yuu appreciates the concern, but there’s no way she’s turning her back on the club.

Shizuku feels guilty for some reason and this leads to the girls workshopping the end of the play. It’s essentially Beauty and the Beast, but they put their own spin on it. They improvise the ending here, so this probably won’t be the finished product.

On their way home, Yuu and Ayumu go on a Ferris wheel. Ayumu tells Yuu  to ask if she needs any help. Yuu responds by saying Ayumu has supported her so much already, so Yuu wants to support her now.

I don’t understand that at all because Yuu has been supporting Ayumu since the beginning. Ayumu is the one who wanted to become a school idol and Yuu joined the club to cheer her on even though she didn’t want to perform herself. The whole show has been Yuu supporting Ayumu and the others, so this makes no sense to me.

There are some smaller scenes here, like Mia showing Lanzhu Yuu’s song and Shioriko’s sister revealing that she’ll be student teaching at the school. Honestly, I’m starting to lose track of all of these characters. There were a lot in the first season, but now there are even more and I think that’s working against the show.

On a positive note, I enjoyed the improvised play ending and I’m hoping to see the finished product in a future episode.

While this episode is fine, it highlight the show’s weak points. These points that I mentioned before feel like they’re holding the show back. I hope everything comes together by the end, but there’s still progress that needs to be made.