#it's been long overdue for me to do some solo shots of her tbh

[chooh2]

It's lookin' like a So Mi Summer ☀️💖

[saitou-shuka]

shukamod @ First Live LV [1 of 4]

This post covers what I did before the LV and the LV itself up to the first six songs in the setlist!

Hi everyone! This is a post that’s been long overdue and I truly apologize. Many things have happened over the past week, including tons of schoolwork, more than one all-nighter, more than one 14-hour-sleep day, and me snapping my chair in half cheering too hard for Shuka, among other things... not to mention general laziness and procrastinating on Discord :))))

Excuses aside, I know at least a few people were curious on my thoughts about the Live Viewing. I wasn’t actually sure how I wanted to write the post another reason it was delayed so much ... It kind of turned into a strange diary-style post about my entire experience. Hope you guys don’t mind hearing about my weekend too...

I’m also terrible at summarizing, so the whole thing got super super long. So long that I’m splitting it up into four parts. (This way you don’t need to wait for me to finish writing everything, too...) Each individual part is still extremely long, so under a cut it goes~

Sorry for the page stretcher, mobile-users ( ‾▿‾ ;;)

The Day Before Our LV was at 12pm on a Sunday. Turns out the earliest bus from where I live doesn’t actually reach NYC until 11:50am on Sunday (... lol), so I resigned myself to arriving in New York on Saturday and paying to stay the night. My friends and I ended up buying tickets for a five-hour bus ride leaving at 7am on Saturday (rip sleep) so we could have time to hang out with the /r/LoveLive Discord community later in the day. It was really lit! We went to karaoke, which was tons of fun, and then had KBBQ for dinner. Thanks to everyone who made sure I ate properly for dinner ;__; I made sure to eat a lot to honor the price tag on the buffet  (•̀ ∀ •́)ﻭ✧ I was actually super sleepy that day, so my bad if I seemed super quiet or dead ( ‾▿‾ ;;)

Also: It was cold it was cold it was cold it was so cold that day fml

The Day of: Pre-LV I think my friends and I left for the theater around 8am? On our way there we decided it would probably be wise to actually eat breakfast, so we stopped at an IHOP and met up with a bunch of people from the Discord community again. It was kind of difficult for IHOP to serve all of us quickly, so we didn’t get to the venue until like 10am instead of 9 or 9:30am like I was hoping for. There was already a sizable line forming by then. I handed out a bunch of call guides and UOs, as well as a couple of handwarmers (because it was still cold af) to people, and then we put the banner on the ground for people to sign. Thanks to everyone who signed the banner! I don’t really remember what else happened in line because I was trying to do so many things at once lol...

The theater let us inside earlier than expected (thank youuuu). Everyone was inside by about 11am. I was already super excited at this point. My group and I picked seats in the middle-back behind a railing. During the LV I leaned over this railing like Chika in Episode 2 more than a few times and people were afraid that I was going to fall off. After I got my stuff all settled, we set up a speaker to play Aqours music. Then at some point I got bullied into going up in front of everyone in the theater with a megaphone and introducing myself OTL

I got to talk to a few new faces too! I think it was @keipointo​ who greeted me first? I awkwardly offered to shake hands because I didn’t know what to say :’))) My bad. Also had a brief exchange with one of @takatsuking​‘s friends, which was nice! (waaaa I didn’t catch your name I’m sorry ;__;) I was probably also awkward then aaaaaaa I’m bad at one-on-ones Thanks for taking the time to greet me, all of you! :D

And now onto the Live itself, finally ꉂ(･∀･ゝ ≡ ･∀･)ゝ

Some background. We only saw Day 1 of the Live, since none of the American venues offered Day 2 viewings. I was already pretty much spoiled for the events for both days of the live due to Twitter, but being able to see it in person on a giant screen was still a whole different experience altogether. It’s a sensory overload, to say the least. Yokohama Arena is soooo pretty. It’s kind of hard to describe the structure in words, but there’s a main stage with steps and a screen in the back for displaying camera shots and special effects, like so:

... which is connected to a circular center stage by a runway, which you can see here:

The floor of this center stage was actually a giant screen which was used to display some amazing special effects in a lot of the songs; I was really impressed aaaaaaa

And, as some of you might remember from μ's concerts, sometimes the seiyuu will also hop onto carts and ride them around the arena, like so

hi ainya

Here we go! ( *˙0˙*)

Aozora Jumping Heart The seiyuu rise up from below the stage and you can practically feel the tension in the air. I think... a bunch of people screamed when the music started, but I don’t remember too well. I broke two UOs off the bat because I was so excited lol. People behind me, I’m so sorry if I blinded you... Not much to say about this one, actually. Familiar song, familiar outfits. What was different this time was that they finally did the full version of the song! Since the solo lines in the second verse are done by subunit, there was some cute subunit interaction :D

Koi ni Naritai Aquarium Uhhhhhh.... lol. I didn’t want to die this early in the concert, but here we are... This song was 👌👌👌, and I pretty much... reacted how you might expect me to react. (:D)|￣|＿

Since I was spoiled for the setlist, I knew this song was coming up right after Aozora. I still wasn’t prepared. It’s just...... the choreography looks so good live and Shuka was so cute I was dying the whole time ashfsdkjfhsdkjfs. THERE ARE SPINS IN THE CHOREOGRAPHY (covered up by cutscenes in the PV) THANK YOU..............

The blue → orange → blue penlight color transition in the theater was also better than I expected wew, but then again my expectations weren’t that high in the first place.

In my humble, definitely not biased opinion, the Yousolo was amazing. I broke 8 UBs (uhhhhhh... LOL) and attempted a balrog for the solo but it was pretty spaghetti, considering how much I was freaking out.

AT THE END OF THE SONG, THE CAMERA ZOOMED ONTO SHUKA AND SHE DID A LITTLE HEADSHAKE AND FLASHED THE BIGGEST GRINｓｊｋえｊｓｇｄｘｃｖはｊｄｈｖｋｇｈｗｌｇｈｓｄｇＤ？ＧＳ

I’m so proud of Shuka, especially because she talked about how nervous she was for this song in her blog post aaaaaaaaaaa. There must have been added pressure from having to perform it second in the setlist, too...

My voice was pretty much already dead after this song :)))))))) oops

After KoiAqua, intros happened! The usual calls and all. It was good seeing the seiyuu looking just as excited as we were! Hearing so many people in the theater do the Call & Responses was really refreshing as well :D

Aqours☆HEROES  I’m always hype for this song because I love the choreography (read: Shuka’s 128759 spins). The calls for this song are also tons of fun! They were displayed on the main stage screen for the fans. I think this was the first song where the seiyuu went out onto the center stage. A lot of different camera angles (they started singing on the runway part of the stage) and modified choreography to account for the circular stage shape. They ran in circles a lot and it looked pretty tiring tbh because they were running in circles I don’t think Shuka did her “muteki datte” spin (either way the camera wasn’t focused on her) T_T Still good though, I love Heroes :D

The seiyuu leave the stage, and a short intermission drama happens. I’m going to avoid summarizing what happens in the dramas just because my Japanese listening comprehension is really bad, but I’ll mention that the animation for the little talking heads has really improved since the μ's days. They’re much more dynamic, they have more expressions, they have necks... Man, I wish I could GIF this :’)))))

Kimeta yo Hand in Hand Second years take the stage in their Daisuki dattara Daijoubu! outfits! The outfits have pretty wide sleeves, so you can see hints of Yume de Yozora costumes underneath (it doesn’t help that Shuka and Rikyako are wearing blue and pink, whereas their Yume de Yozora outfits are red and blue, respectively...) if you look closely when they raise their arms up.

At the end of the first round of solos, Shuka does a really nice spin which has the unfortunate side effect of flashing the red skirt of her Yume de Yozora costume, as well as her safety shorts LOL.

I remember laughing super hard at the arm-flailing choreo in the chorus when I first heard the song in the anime, but it actually didn’t look that weird in real life. There’s one part where all three of them just grab each other’s hands to form a circle and then run around, which I thought was really cute... ;__;

Daisuki dattara Daijoubu! Err, let’s just say that when Shuka jumped for the “Jump da!” part I thought I was going to have a heart attack lmao :’D

Choreo was pretty much exactly like the anime. For the second half of the song, the three of them moved out to the center stage while holding hands. During the instrumental it looked like there was no choreography, so all of them just circled around the stage and waved at all the fans. Shuka bounced around like a little kid on a sugar high and it was adorable ;__;

Then we had a short second years MC, the highlight of which is seeing the three of them turn in a circle to show everyone their costumes! There’s a giant ribbon on the back :>

Yume de Yozora o Terashitai Okay I already posted the official picture for the Yume de Yozora performance but I have to post it again:

This performance was sooooo beautiful, definitely one of the prettiest songs in the setlist. The whole performance itself took place on the center stage, where they could take full advantage of the screen display on the floor. Lots of aerial camera shots so we could see the evening sky displayed right under the seiyuu... Sooooo pretty. They put a really nice animation of the lanterns spelling out “Aqours” on the floor for Anchan’s solo as well :))))

There was this one part (or maybe two parts? I forget) where Aiai and King reach out and touch each other’s hands in this song, and I gotta say... their height difference is really moe. Ashkfhdsfjdkfh

... I would also like to personally thank the choreographer for putting in a Shuka spin in the second half of this song :)

You can’t see it too well in the photo, but the skirts on the costumes are all glittery. So prettyyyyy aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

After that, the stage goes dark and the seiyuu leave the stage. Next up: Subunits! (and more) → [Coming Soon!]