Anime 52214 Genjitsu No Yohane Sunshine In The Mirror Reviews Filter Check 2

Directionless: The anime starts off strong with introductions to Yohane and friends, beautiful artstyle for the animation, and great music. Then comes the middle of the show where each episode just felt like time filler for the next song that will be performed and the main antagonistic force at play is completely forgotten about so much so that the show felt like it was dragging. Fantasy setting? Very underutilized. World building? Not much of it. What danger is there? Just a few deer in 2 eps... While the final episodes finally turned the gears for something to happen in the show, the emotional parts fall ... flat due to the dragging of those middle episodes but at least the ending is a bit middle of the road. The anime could've been better if it didn't introduce an antagonistic force and focused on being a pure slice of life but they chose to try to do both and somehow sacrificed the plot and made a muddy sol. In conclusion, if you're an Aqours fan you can find some moments that can make you excited Aqours is back animated if you ignore everything else...while for others new to this franchise looking for something not idoly I'd say it's safe to skip.

To get directly to the point: This show is like a big bowl with great ingrediences and no cook. It feels like 9 or 10 girls put their craziest ideas, mixed them up and took, whatever came out of this mixing process. This show is a mash-up of great fantastic ideas glued together by a story-telling without a störy.

But no for more details:

1.) Sunshine in the mirror as Love Live show
This show was first announced as april of the "Love Live" franchise. Therefore, it is part of this franchise. But this show doesn't feel like a Love Live show at all. The mirror-counterparts of ... the Aqours members share some traits of the originals and the mirror Numazu reminds partly of the original Numazu as shown in "Love Live Sunshine", but that are nearly all similarities.
There is no school to save, no song contest, the characters are some kind of adult and there is nearly no singing. You will not like the show, just you like "Love Live". You can possibly like "Sunshine in the mirror", but for another reasons than its franchise.

2.) The crazy setting
The most impressive part of this show is the setting. This is a kaleidoscope of ideas. Sunshine in the mirror excels most fantasy shows by cool and crazy elements. We have magic elements, steampunk elements, modern and postmodern elements.
For example: While Dia rides a bike with some trandformation elements ans Ruby (as a fairy) speaking out of screen of this bike, we see You as a postgirl shot out of a cannon and then gliding to her target. We can see Lailaps again, but this time as a speaking wolf-like sister-like partner of Yohane.

3.)The story
There is a Numazu-wide threat of randomly popping up aberrations with dark purple fog, strange lightnings and strange behaving animals (mostly deers) with glowing red eyes, but this doesn't prevent this show to focus on completely unrelated things like organising a girls night out or organizing a community festival with the once group singing (at least until episode 11). To be fair, we the other story-driving element of Yohane searching something like a purpose (Something, that only she can do), but this doesn't change the impression, that this show doesn't look like as it knows, what it wants. Even if there is a story in the backgound, the episodes doesn't mostly feel connected by this story.
The episodes itself can be fun. But you should have no problem to enjoy purely CGDCT stuf in some episodes and some dark mysterious stuff in some other episodes. If you want a great story, which holds all together, you should probably ignore this show.

Genjitsu no Yohane is a visually appealing spin-off, that boasts some of the best songs in the franchise, but at the same time fails to tell an interesting story and does a huge disservice to the original cast.
Being a Love Live fan, the announcement of this spin-off came as a pleasant surprise. An alternative setting with our favorite LL girls, which could be filled with fantasy and adventure. Each girl had her own shtick, with Kanan being an engineer or Mari being a demon queen, and these things had a lot of potential to tell an interesting story.

But unfortunately, none of these came to be. ... The story revolves around a certain mystery that happens in Numazu which makes animals go berserk once in a while, and is therefore limited pretty much only to that place. The idea in itself isn't so bad, but it was never executed properly. Half of the episodes in the anime are purely SoL episodes with no relevance to the story, which later on, when the story actually progresses, it fails to actually be interesting.

The characters themselves also lose most of their personality and are reduced to a one-off shtick (as mentioned above), while all previous relationships established in Sunshine! are entirely gone. Kanan/Mari for example, or Chika/You/Riko feel like practically strangers in this show. Everyone focuses just on one single character - Yohane. Every sentence they utter is about her and regarding her. Yohane makes the world there go round.

Unfortunately, Yohane's character was another disappointment, as she never convinced me why she deserves to be a main character. For most of the anime's time, Yohane is spent moping, crying, being depressed or making drama. She can't do that, she doesn't deserve to do that, etc. are regular motifs in here. Every time, without fail, she'll be pushed up and supported by Lailaps, or the other girls from Aqours.

Not long after, Yohane becomes a celebrity in town and everyone focuses on her and supporting her, despite the fact that she has never shown us she's done anything exceptional. From an outsider's perspective, she's basically just a random teenager who does random errands for people and likes to sing. She cannot fight, and she cannot support anyone else. Because of that, it's bizarre seeing how everyone revolves around her.

Meanwhile, Yohane's development is a very mixed bag. At the end of the day, she did develop quite a lot, but the process was extremely tiring with one step forward one step back for a long time. Yohane tries to do something, fails or succeeds, then for whatever reason she goes back to moping in her bed. Lailaps comes to cheer her up, they argue a little, and then another chance comes to repeat this process.

Luckily for the anime, I think that the songs are definitely the stronger ones in the franchise (coming second after the series of bangers NijiGaku has released), and with the songs themselves and CGI lives being so great, it elevates the show by a lot. The quick succession of songs in the first half of the anime lulls the viewers into a false sense of security, forgetting completely that there's a story to be told (that is being skipped).

The anime also looks great. The new character designs feel really "soft" and nice, and the anime is very colorful and vibrant.


Ultimately, Genjitsu no Yohane is an eye candy and a treat with its songs for Love Live fans, but as a standalone anime, it's a huge disappointment, failing to have a proper story, and butchering the personalities of the characters we love.

Let me preface this by stating I have not watched Love Live! Sunshine!!, but I am at least familiar with the original Love Live series and the concept of idol shows as a whole. At least from its advertising, Genjitsu no Yohane didn’t seem to require any prior knowledge of said series, so I will be predominantly reviewing it as such.

☆ Story: 4/10

Genjitsu no Yohane is- definitely interesting. While it had a good premise at the beginning, the show does fall short on fully explaining its lore and narrative as a whole. For the most part, the storyline was either disjointed or rushed, the whole ... “calamity” aspect feeling clunky at best and downright confusing at worst.

I am providing a little leeway here, given that this is clearly the work of those who have never had to write high fantasy (or likely anything with supernatural twists) before, but it is still important to note that this series isn’t exactly competent in the way it handles its fantastical elements.

The Lailaps subplot was essentially the only aspect which felt properly constructed in my opinion, with the twist in episode 12 being the sole reason this ‘story’ section of my review was bumped from a 2/10 to a more tolerable 4/10.

☆ Characters: 4/10

The problem with having a show like this and being expected to include nine main characters (plus Lailaps, to make ten) is that there simply isn’t enough to time really flesh any of them out in a single cour (~11-13 eps) anime. Yohane is pretty much the only one to see anything even resembling character development, with the others pretty much just shoved in for the sake of retaining the original LLS cast.

In short, I believe it boils down to the fact that a school-based idol anime has a greater advantage in terms of having its protagonists interact with each other in a believable manner - After all, they’re all around the same age, and likely in many of the same classes, so getting them to naturally form an idol group together isn’t a huge stretch. Compare this to the fantasy world of GnY, wherein the nine main girls + Lailaps all have separate jobs, subsequently having little (if any) reason to interact with each other aside from “because the plot demands it” or “ because we’re all friends with Yohane”.

☆ Music: 8/10

This is by far the show’s strongest aspect, with each of the songs and their accompanying music videos being beautifully written, performed, and overall just fun to listen to.

☆ Animation: 8/10

For the most part, this show’s animation is pretty average, although I am bumping the overall score up due to how fluid and dynamic the music videos were. Additionally, I have to give praise for their decision to do this mostly in 2D, with the LL franchise otherwise seeming to love their (somewhat uncanny, in my opinion) 3D animations even for non-music video scenes.

☆ Enjoyment: 6/10

Not much to say here, really. I’m sure I would have liked this more had I already been a LLS fan, but as things stand now, I found myself either bored or confused for the majority of my watching.

☆ Overall: 6/10

Again, I am being generous here in assuming some jokes or references went over my head as a new viewer, but I cannot fully ignore the fact that, at least in a vacuum, Genjitsu no Yohane simply didn’t have enough time to accomplish what it originates set out to do.

Perhaps if it had been double or even triple the length, this show could have proved an engaging and unique standalone fantasy+idol series, but as is, I believe the only people who will enjoy this are those who have already seen the original Love Live! Sunshine!! saga.

I don't want to be harsh on this, cause I'm very happy to have a Love Live Sunshine spinoff at all, but I feel like Sunshine in the Mirror could've been a lot better than it was. Specifically it seems pretty halfhearted in a lot of what people want from something like this. It doesn't get rid of singing and performances, but there's less singing than one would expect from Love Live. It's set in a fantasy world, but with plenty of modern amenities (and some tokusatsu elements?) and it never leaves the single town of Numazu. It has everyone from Aqours, but other than ... the eponymous Yohane, Lailaps gets more focus than all of them combined. And as far as I remember from Love Live Sunshine, Lailaps is a completely new character for this, and one I don't find all that likeable. As for the Aqours members themselves, their personalities only vaguely resemble how we know them, if at all. Mari's case is especially egregious, with the loveable, bubbly troublemaker becoming a secluded, depressed demon lord.
All that said, while the lack of adventure and relation to Love Live proper I expected is disappointing, I still think Sunshine in the Mirror is a good anime and a good addition to the Love Live series. Visually, it's beautiful, with intricate lighting, beautiful colors, and great attention to detail. All the Aqours girls, despite their differences, are still loveable, especially Yohane. What songs the girls do sing are very good. I would very much appreciate more content like this from studio Sunrise.

I can't tell after watching 6 episodes of this anime that what the hell is it trying to explain with the story.
It have potential to be one the good anime this season but its getting bad with each episode seriously.

•Storyline:- so the storyline goes like this there is a girl wants to be a singer and gets rejected again again and again her mom calls her back to home and give limitum to decide what to do this is the basic overview and how the story goes.But main problem with the story comes now,
Literally many people can think of a story that how will it ... go like how she will find her dream and all the anime till now revolves around playing friend friend and some kind of mystery that affects only kids and animals and there comes a plot twist there are different people playing superhero like wow worst scripting.
You have good base of the story, you have good characters so instead of utilising the potential they are wasting it.

•Animation:- In this department i have no complaint whatsoever as the animation team have done a great job with the details, colour selection character attributes etc

•Music:- 6 out of 10 as it is okay okay but the ED deserves a 9 it was a nice ending song.

•Character Design :- I didn't wanted to go with this but seriously. They are job doing or searching teenagers or in there world early adulthood stage but you have given the elementary school kids type or personality like should we leave elementary kids to do the jobs.

=> CONCLUSION:- its the part where mostly i get strike but still in my opinion its wholly upto you if you want you can watch and if the production wants to fix they can still fix the show and get it on the track it was one of the awaited anime of this season for me and feels bad that it turned out like this.

Love Live Nonsense.

When Yohane the Parhelion: Sunshine in the Mirror was announced, I think everyone thought it was a joke considering its first announcement trailer dropped on April Fools Day. A weird spin-off of Love Live Sunshine, which is considered to be the best Love Live by the fandom, which is wrong because the best Love Live is Love Live Superstar. The story takes the girls of Love Live Sunshine and plops them in a fantasy setting… sort of.

I say “sort of” because I don’t know if it is set in a fantasy setting, considering we’re introduced to the main protagonist Yohane, the alter-ego ... of the chunibyou Yoshino from the main Sunshine, as she’s performing for an audition in not fantasy-looking Tokyo. After getting grilled by her mum for being a total failure she's forced to return to her port town home via the fantastical Japanese Bullet Train. There she is greeted by a giant telepathic dog and mocked for being a silly boo-boo head. Here is when actual fantasy things start to happen. It’s pretty jarring and hard to explain anything about this show. If you have no prior knowledge of Love Live Sunshine and its cast of moe blobs, you will probably be confused most of the time.

Of course, as a Sunrise production, the art and animation are pretty fantastic. With wonderfully expressive characters and beautiful backdrops, I can see the appeal that would attract Love Live Sunshine fans. My main issue lies in its general premise or lack of commitment to it.
From the four episodes I’ve watched Sunshine in the Mirror feels like it’s trying to be a moe blob idol anime combined with a lacklustre fantasy setting with magic and stuff but it doesn’t excel at either. It can't choose which side of those genres it wants to lean into and the result is an inoffensively mediocre story which feels safe yet is hard to follow unless you're a Live Love Funshine connoisseur.

Then again those Wuv Wive Wunshine girls are very fun. Yohane is very charming in her silly way and the rest of the crew all have their perks. I don’t know. I have never been so confused about my feelings towards a Long Dive before. Would a say it’s bad? No. Would I say it’s good? That is a tricky question. Your average Dove Five Bumshine fan will enjoy it and has been considering its MAL score, which is great, but for the rest of us, it’s inoffensive. Would I recommend it to someone? Probably not. I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire premise turned out to be in Yoshino’s imagination or in a video game or something considering Yohane is her chunibyou alter-ego.

5/10 Mediocre