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. Her solo album is called Umiiro Shoujo ni Miserarete (海色少女に魅せられて The Enchanted Ocean-Colored Maiden).

Background
Since she was young, Umi has been Honoka Kosaka and Kotori Minami's childhood friend, thanks to Honoka inviting her to a game of hide-and-seek. She is also a member of the school's archery club, at which she is quite good. She believes Honoka is bossy and pushy, but also realizes the perks of having an adventurous friend. Among the members of μ's, Umi takes the role of being their physical trainer.

Umi has a far older sister who has already moved out. Her father is a martial-arts trainer while her mother teaches traditional Japanese dance; as a result, Umi is expected to inherit the combined dojo of both. As the heiress to her lineage's legacy, she is burdened with the responsibility of carrying on her family's traditional Japanese practices and techniques. She also is highly skilled in kyūdō (弓道), or the Japanese martial art of archery. Predictably, Umi's traditional upbringing is reflected in her personality and behavior.

Personality
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 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!" (ラブアローシュートですか) 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" (desu), "ます" (masu), and other polite forms of speaking in her speech.

Clubs and Hobbies
As the daughter of an Iemoto (家元, Head of Music & Arts School) mother and a Shihan (師範, Martial Arts Inspector) father, Umi excels in Kendo, Nagauta, archery, calligraphy, and traditional dance. Starting in the second season, she becomes Otonokizaka High School's new student-council vice president, taking the role from Nozomi Tojo. She likes reading as well.

Umi becomes the group's main lyricist, and writes the song "START:DASH!!", along with most of the rest of their songs. She also trains the members of the group before Eli Ayase takes over the role. She either created the dance steps for START:DASH!! or aided Kotori in coming up with the choreography.

Trivia

 * Umi fulfills the cool attribute of the µ's second years.
 * Umi originally had an additional younger brother before it was written off.
 * "Umi" is also the Japanese word for sea. Whenever Honoka mentions the sea and calls out "Umi", Umi thinks Honoka is calling her name out instead.
 * In the manga, which was published prior to the anime, both Umi and Honoka were portrayed to be members of the kendo club.
 * The various media in the project disagree on the relationships between the second-years. In the manga which was published earlier, Honoka is closer to Umi as the two of them are childhood friends and not Kotori, but in the anime and other newer media, the three of them are all childhood friends.
 * She wears her summer uniform's vest under her blazer. However, this is not shown in Season 2's ending credits.
 * She didn't like to eat sticky food when she was in elementary school.
 * In early PVs, Umi and Eli were often shown together, implying they seemed closer before the story for the anime was established.
 * Because of this (prior to the announcements of year placements) many theorised that Umi was originally planned to be a third year, with Nozomi replacing her as second year, as early art had placed Honoka/Kotori and Nozomi close together and suggested a closeness.

Gallery
Umi Sonoda/Image Gallery