#kanon shibuya – @themattress on Tumblr

So there's a big issue with this final plotline about Kanon getting an offer to study abroad in Vienna. Actually, there's a few issues compounding on top of each other, but at heart it comes back to what I said before about Superstar lacking its own identity.

As a season finale, this storyline makes sense as the climax to a story like Hibike. You know, a conflict between just performing music because it's fun and you want to share that joy versus performing music to achieve greatness no matter the difficulties or sacrifices. And there have been hints at that throughout season 2- the second episode was all about exploring that idea and it was pretty damn excellent. That was the basis of Sumire and Keke's conflict in episode 9 as well: is it worth pushing the first-years out of the competition if it means a better chance to win for Keke's sake? And, of course, Wien's whole deal has been pursuing greatness at the expense of everything else. So it's not like this idea hasn't been established.

But that's also all it's been: established.

Something I'm realizing looking back on Superstar as a whole is how shockingly episodic it's been from start to finish. Compared to Sunshine and SIP, which developed pretty continuous story threads as they went along, very little of Superstar's many component parts feel like they feed into each other. Kanon had three episodes of stage fright at the start and then it wasn't an issue again until the penultimate episode of the first season. Basically every character's introduction arc into Liella is completely self-contained with emotional issues that are no longer a factor once they're part of the group. And all those moments season 2 touches on the theme of greatness vs passion are similarly resolved in a tight twenty-four minute package. The idea's brought up, toyed with, then resolved the same way: Liella is nine, and they want to sing for each other and the joy of singing. There's no progression of that theme, no elaboration, no sense that the way the characters interact with those ideas is evolving throughout the season or changing them as people.

So to have this Vienna school thrust upon us in the last moments of the season feels... wrong. It feels like it's trying to pull on threads that have already been tied up, trying to make a grand, cumulative statement on something that just hasn't been prominent enough in the story to warrant that amount of focus. We know what Superstar thinks about the conflict between doing what you love because you love it and doing what you love to create something special with it. It's already been tidily resolved multiple times. And trying to close out the season by prying those closed loops open again just reveals how little this idea has actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. Actually, it's worse; it's revealed how little any of Superstar's ideas have mattered. This season, compared to even Sunshine's weakest stretches, has so little meat on its bones that any conclusion would ring hollow from how little foundation it has to build on.

And unfortunately, it's let me to one final big disappointing realization: Kanon is a bad protagonist.

Like, I'm kind of surprised that's where I've ended up? I've never disliked Kanon or her presence in the show, I've had no trouble watching her on screen. But now that Superstar's actively centering her in the narrative again, I'm forced to realize that she is just such an empty character. Beyond the generic motivation of wanting to share her songs with the world and her long-since-resolved stage fright issues, I can't think of anything that defines her. No real quirks, no specific motivating factors, few strong relationships with the rest of Liella, no sense of her family life... I could talk at length about the nuances of Honoka and Chika and the different aspects of the genki girl archetype they emulate, even how they change and mature throughout their respective shows (And neither of them are my favorite characters of their groups!) But with Kanon? She's a near-empty vessel propped up by the much more dynamic cast surrounding her.

And that's a huge problem when you're trying to build any sort of drama around her specifically. Especially when that drama relies on us believing that Kanon is such an exceptional singer that one of the best music schools in the world would make an offer to her. Because straight up? I do not believe that for a second. Even the the heightened, idealized world of Love Live, it does not make sense how this girl, of all people, could make such an impression all by herself. Nothing Superstar has shown us has made it seem like Kanon is any more or less talented than her classmates. Honestly, Love Live's never really been good at showcasing the individual talents and skill levels of its main cast; when the performance starts, they're all basically the same up on stage. But that's never been a problem before because the story's never been about exploring those different skill levels until now. And nothing in this show has felt like it's even been trying to present Kanon as some kind of exceptional star in the making. She's always just been one idol among many, except now we're supposed to believe she's a step above everyone else and there's just no evidence to support that.

So Kanon's not a bad protagonist in the sense that she's annoying or unrealistic. She's a bad protagonist because Superstar has utterly failed to justify why she belongs at the center of this story. And with all the other issues I've talked about compounding on top of that, it's basically impossible for this show to do anything meaningful with her character as is. She's doomed to an existence of perpetual superfluousness, a gaping hole at the center of her own narrative who can only ever fail to be more than that. And that, more than anything, is the reason that Superstar, for all its delights, has come up so painfully short.

themattress

I liked Kanon fine in Season 1, she felt fresh and different with an interesting arc, but after that she needed to step the fuck aside and serve as a supporting player whose only plotline was being Wien's enemy. Kinako should have been the new protagonist for Season 2.

#Love Live Superstar #Kanon Shibuya #Opinion #Agreement #Truthbomb #Bad Writing #The Scrappy #They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character