Love Live! School Idol Project

Love Live! School Idol Project µ's, Music Start! Genre: Comedy Musical Running Time: 24 minutes Country: Japan Release Date: January 6, 2013 – June 29, 2014 Network(s): Tokyo MX Seasons: 2 Episodes: 26+1 Film Next show: Love Live! Sunshine! Love Live! Nijigasaki School Idol Club Love Live! Superstar

Love Live! School Idol Project is a Japanese anime, based on a multimedia idol project. The first season aired on January 6 to March 31, 2013. Its second season aired on April 6, 2014 to June 29, 2014

Plot

Kousaka Honoka, an action-taking high school student, set out to save her school, Otonokizaka High School from abolished via teaming a school idol group, µ's. (Greek symbol for Mu)

Why It Rocks

1. Adorable character designs despite looking a bit generic and are beautiful and nice to look at.
2. Catchy songs, like Snow Halation, nominated as the best anime songs of all time.
3. Nine likeable school idols with unique traits.
4. The sub and dub version are good and decent.
5. Nico's siblings and her mother are very cute, while Ayase and Honoka's younger sisters are also adorable and interesting characters.
6. It spawned internet memes like, "Nico Nico Ni!", Umi Sonoda's "Love Arrow Shoot!" and the poker face scene in the second season, etc.
7. It has three spin-offs, called Love Live! Sunshine!!, Love Live! Nijigasaki School Idol Club and Love Live! Superstar!!.
8. Top-notch animation, especially for the sing and dance scenes.
9. Tearful moments such as the first live show with only one audience (who later become their teammate), the moment that Hanayo decided to join their squad, and the graduation scene.
10. The events of Episode 12 is shocking and interesting, where the girls do not get to participate in Love Live, Kotori is going to study abroad, Honoka is depressed and blaming herself for not noticing her feelings due to her focus on Love Live and then decides to quit being a school idol and gets slapped by Umi.
11. Rin, Nico and Nozomi's background stories are tearful to watch.
12. Great character interactions and each character is well developed and fleshed out.
13. Season 2 was a big step up from Season 1. Honoka's passion makes her truly seem like the leader and center of the group, whereas the first season didn't have much reason beyond "well, somebody had to be the leader, right?" Even the characters who were given little to no screen-time in the first season (Rin, Eli, Nozomi and Hanayo) are fleshed and given their own episode to shine.
14. There's also a movie for this show, talking about their story afterwards, also introducing a mysterious Japanese singer resembles Honoka.
15. By all means, it had become one of the most successful Japanese anime franchises, as the live activates also goes well.
16. Its success inspired BanG Dream!, Renue Starlight, and other successful anime franchises.

Bad Qualities

1. Repetitive facial design, though not only the series is troubled with this problem.
   • In fact, some character designs even plots are recycled in Love Live! Sunshine and Superstar.
2. Eli Ayase might not be a likeable character at first, while her background information turned out to be insufficient then, but she does go through character growth after joining µ's.
3. While being a great character, Honoka can be incapable and insensitive sometimes, where she didn't have much being the leader of µ's, such as making decisions without thinking, being a poor dancer and failing to notice her best friend Kotori's feelings.
4. There are some inappropriate moments for a show like this, such as Nozomi fondling the girls breast.
5. Sometimes the characters could be mean-spirited toward Nico, for denying her ideas instantly (though being stupid and nonsense) and ignoring her.
6. The show following the ordinary "school abolishment" plot kind of rips off K-On! in a sense, and makes this mediocre in comparison depending on who you ask.
7. A-RISE, the main opponent team in the story, only had two songs and just one stage outfit by contrary and have no character growth for them.
   • Even their follow up group, Saint Snow, had their own live show, full album, Arcade Game appearance and character devolvement, while A-RISE did not had the opportunity to have any of them.
8. In one of the episodes, there is a scene in which Nico Yazawa lets her hair down, which can concern sensitive viewers. Season 2 even has a controversial scene plagiarizing Glee.

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