Umi Sonoda

Umi Sonoda is one of the nine main characters in Love Live!. She is a second year in Otonokizaka High School. Her image color is deep blue. She is the leader of lily white, a sub-unit under µ's and co-founder of the group itself. Her solo album is called Umiiro Shoujo ni Miserarete. Umi has the qualities of a yamato nadeshiko, or a proper and traditional Japanese lady. As such, she is generally shy when having to interact with unfamiliar people. Even with those she is comfortable with, she seems to act reserved by default unless provoked. She is highly intelligent and a very logical solution-seeker. Above all, she is extremely disciplined--nearly to a fault-- and as a result can often be hard on others. This is exemplified in Season 2 Episode 7 when she forces Honoka and Hanayo to do long training hours after they gain a bit of weight. However, this is never motivated by feelings of malice or dislike aimed at her friends. Umi's occasional lack of sympathy stems from the fact that despite her excessive strictness towards her friends, Umi is the most unforgiving with/hardest on herself. She despises laziness, shortcuts, and/or cheating; she instead places a lot of value in hard work and perseverance. As self-destructive as this may be, these qualities combined with Umi's strong will makes her well-suited to leadership, which she often utilizes by being one of the main organizers of logistical or business-related action items for µ's. Where her leadership skills lack in sociability, she makes up in organizational excellence. This, in tandem with Umi's inclination to stay in the background when she can, makes Umi the perfect second-in-command to Honoka's leadership in µ's. In this manner, the two operate perfectly as the primary leaders in µ's. Honoka establishes and maintains µ's core of friendship and love for both members and fans alike through her ability to unify, inspire, and motivate. Umi facilitates the less enjoyable yet arguably more vital aspects of their idol work. The foil between Honoka and Umi's personalities affect areas outside of leading µ's. Honoka is more of a happy-go-lucky, modern day schoolgirl, which lead to her impulsive goal of becoming a school idol. Due to Umi's traditional values of proper ladylike behavior, Umi resisted Honoka's pleas for Umi to join her. Umi's strict moral compass made nearly all aspects of being an idol highly inappropriate and embarrassing for her. However, she is shown at times to entertain intrusive thoughts in which she acts entirely contrary to her code of proper behavior. One example of this is when in the middle of practicing archery, she imagines herself as a cheery and energetic idol saying (what will later become) her signature catchphrase, "Love arrow, shoot!". Umi is greatly flustered and ashamed of even having such a thought. When she does eventually agree to becoming a school idol, she is at first uncomfortable with wearing short skirts and opts for pant shorts. However, she learns to get used to skirts as time goes on. Despite her overall calm and collected personality, there are a few exceptions. In Season 1 Episode 10, the rest of µ's learns (the hard way) that Umi gets very grumpy and angry if she is woken up in the middle of sleeping. Season 2 Episode 5 reveals that Umi's moral aversion to dishonesty is also actually just a literal inability to lie: when playing Old Maid, Umi is painfully unable to keep a poker face. Any emotion she feels is immediately obvious by her facial expressions. In this way, Umi continually loses every game, which frustrates her because she is entirely unaware of this behavior. Her persistence and determination causes her to repeatedly ask to play another game, but her unawareness of her emotive reactions does not relent. Umi always speaks politely, using "です", "ます", and other polite forms of speaking in her speech.