Love Live! School Idol Project

I have to admit that when I first started watching this show, I wasn't expecting a whole lot. I decided to give it a try because I had recently gotten hooked on the mobile app, but I figured that it would be little more than a feelgood story about some friends getting together and singing some catchy songs. Nothing groundbreaking, and definitely nothing too serious. Which is probably why I was so impressed by what it ended up being. Story: 10/10 What I appreciated the most about Love Live was that it didn't try to pretend that the girls would be able to get up right awayand become the top school idols in the nation. Rather than using the typical "Character gets by on sheer luck and natural talent" plotline, it's made entirely obvious that μ's is starting from the very bottom- The group isn't even fully formed until more than halfway through the series. The initial founding trio is shown multiple times at the beginning of the show running up and down stairs and stretching, just so that they can be in shape enough to perform. The road they take to reach their goals is a long one filled with physical, mental, and emotional hardships, and even if it's obvious to most viewers that everything will ultimately turn out well for them, it's still tear-jerking to watch them in their darker moments- and even more satisfying to watch as they gain their first fans, put on their first live performance, and slowly but steadily watching them grow not just as performers, but as a team. Art: 10/10 The art style in this anime fits the overall tone perfectly- There are a LOT of bright colors, and the girls' eyes are almost constantly sparkling. The animation is generally pretty beautiful to look at. The normal, everyday scenes are above average, but nothing overly special. But whenever there is a performance by μ's (this includes the OP theme), the show upgrades its animation to a more 3D-type style in order to more fluidly portray the dancing and expressions. Those bits are absolutely stunning, even if they take a bit of getting used to. Sound: 9/10 Of course, as an anime centered around a (school) idol group, there are bound to be some catchy songs, and Love Live doesn't disappoint on that front. Of course there's the bright OP song "Bokura wa Ima no Naka de" and the upbeat ED "Kitto Seishun ga Kikoeru," but each episode usually has at least one insert song that μ's performs as part of the story. They're all about the same in terms of quality, which is to say that they're all really good. I'm not a big enough fan of the style to listen to them on a regular basis outside of watching the show, but none of them are annoying to listen to, and they're all fitting for the mood of the show- that is to say, incredibly optimistic and, for the most part, upbeat. Character: 8/10 For the most part, I absolutely loved the characters in Love Live. I have a soft spot for first-year member Hanayo, the soft-spoken girl who is extremely shy until she starts talking about her incredible, lifelong passion for idols (her best friend, the ever-energetic first-year Rin- another favorite of mine- comments that she's an entirely different person when someone brings up idols). The other first-year, Maki, was okay, but she never stood out to me as much more than a standard tsundere. The second year trio- arguably the main characters, seeing as they were the initial founders of μ's- were generally pretty likable as well. Honoka was cheerful through the majority of the series (barring one of the more dramatic episodes toward the end), Umi started off a bit frigid but quickly warmed up into one of the more well-rounded characters, and Kotori was usually pretty happy, but didn't play a very critical role until the end. As for the third years, well... they were probably some of my least favorite characters. Nico was a bit annoying (basically a second tsundere, albeit a much LOUDER tsundere than Maki), Nozomi was just sort of bland, although she did grow on me, and Eri, the student council president who is initially opposed to the very existence of μ's, was undoubtedly my least favorite character in the series. Even after she joined the group and mellowed out a bit (This isn't a spoiler, as the OP shows all nine girls together from the very first episode), I just couldn't find it in me to like her. Basically, I don't think any of the characters are particularly strong on their own. But I still gave them an 8/10, because I loved the way that they all complemented each other, and they all showed at least a little bit of growth at the end of the series. Enjoyment: 10/10 Based on the scores I gave this anime, I think it should be fairly obvious that I enjoyed it. The sad scenes are only sad for long enough to make the mood upswing that much more satisfying, and the happy scenes are strong because after a while, it's impossible NOT to feel something for the hardworking characters. It's an emotional roller coaster, and it's so much more satisfying than it seems like it's going to be. Overall: 10/10 Like I said at the beginning, I got a whole lot more out of this anime than I ever expected. I would recommend giving it a watch, even if it doesn't look all that special or interesting at first glance- before I watched Love Live, I had absolutely no interest in idol-themed anime. The music bored me, and I expected it to be yet another "cute girls doing cute things" slice-of-life show. But it's SO much more than that, and I've found a new favorite anime to add to my list.

Love Live! is a Comedy, Idol anime co-created by music label Lantis and animation studio Sunrise in 2010. The story is about Honoka Kōsaka, girl who loves her school and after she hears that it plans to close down because of lack of first year applications, she becomes determined to save her school. After see how popular school idols are, decides to create a idol group called μ's (Muse) with her friends to attract new students and save the school. So that the plot of Love Live, as i normal don't write spoilers, all i can say that the writing and flow of the storyis very well done as every episode is interesting and funny. Now on the characters, there is nine girls that make up the idol group μ, so i only going to be brief about them. Honoka Kōsaka (Voiced by Emi Nitta), is the main character and leader of μ's, her family owns a sweet shop. She is very cheerful and never gives up on anything, Eli Ayase (Voiced by Yoshino Nanjō), is the student council president who is also trying to save the school. She doesn't like school idols, but joins μ's when she sees how hard they are trying to save the school. Kotori Minami (Voiced by Aya Uchida), is a childhood friend of Honoka and the daughter of the school's Chairwoman. She normally have her head in the clouds but she is kind hearted. She is μ's wardrobe designer and one of it's choreographers. Umi Sonoda (Voiced by Suzuko Mimori), is a childhood friend of Honoka and Kotori, and a member of the school' Kyudo (Japanese martial art of archery) club. She acts as the voice of reason to group and she leads the practice sessions. Rin Hoshizora (Voiced by Riho Iida), is a very athletic girl and has a very cheerful personality. she is a bit it of a tomboy and has a habit of acting as cat. Maki Nishikino (Voiced by Pile), is a talented singer and Pianist. she is the main composer and vocal coach of μ's. Nozomi Tojo (Voiced by Aina Kusuda), is the student council vice president and the μ's spiritual leader with her almost all knowing vibe she has. She also has a very unique way of cheering up the other group members. Hanayo Koizumi (Voiced by Yurika Kubo), she is a shy girl who allows dreamed about becoming an idol since she was young. She joins μ's wit her childhood friend Rin to follow that dream. Nico Yazawa (Voiced by Sora Tokui), is a girl who looks up to idols and wishes to become one herself. She is μ's wardrobe supervisor with Kotori. That is all nine characters out of the way, next is presentation. Love Live! is a very colorful and brimming with life. The art style is well designed with attention to detail with it's character design. The animation is beautiful created especially the song scenes which as been designed in a different animation style to make it look more better. the character animations and facial expressions are well made and look very believable. The voice acting is great and singing is well done as seems that they had a lot of work put into them and it shows wonderfully. The music is beautifully created and some are very catchy. The topics used in the anime are well as they fit the story and don't seem out of place. Lastly, my opinion. Love Live! is one of those animes that can bring a smile to my face. i love how Sunrise has created a wonderful story what captures your attention and makes you fall in love with the characters with me loving Nozomi because how funny she is and of course her hair. The songs really makes this anime, one of my favorites to watch and i really enjoy. The animation itself shows me how much hard work has been put into this and i like to say it probably one the best looking animes i ever seen. Now for the Verdict. Love Live! is a wonderful created animes that shows you that you don't need over the top story to make a great story. The art design is beautiful created and the songs will make you fall in love with it as they have been created with a lot of care. Love Live! is one anime i can recommend anyone to watch as it can be enjoyed by all and i say one of the best animes out there.

I know what you're thinking...And stop it. Recently I've been on a sort of 'binge watch' of anime; but not just any anime, I'm talking about the type with no plot, high school girls doing crazy things, minor fan service, why? Because after a tough day of college the LAST thing I want to do is put on an episode of Serial Experiments Lain, right? But what if I told you that there exists a moe idol show with so much more to offer than meets the eye? A show with so much heart, passion and hard work put into it, that it has actually bustled itsway into my shortlist of favorite anime of all time? Well, such an anime does exist, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, my review, of 'Love Live: School Idol Project' as well as it's second season. Story - 8/10: A lot of people like to compare this anime to a little known anime known as K-On! , but in reality, Love Live is so much more. Our main character, Honoka Kousaka, finds out that her beloved high school will be shut down next semester due to poor application rates, and discovers the reason for this is because of a brand new high school called 'ITX' which is home to Japan's biggest school idol group known as 'A-RISE'. Naturally, Honoka sets herself with the goal of creating her own idol group, not to rival the behemoth that is A-RISE, but to simply keep her school relevant for another year. From then on, we journey with Honoka through the trials and tribulations, hard work, and sad moments everyone must go through to finally see their goals come to light. Personally, my only 'problem' with the pacing of K-On! Was just how seamlessly quick and easy a group of moe blob ditzy girls became a famous girl band, no emotion, nothing. On the other hand, even the latter third of Love Live's 3rd episode comes filled with sadness, helping you understand what it is you're getting into, and for that, I am thankful. Art - 10/10: I just... Okay, it's pretty much standard fare that every idol has to look vastly different to the others in order to check off the anime girl stereotype check list and appeal to as many fetishes as possible - I'm not into that. What I AM into is great ANIMATION, and Love Live does not let me down on that part! You can expect some sort of high production value from a studio like Sunrise but this was just ridiculous. Each and every scene looks beautifully colorful, vibrant, and all round pleasant to look at, but where the animation goes above and beyond is during the performance scenes; masterfully executed scenes of CGI inter-spliced in between animated frames make the choreography look unbelievable, arguably the best and most appropriate use of CG in any anime ever. Sound - 10/10: As I stated in my previous review, I'm fluent in both English and Japanese; and therefore I can give a more accurate viewpoint on the dub than others who don't blah blah blah. We'll start off with the voice acting. As it stands, there is no English dub, and for a show like this, I don't think there will ever be one, every character is voiced by their real life counterpart which I thought was a nice touch, and so I don't think anyone can criticize the choice of voice acting. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, the music, ah yes, the music! My god. Basically, all you NEED to know is that the singles they used for the anime was perfection, and each song kicks major ass, a song is rarely ever repeated in the same season which means you get fresh off the batch music nearly all the time. Character - 10/10: NICO NICO NII~ The series has a mere 26 episodes to fully develop and extract emotion from 9 whole main characters, which averages out at less than 3 episodes per character, but you know what? Even though characters like Hanayo and Rin don't even get that many episodes, their stories are all beautifully executed, some even managing to force a tear from me. The one character that I felt wasn't developed as well as I would have liked was that of my favorite girl in anime, Nico Yazawa. You see, you see small flashbacks of how tough her life has been, such as a brief 5 second time skip of all of her club members leaving her to be alone for the entirety of her high school life, and I'm sure some of us here know how tough THAT is. I wish some things were better explained, but what we did get was beautiful, and managing to do what they did with such a large cast was a masterstroke. Overall - 9/10: This show caught me off guard, I wasn't expecting to got what I got at all, a show with so much more than it's genre will let off, a show that leaves pretty much every other music-based anime in the dust. What Love Live accomplishes is a heart-warming story of friendship, hard work, failure, perseverance and most importantly, passion. The characters aren't just cardboard cut-outs, however some of the things they do and say can be somewhat cheesy. This show is not perfection, however. As I mentioned, the story is very basic, and while it does expand upon it's initial goal, I still feel like there is more to come, and more that could have been done, in a story with 9 girls who successfully played with my emotions. Watch it. Love it. Never regret it.

When asked, a lot of people don't like idol anime or anything similar, or in other words, anime based on music and stuff. I'm one of these people. I don't usually watch idol anime, but I wanted to try this out because of the outstanding art that this anime offers. At first I was really hesitant, even to the point where I removed it off my PTW list because I would feel embarrassed having watched something like this. Sure this anime might be targeted towards children rather than teens/adults, but it doesn't mean that teens/adults wouldn't enjoy this. This anime taught to me that hard workactually does pay off, that if you try your hardest, you will eventually arrive to your destination point. There are a lot of things I liked about this anime, but the thing I liked most was probably the art. Yes, I'm a very picky person when it comes to art, and this anime reached my expectations when it came to the art. All the characters were nicely designed and all of the 9 girls are cute. In other words, the art was what some people call it, flawless. The only thing I disliked about this anime was the fact that they were taking too long to prepare for the live shows and stuff like that. The producers should have shown the girls in action more (I don't literally mean in action, I meant that they should probably have shown more of their songs). In terms of characters, all of them are easily likable, none of them are really that bland. There are 3 main characters in this anime, Honoka, who is seriously hyper and energetic, Umi who is very shy and was reluctant to become a school idol at first, and Kotori who is a very calm, and a little shy. We have these 3 main characters make an school idol group in order to save the school from closing (because they aren't reaching the applicant quota). They name this school idol group 'Muse' (sorry I don't want to look all over the internet just for a greek character). Eventually they reach 9 members by around episode 6-9, forgot. That's basically it for the story since I don't want to spoil a lot. The sound is the second thing I enjoyed a lot in this anime. The opening was just straight up amazing, I almost watched it every episode. I don't usually watch endings because they're usually dull and boring, but I really loved the ending song this time, I ended up watching it every episode. The insert songs were amazing too, I ended up downloading that 'Dash' song too (it was that good :>). I could probably say that I felt embarrassed inside while watching the first few episodes due to this being my first idol anime, but eventually I got used to the feeling and I opened myself up to this anime. All in all I could say that I enjoyed this anime a lot for my first idol anime, and I would suggest this to anyone who is looking for an idol anime. Thanks for reading :> - Peten00b

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