Natsu-iro Egao de 1, 2, Jump!

One of five singles from an anime-idol group Love Live! Given the popularity of said group, a high-quality video accompanied with a good song is what we should expect, right? Well, let's see if that's true.

Most music videos tend to lack in the story department, and this is no different. All the introduction let us know is that they are going to the beach and that the song is summer-related—information provided in the name of the song. Since this is, after all, a music video, lack of story can hardly be called a flaw.

The art is a mix of CGI animation (for the dancing parts) and regular low-frames-per-second animation (everything else). The CGI animation was motion-captured, and as such, you can't really mess it up. As for the regular-styled animation, it was no different than what you would see in any weekly mediocre anime series. The backgrounds, however, were above average in some occasions, and I would even go as far as saying they were the best art-related part of the whole video.

Now comes the most important part of the video: the music. I'm no fan of this kind of music, but if I were, I wouldn't be amazed by this song. Yes, it's a bit catchy and with plenty of Engrish, but in my opinion, this should have been much, much better. The song is as average as it gets. Now, if you tell me this is a song aimed at children, I would probably think better of it, but this kind of thing is not aimed at children at all, but at an older male demographic; therefore, this is a fatal flaw.

It's an idol music video, so the characters are more of what you expect. Tons of teens in little clothing dancing and being happy. They all are basically the same character personality-wise, aside from a few mannerism some of them posses.

Even after all the bashing, my conclusion is that you will probably like the video. You will enjoy it and love, you will sing and dance to it. Keep in my mind that this conclusion is not directed at every single anime watcher, but those who will not enjoy this are very few and far between.
Bottom line: Give it a try, and since there are subs for it, even better.

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