Welcome to my review of my favorite idol anime Love Live! Quick warning, since I’m doing season 1 and 2 there will be some spoilers but if you haven’t seen the show and your reading the review then what are you doing?
Let’s get right to it shall we?
The Story follows Honoka Kousaka a young girl who attends Otonokizaka High School which is on the verge of closing down due to low enrollment of students. After a visit to UTX High School home of school idols A-Rise, Honoka hatches a plan of her own to become a school idol to help her school attract new people to enroll.
This is where Honoka begins her journey in recruiting the many members of the school idol group that would soon be.
From the start Love Live may not exactly pull you in right off the bat, but that’s more of the charm of the show. As you progress with the show through season 1, you slowly get more and more interested in the story behind the girls in μ’s. You learn about each of the girls in the group one by one and slowly start to understand why each of them join the group. In they’re own various ways each girl finds a place in your heart.
Through out season 1 we watch as μ’s is formed from just the original three(Honoka, Umi and Kotori) to the full nine(adding in Rin, Hanayo, Nico, Maki, Eli and Nozomi). It’s quite the journey for each girl to join μ’s though, with Umi struggling with her stage fright, Hanayo trying to overcome her shyness, Rin not wanting to be laughed at for being a tomboy, Maki with her dislike of pop music, Nico trying to get over her first try as an idol, Eli trying to push past her past as a ballerina and wanting nothing more than to keep the school running and Nozomi also wanting to keep the school running but also wanting Eli to be true to herself.
At the beginning the very first song(Start:Dash, which was “secretly” written by Maki) which was performed by Honoka, Umi and Kotori, you can tell the girls have a huge passion to keep their school open for future generations. The second song(Korekara no Someday) brought in the passion of Rin, Hanayo, Maki and Nico and also brought more popularity to the group known as μ’s. It’s after this that they learn of Love Live, the idol competition to end all Idol Competitions. Thus with the recruitment of both Eli and Nozomi the girls start practicing to become better idols all around and put on a huge performance during their schools “Open Campus” to attract more people to go to their school. With the performance of Bokura no Live Kimi to no Life, μ’s starts moving up the popularity rankings! After learning that they’re well on their way to performing at the Love Live Idol festival the girls start working on making themselves better as idols and as we move forward they decide to put on a show for the school festival. Enter one of my favorite songs in No Brand Girls, but with a heavy work load comes an unfortunate incident. After much drama and a lot of emotions the girls almost fade apart but with forgiveness and one last try the girls come back to perform the first song of the show Start:Dash together.
With Love Live there are a lot of factors that play for/against the show.
One of the big factors that make the show what it is, is definitely the music. The upbeat pop style of the music is definitely the main reason that draws the attention of the viewer.
Though one of the factors that works against it is the fact that a heavy amount of drama happens towards the end of the show may throw off the viewers quite a bit because it happens so unexpectedly.
The story itself is definitely one of the stronger points of the show as well because of how well it’s written and how well it intertwines with the characters interactions with one another.
Speaking of character interactions, they too play a vital part in the production of the show, as the girls interact with one another you get vested into who they are as a person and what their personality is like. Each girl as their own personality to them as you learn about them one by one.
All of this combined makes for one hell of an idol show known as Love Live School Idol Project season 1!…………………
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Not only am I reviewing season 1! but this will be combined with season 2!
With Honoka’s stirring rendition of how she became Student Council President and failing at her very first speech in front of the whole school, I welcome you to Love Live School Idol Project Season 2!
Picking up from where we left off in season 1, we quickly find out that many a thing has changed. From the fact that Otonokizaka will stay open and the fact that Honoka, Umi and Kotori are the new Student Council, also there’s a Second Love Live looming on the horizon!
That’s right the girls in μ’s have a second chance to compete in Love Live! But the real question is whether they should do so or not. There is also the looming factor of the third years(Eli, Nico and Nozomi) graduating to add to the many factors.
Soon the discussion is had and μ’s becomes more determined than ever to win Love Live!
Of course we start out with Maki, Umi and Kotori in a slump because it had been so long since they had worked on anything related to music. So they split into three groups(which are BiBi, Printemps and Lilly White for fans of the side groups) to work on Lyrics, Music and Costumes respectively. With all the work put in together, we’re lead to the very first song Yume no Tobira. The Gauntlet is then thrown by A-Rise after saying that “they wouldn’t lose” in the upcoming Preliminary stages.
Shortly there after Honoka, Umi and Kotori take the 2nd years school trip to the beach while everyone else prepares for a fashion show performance. During the preparation we find out that Rin is still worried about her wearing a dress, but with a convincing talk from Eli, Nozomi, Hanayo and Nico she agrees to dawn the wedding dress costume while the others dawn Tuxedos leading us into the Love Wing Bell performance.
With the return of the 2nd Years from their school trip, the girls get together to try and decide on how their going to have more “Impact” when they face A-Rise. They go through various different ways of having more “Impact” by dressing up in clothes from the different clubs around school to changing personalities by wearing each others training clothes to dressing up as a certain “Black and White face paint rock group”. They eventually dawn their Halloween costumes for heir “Dancing Stars on Me” performance during the Halloween parade.
After having a bit of fun with the “Weight Issues” episode, the group decides that they should perform a new song at the Love Live Preliminary. With a suggestion of a love song from Nozomi the group begins to struggle having little experience in the matter. After learning about Nozomi’s back story and what her wish really was, Maki and Eli gather the other members to help the with writing a song and get lyrical inspiration from the snow that they see.
This leads us into their performance of Snow Halation and win over A-Rise in the Preliminaries. After realizing that their fans were the reason behind their driving force, they come up with a catchphrase in “A Story Achieved Together”
Both Yukiho(Honoka’s sister) and Alisa(Eli’s sister) join the school and decide to form their own group. Though after a day of visiting everyone’s favorite places, the members of μ’s end up at the beach and decide that after their last performance μ’s would disband in a tearful moment.
The group has one last practice at school the night before Love Live to stay together until their last performance which leads us to their performance of Kira Kira Sensation which the fans loved so much that they did an Encore performance which comes full circle because it’s Bokura wa Ima no Naka de(which is the Opening theme of season 1). This leads them to Victory!
Soon after the graduation ceremony for the third years happens and with a tearful rendition of Aishiteru Banzai, the show comes to a close with the performance of the song Happy Maker…or it should have because it’s right as the girls are saying their goodbyes to Eli, Nozomi and Nico when Hanayo gets an unexpected text message with “Big News” prompting everyone to run back to the club room…
Now this is where I would start the review of the movie, but I’d rather everyone go out and watch the movie so I don’t spoil anything. Trust me when I say that if you loved the show then the movie is definitely worth seeing, I know I saw it twice already.
Here our my thoughts on season 2
It’s quite the emotional roller coaster from Season 1, but it worked so well with the story in Season 2 that it pushed it into a whole different standing. Everything connected point for point, from the story to the music and even to the character interactions. Though it’s tough to choose, Season 2 is better than Season 1 on all accounts but that’s not to take away from Season 1 because with out the progression in Season 1 we wouldn’t have gotten Season 2.
It’s in my humble opinion that if there’s one idol show to watch before all the others, it’s definitely Love Live School Idol Project!
So that’s it for my review of both Love Live Season 1 and 2!
I hope you guys liked it, I went back and rewatched both Season 1 and 2 for this and after seeing the movie Twice in one day it inspired me to come back and finish this review out. There’s nothing quite like seeing a movie with your fellow Livers and sharing in the emotions that it brought out.
So until my next anime review, This Is Pervy Fatman
I’ll See You On The Other Side!
HonoYoRu thoughts 