Back to Yunyuu's Profile Yunyuu's Profile

I’m going to start off by saying that I am a huge love live fan, I absolutely loved school idol project and to a lesser extent also enjoyed sunshine quite a bit. Needless to say I was very hyped when I saw that Love Live was getting another iteration to the point where I went and downloaded the game to learn more about the upcoming characters.

But oh boy was I disappointed. I have been reading other people’s review and can’t understand why exactly they liked so much about it.

Love Live is an anime about music and character progression through trials and frustration, developing ... and evolving personalities and songs as they become more acquainted with each other and live their lives. School idol project placed its songs exactly where they needed to be. START:DASH!! was placed in S1EP3 to show the beginning of their story, the start of their dreams and journey. Snow Halation showed their emotional progression and attachment to each other.

But why did I go through the effort of explaining School Idol Project story telling? Well, because Nijigasaki does a 180 turn and goes the other direction. It introduces each character individually, making each the focus of the story. Sure, some of their stories can be sweet and show character development like Shizuku and her inferiority complex, but this in exchange takes a big toll on the world development and group mechanics. Now we have not only less impactful characters because they hardly get any screen time aside from their one episode, but the songs are less emotionally impactful.

When Nijigasaki actually tried to shift their focus from single characters to multiple, it started off decently, meaning for the first 10 minutes of episode 10. After that I believe they ruined what people considered a fairly interesting character, being Ayumu. I’ll say it straight, I very much dislike yuri anime, and introducing it to the show made what I thought was an already uninteresting progression even worse. Ayumu simply came off as a petty and selfish person. Other characters aside from her got little to no screen time, so what could have been two and a half episodes setting up a future plot (which I thought would have been to bring together the 9 girls to sing together and shoot for love live), was simply a selfish yuri romance insert.

Character drama and story telling is bad enough, but at the end of the day, Love Live is a show focused on music, so how does that fare? Well, in my opinion, very badly. I personally loved the 9 member voice, exchanging centers and show dynamics of School Idol Project and Sunshine, and that to me is what made it unique. We had 9 girls singing and dancing a captivating choreography, mixing and matching which voice would go better at certain parts of the song. But we don’t get any of that in Nijigasaki. We get some interesting songs with, well, low impact aside from the very first time you watched it. To put what I’m trying to get at into perspective, the song I most enjoyed and went back to listen in this entire series was the opening.

Edit: Also just a tack on thought, who makes their music? From what I've seen there was no Maki or Riko in the show, and most characters seem to have no knowledge of music composition. This might be nit-picking as obviously in the original cast or sunshine they didn't have a band to make guitar sounds and such, but having one character that understands it makes it more believable, or at least suggestive of skill, the songs being a master-piece. This is an anime afterall, we're conecting to the charcaters and not the people behind their voices.

Now, what I also want to know is why the series is called Love Live? I only heard one mention of it during the entire series and that when Setsuna was fighting with Kasumi about their training sessions before they had more members. At that point, it made sense, and gave the viewers a sort of familiar feeling about the struggles of becoming a popular group and arriving at the Love Live stage. But then episode 10 came and Yuu said “let’s do a school idol festival”, whatever that is. Why? The girls did nothing to deserve them acting so high and might to stand with other presumably popular groups like Touou academy.

In conclusion, I think that Nijigasaki is a wasted potential in storytelling, lacks impactful songs and misses the mark of what I considered interesting in the Love Live franchise. My hope for the future of the series, although unrealistic, is that they drop Nijigasaki altogether and go back and improve upon the original series with a new cast.

Overall scores:
Story – 1/10
Art – 7/10
Sound - 7/10
Character – 1/10
Enjoyment – 3/10
Overall - 3/10