April 23, 2020, 10:19 p.m.

Happy Birthday You! (Despite me posting this 3 days later)

Man, You Watanabe is one of my favorite characters in general, her bright personality and energetic spirit is what first drew me to her. She was my number 1 Aqours girl when Aqours started, I mean, her Christmas UR was the first ever UR I saved and scouted for. After that scout, I fell off of Love Live, due to looking back on Sunshine season 1 and realizing I didn't enjoy it much. I returned to the game around August 2018, and played on and off, not fully coming back to Idol Hell. I stayed out of LL (listening to the music, enjoying the dances, hell, just experiencing everything series has) until New Year 2019, when the Hop? Stop? Nonstop! preview came out on Youtube, I somehow came across it, and feel back in love the the characters of Sunshine.

When I came back I didn't have much of a best girl, since I was getting back into the Game and the Music, and not the anime. (Ironic, I know) The reason for this was that every time I thought about watching Sunshine Season 1 and 2, I remembered I didn't enjoy S1 when I last watched it (when it was airing back in 2016, turns out I don't really enjoy watching things as they air, so now I just binge all my anime after they finish). Since I hadn't watched the anime and only enjoyed the game and listening to the songs released, my best girl was in a state of limbo, switching between 4 girls, Kanan, Riko, You, and Chika. This due to vocals and the characters cards.

I finally got around to watching season 1 and 2 around July of 2019, in which I loved both seasons, with season 2 becoming my favorite anime show. (Still need to watch the movie, got the blu-ray, but I kinda want to binge the entire series of Sunshine with the movie.) After re-watching the first 2 seasons, my best girl list narrowed to 3, with Chika no longer being one of my best girls. It kinda switched between all 3 of Kanan, Riko and You depending on the day, so all were best girl to me at the time.

Then All Stars came out in 2019, and more specifically, that first Yohane UR came out after the initial one. The idolized has Yoshiko in a take of her solo song outfit. I didn't know the solo songs had special outfits or anything, so when I saw that, I thought all the first new UR's for the girls would be outfits based on the solo songs, so I went to find out what the outfits would be like.

Then I saw the very short 30 second preview of Beginners Sailing. After that, everything in that 30 seconds help decide You was best girl. From the song to the outfit Shuka wore, to Shuka herself giving everything into the performance. It all just resonated with me that that WAS You's solo song, I could see You up on that stage, singing and dancing where Shuka was. All the fun and energy that those 30 seconds sent out to the crowd and viewers watching, is what made me realize who best girl was. (In comparison to the other solo songs, which I also watched, but none of them had the same impact as Beginners Sailing on me.) (Guess you could say it's not so much You best girl, but Shuka, but that's kinda weird to have a real person be "best girl", since, ya know, real person and all)

After that performance, You has without a doubt been my best girl again, never having some sort of doubt or switching to Kanan or Riko. It's just been You. So I decided that I wanted to draw You in the Solo outfit for her birthday, too bad I hadn't drawn in over 2.5 years and I had never drawn digital before either, so it is very rough, but I know if I keep giving it everything I got, it will eventually be something I can be proud of.

So thank you, You Watanabe, for being amazing and inspiring me to keep trying and try giving everything in life 110%. And thank you, Shuka Saito, for bringing such an amazing character to life.

YouFanAwards2020

(PS. I also have NO idea how to format activity posts here, so sorry about how bad it is.)