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.
