Love Live! Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukoukai: Next Sky

Next Sky is a sequel to Nijigasaki season 2 with events happening shortly after Ayumu's return from her UK trip.

Like most OVAs, it is its own and is not always required to watch but something that the staff and fans thought was missing in season 2 was giving a specific character more spotlight and that was accomplished in this episode.

Unlike prior entries where the school idol groups experience going overseas in their movies, they've done the opposite for this OVA and gave Isla, Ayumu's friend from the UK, the Love Live! pilgrimage and school idol culture experience.

Not that much to say, it is short and ... sweet, and something every long-time Love Live! fan can appreciate. It was also used to promote Nijigasaki's sequel trilogy of films. The ending scene hints something that might shake things up for our Nijigasaki idols and Love Live! in general.

I went into Next Sky expecting two things:
The first thing I expected is that it would be bad, like how season 2 of Nijigasaki was, and the second was for the Love Live simps to blindly defend it and to tag any negative review of the series as "confusing" as they've done in the past to try to discredit legitimate criticism.
Neither turned out to be the case.
For the latter point, my guess is that after the disappointing run of Love Live content in the last year and Next Sky being overshadowed by Genjitsu no Yohane, it seems that not many people are talking ... about it.
As for the OVA itself, I was pleasantly surprised. Some aspects like the pacing and the character writing are as bad as ever, but the story is relatively enjoyable, the conflict isn't melodramatic, the animation looks fantastic (good job Sunrise), and we actually got some good character development with Shio-ti (that's Shioriko for all those unware).
If there was one thing I was disappointed in, it was the music. It's decent production quality but I definitely did not enjoy the first song's tune. The other songs are okay. Go Our Way isn't really my cup of tea but the visuals are phenomenal. Outro song is inoffensive but a downgrade from the previous outros.
Next Sky is probably worth a watch if you're a Shioriko fan or a diehard Love Live fan like myself. Otherwise it's pretty unnecessary. There's cute girls doing cute things, Engrish, a bit of drama, some British girl who for some reason has a darker skin pigment than the girls from Japan, and a cameo by Maho from D4DJ's seiyuu as some other British girl.

Oh also Koko Hayashi did a great job as Setsuna in this. And I say this as someone who did not have high expectations for her.

TL;DR: Coming from a Nijigasaki enjoyer, this is bland. Watch with low expectations of a story, it's just an extra episode with an insert song.

Nijigasaki is my favorite of all Love Live! franchises because of the music, character designs and the first season deviating from the "oh no, we have to save the school by singing, again" storyline.

With that said, and following the current trend of content that the Love Live! franchise is spitting out, there is little positive to say about this OVA. It is just a small bite of nothing.


STORY: 2/10
I couldn't care less about Isla. The story was outright... ... nothing. There was no story, it was just "this cartoonish foreign character is here, and now she is gone". After Emma, Lanzhu and Mia being quite good representation of what an actual foreigner is in Japan, this one girl dropping into the OVA and stealing the spotlight only to speak perfect japanese with a funny accent was insulting. They do nothing and then it's over. There were a couple of scenes showing how the girls react to being recognized, that was a highlight. Shioriko showed more of her character which was also refreshing to see, but it was too short for much to happen/for any characters to actually evolved.

ART: 8/10
Nothing out of the ordinary. The animation was up to par, but it wasn't particularly good either. It was nice on the eyes.

SOUND/MUSIC: 6/10
The songs were... ok (the best one being the one on the ending for some reason). This was so disappointing to me. Only one song was animated and show, but it sounded a lot more like Liella than Niji. The futuristic and simple vibe of the song just didn't match them. It lacked charm.

ENJOYMENT: 4/10
This is probably my own fault for being excited about anything Niji. After the lackluster second season (which I still enjoyed because of the subunit songs) followed by an overflow of cheap stories with high budget (Yohane in the Mirror and Liella, looking at you), I wasn't expecting any more Niji content so I was pleasantly surprised when I heard of the OVA, and expected to see our girls venture in a fun and short adventure with a little drama. It just didn't live up to the expectations set for Nijigasaki, but if I look at it thinking of all the recent Love Live! content, it fits. Love Live! has overstayed its' welcome at this point, and they only get away with it because of the fans that consume anything and everything as long as it has "Love Live!" written in it. It's pretty pathetic, the state of the fandom. There is no room for any sort of criticism, everything is "amazing" and "perfect" because Love live... If the consumer had a more discnering taste maybe we would get better stories. Think about that before you rate everything 10/10 and sink every bit of constructive criticism. You are doing this to yourselves.