Story (7):
So, the concept of Love Live! is pretty nice. Honoka who loves her school wants to stop it from closing down by starting a School Idol group. It is straightforward and it should provide much material for the story to progress. It should have, but it didn't. This show was practically just filler episode after filler episode with not much progression of the actual story and many repetitive scenes. As well as that, there were many plot holes. Some of the serious scenes were over-dramatized and all in all the first season just didn't get anywhere.
Art (9):
One of the great things about Love Live! is the beautiful art from Sunrise. The art was consistent and had a lovely art style. There was minimal use of CGI, the only scenes that used it were the live performances, and for CGI it was very well done. Most of the character designs were memorable and unique. Overall the art is probably my favorite thing about the anime.
Characters (6):
The characters were....well cute girls all with very different personalities, and by 'different personalities' I mean a bunch of different stereotypes. For a start Honoka, our heroine, who in a few words is: dumb, energetic, forgetful and cheerful. Just what you would expect from a 'cute girls doing cute things anime'. The rest of the characters were pretty much the same, a simple, stereotyped personality with no real back story and no development.
Sound (8):
Considering this is an idol anime, you would expect great, idol music. And that is exactly what we got from Love Live! The music was well suited to the show and the OP and ED had nice animation sequences. Unfortunately I found that the voice acting was not the best, in my opinion Minami and Honoka's voices were just plain annoying and the rest of the voice acting wasn't much better.
Overall (7):
Overall, Love Live! really did not live up to my expectations, but if you do want an anime that you can just sit back and watch without really having to think about it, this is that type of anime.
