I-n-g, I TRY!!
“i-n-g, I TRY!!” is a 2019 song performed by Aqours, the nine-member school idol club associated with Uranohoshi Girls' High School. The composition was first issued as a bonus recording with the Japanese Memorial Box edition of the Blu-ray release of Love Live! Sunshine!! The School Idol Movie: Over the Rainbow. Its placement outside the film's principal sequence distinguishes it from the musical numbers heard within the theatrical work, although its performers, production personnel, and thematic vocabulary remain continuous with the film and the wider Love Live! Sunshine!! project.
The title combines the English derivational suffix “-ing” with the independent clause “I try.” By separating the suffix into three letters, the orthography converts a conventional grammatical element into a sequence that can be articulated rhythmically. The two exclamation marks form part of the official title and identify its emphatic typographical register rather than an alternative arrangement or edition.
Composition and language
The lyrics were written by Aki Hata, while Takeshi Masuda composed and arranged the music. Hata's text uses continued action as its central organizing concept. The English “-ing” suffix represents activity in progress, whereas “I try” describes the decision to continue that activity without defining success as an immediate or necessary result. The title therefore compresses the song's temporal structure into a grammatical formula: action remains incomplete, but incompletion does not terminate participation.
Japanese supplies the primary lyrical framework, with English expressions functioning as recurring structural markers. This combination follows an established practice in Aqours recordings, where short English clauses are integrated into Japanese verses and refrains according to their rhythmic and phonetic properties. In “i-n-g, I TRY!!,” the English wording also carries a semantic function because the grammatical image of continuity corresponds directly to the lyrics' treatment of effort.
Masuda's arrangement places the refrain within an ensemble-oriented pop structure. The music alternates comparatively restrained passages with denser collective sections, allowing the title phrase to operate as both a lyrical conclusion and a recurring rhythmic unit. Rather than assigning the work to a permanent lead singer, the recording uses changes in vocal grouping to connect individual statements with the response of the full ensemble.
Vocal organization
The release credits the vocal performance collectively to Aqours. Chika Takami contributes within the same ensemble framework that governs the recording as a whole, including the movement between limited vocal groupings and collective refrains. Riko Sakurauchi is incorporated through an equivalent allocation, with her part functioning as one component of the nine-member arrangement rather than as a separately billed performance.
You Watanabe participated as a member of the Uranohoshi school idol club and contributed to the song's ensemble vocal structure. Her involvement follows the distribution used for the other members: shorter differentiated passages establish changes in vocal color, while the principal refrain reunites those parts under the Aqours credit. The recording consequently treats membership in the performing group, rather than individual billing, as its basic unit of attribution.
This organization is relevant to the song's subject matter. Statements expressed by individual voices are repeatedly absorbed into group passages, linking personal continuation with coordinated activity. The arrangement does not remove the distinction between the participants; instead, it places those distinctions inside a shared metrical and harmonic framework.
Release history
“i-n-g, I TRY!!” was released on 26 July 2019 as part of the Memorial Box edition of the Japanese home-video publication of The School Idol Movie: Over the Rainbow. The bonus-disc format meant that the song did not initially constitute a conventional standalone single. Its first commercial context was therefore attached to a physical edition of the film rather than to an independently marketed audio release.
The song was subsequently included in Aqours CHRONICLE (2018–2020), issued in 2020 as part of the group's fifth-anniversary discography project. That appearance moved the recording from an edition-specific bonus disc into a chronological compilation. Within the compilation, it is situated among works documenting Aqours' recording activity during the latter part of the 2010s.
The two publication contexts assign the song different archival functions. The 2019 disc associates it directly with the home-video edition of the film, while the later compilation classifies it as part of the group's general musical catalogue. Neither presentation alters the underlying recording or its collective performance credit.
Title and thematic structure
The unusual segmentation of “i-n-g” gives the title a visual form not normally found in written English. In ordinary English morphology, “-ing” remains attached to a lexical stem and marks a participial or gerundial construction. The title removes that stem and presents the suffix independently, making ongoingness itself the grammatical subject of the phrase.
“I TRY” then provides an explicit agent and action. The use of the simple present avoids identifying one isolated attempt, while the capital letters give the clause graphic weight comparable to the separated suffix. Read together, the two units describe persistence as an active state rather than as a completed achievement.
The song develops this distinction through repeated movement from uncertainty toward renewed action. Its conclusion does not resolve the future into a fixed outcome; instead, it returns to the continuing form announced by the title. This cyclical construction aligns the lyrical argument with the refrain-based organization of the music, since each recurrence constitutes another performance of the same attempt.