Love Live! The School Idol Movie

Hot on the heels of the third year students' graduation, μ's is invited to New York in hopes of spreading the joy of school idols to other parts of the world. Due to the events of the recent Love Live!, μ's has reached eminent stardom which results in crowds swarming them whenever they appear in public. With the increased attention, however, comes a difficult choice.

Having yet to publicly announce the decision they came to regarding their future, the young members of μ's are pushed to continue performing by rival group A-RISE, Otonokizaka High School, and even Love Live! itself. As leader, Honoka Kousaka is left wondering if the path they have chosen is truly for the best, as μ's must re-evaluate their choices and come to a final decision on what they want for the future.

Love Live! The School Idol Movie depicts the final chapter in μ's story as the girls explore just what being an idol means to them as well as the bond that connects the nine of them together.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Nishikino, Maki Main

Pile Japanese

Yazawa, Niko Main

Tokui, Sora Japanese

Toujou, Nozomi Main

Kusuda, Aina Japanese

Minami, Kotori Main

Uchida, Aya Japanese

Sonoda, Umi Main

Mimori, Suzuko Japanese

Kousaka, Honoka Main

Nitta, Emi Japanese

Hoshizora, Rin Main

Iida, Riho Japanese

Ayase, Eri Main

Nanjou, Yoshino Japanese

Koizumi, Hanayo Main

Kubo, Yurika Japanese

Kira, Tsubasa Supporting

Sakuragawa, Megu Japanese

Makimoto, Yuki Producer

Hirayama, Tadashi Producer

Kyougoku, Takahiko Director

Miyake, Kazuo Episode Director

Reviews

Jan 19, 2023

Naneo

Recommended

These girls found out that they are not only popular in Japan, but outside Japan as well. They got invited to perform in New York. We will follow the journey of them traveling overseas. Of course there would be funny moment, intense moment, and heartwarming moment. It is filled to the brim with emotional roller coaster. But hey all these girls have been through a lot, so its just a little rock to tackle right? Watch as how they overcome all this problem.

The story continue from the last hangover scene in Season 2. Seeing them run excitedly makes me notice something. Animation is improving a ... little bit from the anime. In here they all look more beautiful and fluid while moving. With all the colorful background its a match for this story about idol. Because idol always deliver smile and happiness. They dance using CGI. I can safely say that it is a standard fare for the time being. Well I mean if you compare it with the current Love Live CGI, its far better. But this movie is a big jumping step to the current one.

One big plot of this movie is that μ's have a dilemma about their idol group. Did they want to disband or keep it going without the 3rd years. Everything that had a beginning always had an end too. Graduation is both simultaneously the best and worst feeling. One side you happy to finish your school year, one side you sad cus its gonna be hard to meet your old friends. Because of that they want to make this last moment very memorable. And miraculously they got an offer to go overseas. In New York they spend the time with doing what they love the most, being an idol. Singing and dancing in front of non-Japanese crowd is a new experience. But they still nail every single move, thanks to practice they do almost everyday.

At this point there are barely any characters development left. Everyone is now a full fledged people. To think that you watch them grow from the very beginning with only a handful of crowd. And now they're famous celebrities. That is also the thing what made this final story feels sad. We know their life, their favorite thing, their journey. So when it all ends not only the friend they had in anime, but also we the viewer will miss them.

Every song that appear here are a great song. I have them all in my playlist. So everytime i hear it, my mind instantly remember the scenes. Because the song makes that scene even more memorable. Not only memorable but its also meaningful, especially the ED.

Overall I really enjoy the Love Live series as a whole. We got manga, anime, games, song, concert, all of this thanks to their predecessor μ's. They're not only success inside the anime, but in real life as well. All Love Live movies have its own charms that attract viewer. Just looking at this movie poster and synopsis makes me excited to finish the anime faster. Because Love Live movie is their final adventure. Thats all I wanna say about this anime. Thank you for reading my review.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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May 30, 2017

Rinri_

Mixed Feelings

A Review on Love Live: The Movie
Story –
The story at best is simply: “Ok”. There isn’t anything exciting or interesting about it. It’s just mediocre. This was already an apparent trend in the actual series, but having it condensed in a 1 hour 39 minute movie, really makes it obvious how bad it is. The pacing is god-awful and it just throws you from scene to scene will barely any suitable transition. At one moment, it’s like: “HAH, HAPPY FUN TIME WITH MY FRIENDS” then it’s a supposedly seriously moment with a (kinda) heavy atmosphere. Then it swaps right back to the “happy, energetic ... moments” with again, little to no transition. It makes you question, “what was the point of that whole scene?” It feels like a waste of time and adds nothing to the overall story. It was there for simply the moe appeal. That brings up another issue I found while watching this. Because of this over usage of dramatic moments with no substance, it made me care less and less about those moments. Why is this bad? Because when there are scenes with actual substance, such as the whole tension about continuing the Muse after the third-years graduate, I couldn’t care less about it because the viewers have already been diluted to the point where their perception is just “another pointless dramatic scene.” If I were to give this Movie anything, it creates a decent conflict for once. A battle against “ the audience they wish to continuing performing for and their relationship as a group” vs. the “philosophy of what school idol means to them”. It’s a shame the execution was just terrible, it had no proper built up, and once we got to the climax, it felt underwhelming. I also need to point out the transition to the music videos, or song section if you will. Based off what I’ve seen, it feels as if they made those segments first, and were like:
A:“Hey, check out this cool music video we made!”
B:“Great! Where is that going in the movie?”
A:“Oh”

Out of the six song segments, I’ve seen, four of them were just awkwardly placed there for the sake of “We need to put this somewhere”. What annoys me about this is that seeing how they could fit in two other songs in the movie well, they failed to do it with the other four songs. It was lazily incorporated into the movie, and honestly felt like I was watching a kids show where they suddenly break out into song just out of nowhere. My best example of this is the first song segment. Where it’s just “suddenly, it’s raining... ooooh that’s bad… we can’t have fun… (or something). Then BAM, SONG. Like what? It goes from one side of the spectrum to the other within a split second, and the initiation to that segment was just, Rin jumping…. It’s a mess.
Art –
The animation has been half-and-half for me. Overall the drawn animation looks pretty good, especially during the dance segments. There are parts where it looks a bit stiff, but otherwise it was well made. My only complaint would be the CGI. It just awkward to look at and contrasts heavily with the background. You may argue that “dancing is hard to animate”, which it is, so using CGI is justified. But they keep on switching from CGI to Drawn, and sometimes the dancing is done in 2D animation, AND IT LOOKS BETTER. And sometimes they have CGI AND Drawn in the SAME SHOT. IT’S LIKE THEY COULDN’T DECIDE ON WHAT TO DO. THERE NEEDS TO BE CONSISTENCY, otherwise, its awkward and a pain to look at.
Sound –
The music is good, this is the only good part of the movie. They’re idols after all, this is probably the reason why you’d watch this in the first place. If the music was bad, I don’t know why this movie would exist then, let alone the series.
Characters –
My main issue with Love Live would be its overall premise. They tried to make an anime based solely on an Idol group. That’s it. In an Idol group, you only need a few things to be successful. Good songs, Moe Characters, and quirky and cute personalities. In an anime, you can’t do that, you can try, but the quality will surely drop. The Love Live gang is just generic. They’re not interesting, they don’t have any character development, they’re just one-tricks. Quirky and baseless. It works for the first ten minutes at most, but in a movie? It gets fucking annoying. Allow me to run down the list:
Honoka – Clutsy leader
Rin – Makes meow noises at the end of her sentences, this isn’t cute. It’s annoying.
Hanayo – WHITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE RICEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Other than that, nothing is memorable.
Umi – Overreacts to literally everything
Maki – Generic Tsundere attitude
Niko – NICO NICO NIIII. That’s her contribution to the story
Kotori - Her contribution in this movie specifically was minimal, mainly just restates the lines.
Nozumi – Has tarot cards and just is there.
Eri – Serious, and gets the plot rolling.
Of course this a general description of the characters, but it's to get my point across.
The issue here is that you can’t make a show just on very shallow personalities. From start to finish, they’re the same. Boring.

Enjoyment –
Can’t say I enjoyed it. I had literal headaches watching this. It was a waste of my time, and I’d rather would just want to see the music videos.

Overall –
The Love Live Movie is bad…. Not terrible to the point where it’s unwatchable, nor a “masterpiece” as some may describe it. It suffers from being just extremely bland, average, and mediocre. Despite the movie having great music/dance segments, that only constitutes maybe 10% of the movie. Making the other 90% of the movie just unbearably annoying.

To clarify, I don't think Love Live as an Idol group is bad, I just think that the transition from an idol group to an anime and full-on movie was very very poor and deserves another look at the drawing board for we cannot continue with the perception that this series is "well-made" when it clearly lacks in the most important areas in what makes a good anime.

Final Rating:
5/10
Story – 3
Art – 8
Sound – 8
Characters – 3
Enjoyment – 2

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 14, 2017

brynolf

Not Recommended

Love Live took off great with the brilliant 1st season, started to stumble with the 2nd, and lands in a real belly flop in this movie. I'm really quite sad to see it end this way.

What got me hooked from the start of the 1st season was the CG song/dance performances, and this movie lacks most of that. There are some CG left in the movie that looks cool but mostly it is just "regular" animation. The graphics are good, don't get me wrong, but I really liked that kind of 3D choreography with vividly moving camera angles that the first season brought.

Sadly I didn't ... like the music either. The first two seasons had some ups and downs regarding song quality, but in this movie, none of them hooked me. At least the voice acting is alright as always.

The plot is overly simple, un-dramatic and feels mostly like an afterthought. Half of the movie is just cute but non-funny comedy, the other half is cute but rushed, non-dramatic drama. The characters that carried a big part of the two previous seasons don't get much time to bloom, and the time they do get is mostly wasted on shallow "comedy". There really are too many members of Muse; sure they all have different personalities and all, but at least some of them could have been trashed to make room for the rest.

At least it looks good. NYC really gets a fair treatment and the girls are as alive and well designed as ever.

The only thing I actually enjoyed was Hanoka's "new acquaintance", a really beautiful symbolism that could have made a bittersweet ending even more sweet (Not that the ending actually WAS bittersweet, but I guess that's the direction they were aiming).

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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