From a subjective standpoint, there's a lot of things I could say about Love Live! Sunshine! (and the whole series in general but let's keep it at this since this is aimed at first season of Sunshine anyway) which are nice and I could at least say that I am very emotionally engaged with it for the small amount of time I've been into it, since reviewing requires me to be as objective as possible, which I'll get to right now.
However, as much as I love one series, I cannot avoid putting up a proper review for the sake of anime viewers and especially Love Live! fans who want to see more from the series just because of personal bias.
If you've seen the first Love Live! then don't expect things to be completely different here, because they are not. One could say this is a re-run of the first series but with a different main cast & setting but, Sunshine has some points that make the series special & appealing on its own and it does have connections to the first Love Live! after all.
The part that is, honestly, a shame is that Sunrise has managed to not only draw in the elements from the first season of the first series to Sunshine, but also the flaws. I truly did hope they've learned something from the brilliant second season of the first Love Live!, but that's not the case here. The plot-line here is almost the same, the pace is displeasing and there's, again, a whole lot of characters who don't give you a lot of reasons to like & care for them because they aren't & don't have the chance to be developed enough for a ~260 minute run, and 9 main characters are already be too much for one season if I do say so myself but, having the idea of how Sunrise works as much, most of this will be dispelled during the second season.
I feel like the artstyle is much better this time, the CGI in particular. Not distracting compared to the first season and Sunrise really works their way around how the environment and characters look in a good & fitting way.
What I like is how the first season of Sunshine is on-point with the level of drama going on. It isn't something more or different than what it really is even though the theme is basically the same and something that can be found in a lot of bitter-sweet series that don't have to be similar to Love Live!. Sunshine really hit the spot there.
The character cast is rather interesting and by that I mostly mean Saint Snow, Aqours' rival group. Since you could say they are the counterpart to A-RISE in the first season, compared to them, Ria and Seira don't start out as the biggest idol group and are the performers or characters you'd expect them to be if you know what A-RISE is like. Though Aqours faces the same issue as in the first season of the first series, I find them to be quite lovable and special on their own subjectively. I do believe they should reach peak development in the second season.
As expected, Sunshine continues to milk out outstanding idol music that's another reason to why I find Aqours to be special on their own. ''Snow Halation'' and ''Start:Dash'' have been quite the songs but I listen to a lot of Guilty Kiss (I have been doing so way before I got into LL actually) and as I go by more episodes, I can see Aqours clawing themselves in my playlist here and there.
I find myself to be comparing the first Love Live! to Sunshine a lot but it's not like the series isn't doing so itself. It isn't disconnecting itself by any means and, as a matter of fact, the series pays homage to μ's often and, to be precise, from the character standpoint, Aqours.
Overall, I can get the low scores for this series because of varying tastes of other people. This doesn't exactly appeal to every audience but if you're willing to give Love Live! a try, watch the first series + the movie and come back here. If you want to see more from the series then certainly watch this! If you can get past the recurring flaws, you're in for a good ride.
