Where the Sky Meets the Ocean

Foreword

The Where the Sky meets the Ocean was written on intention to expand the current storyline of Love Live! It fills the gaps and tie the story together between the relationship of Eli Ayase's and Umi Sonoda's, from the series and the movie. The episodes and the scenes from the movie were chosen to help progress the relationship.

It was intended to continue the concept that Umi and Eli were already close, as suggested from their PV. First, their very first PV (Bokura no LIVE Kimi to no LIFE). Eli was already walking with Umi when they first appeared, and Umi seemed cheered when Eli joined the group. This was also continued on another PV (Natsuiro Egao de 1, 2, Jump!) where Umi and Eli were playing water together when the rest were playing elsewhere. It felt that this story makes sense keeping that concept in mind while watching the PVs, series, and the movie.

This story explores the first person views and thoughts of the two characters. It was divided into 9 chapters with 6 chapters written from Umi's perspective and 3 from Eli's. This was chosen based on which one of them could best represent and tell the story. The theme of the titles were associated either to "sky" or "ocean", that shows which told the story.

These chapters were arranged in chronological order, except for The Sail (Ch 8) – set earlier than The Coast (Ch 1). The first chapter was intended to introduce the close relationship between Eli and Umi. Slowly building up, Chapter 2 and 3 introduces the link between the story and the series – some scenes were self-explanatory through watching them. Chapter 4 introduces the background story for chapter 5 and 6. The twin chapters (5 and 6) were based on the movie and was told by Eli and then Umi respectively. Chapter 7 and 9 were a two-part story, with chapter 8 telling the origin of their relationship.