Which brings me to Love Live. If you’re familiar with Japan’s anime culture post 2013, you’ve likely seen this franchise EVERYWHERE. It’s a continuous fad really, cute girls in costumes singing pop songs. In America, you’ve probably seen Love Live lines up at anime conventions all over, with tons and tons of merchandise (even incredibly creepy head masks of the girls). The franchise collectively took up THREE spots in the Top 9 of Japan’s most recent Top 100 anime poll, and even the spinoff series was voted higher than Cowboy freakin Bebop! Hell, one person I know in my personal anime club doesn’t even like the anime but plays the phone game to upgrade her idols like crazy!
As for me, I’ve always been hesitant about Love Live. While sometimes I am proven wrong with stuff like Konosuba or Madoka Magica, most anime tend to be exactly what’s on their cover, and the cover for Love Live looked overly bright, and relying on excess cute girl appeal with the name “Project” attached to the show basically saying “yup, we’re making this specifically to merchandise”, much like K Project which I have similar feelings on. LL just didn’t interest me, but I did like K-On, so when I finally went to check it out alongside many other anime reviewers, hoping it wouldn’t be a sellout series, I was....not entirely let down, but still given exactly what I expected. A show trying to push current trends, having writing on the level of your average Disney sitcom, and all and all just being incredibly basic in every department. While I could enjoy different parts of Love Live, and the production behind it is generally great, the show itself never rose above follower entertainment.
Some spoilers below:
It begins a young teenage girl named Honoka, finding out that GASP! Her school is going to close down! One day, when going to see her sister’s school, she sees a famous idol group, and dramatically DROPS EVERYTHING to want to be an idol just like them. She then pushes her two friends, and then overtime slowly convinces new members to follow the idol path, because maybe being idols will be enough to save their school, to the chagrin of the student council President. That’s the general synopsis, and if you’re familiar with this type of “save the school” storyline, you’re probably aware of exactly what to expect and go in knowing. Inevitably, idols will be preached, naysayers will be disproven, and the school will be saved, with everyone in the OP becoming an idol by the end. However, being predictable isn’t immediately a crime, as even great shows can be predictable, and sometimes unpredictable shows can have haphazard plot structure or nonsensical plot twists in hindsight.
So what does Love Live add to it beyond exactly what you’d expect to add some depth to the image? Mixed results.
There are some moments to this stock premise that feel like things actually add to the story. While Honoka’s motivation is as simplistic as it gets, a few of the other girls have pretty solid backdrops to want or not want to be idols in how it affects their character arcs. The name “Muse” they chose for their group was a clever choice in hindsight, including after a little revelation of how it was there. Another plus is the fact that the idols have to practice being idols, and some of the ideas behind this were kind of fun to see, like the whole “smile while you push up” thing, or the idea of holding poses for long amounts of time. They make it clear there is definitely some struggle and people who will crack at them.
Despite this though, almost all of it feels montaged through. While the effort is definitely there, perhaps seeing more of it actually happening rather than saying it happened would’ve worked better for the overall narrative, instead of saving it all for the showcases where they seem to do it perfectly in their robotic CGI sometimes bodies. This even hurts some of the comedy. One episode revolves around the infamous NicoNico trying to prove how hard certain tasks of singing, dancing and personal appeal are to the other girls, but they just feel like they do it with no problem at all to Nico’s chagrin. And we don’t see any of it. It makes it feel like the show saying that Nico’s persistence led to her whole group getting disbanded harder to believe.
Aside from that, most of what you get from Love Live is extremely vanilla and safe. After all, that’s what people have approved in the past, why change that image if you’ll make profits from it? Of course everyone sees the errors of their ways if they don’t want to be idols. Of course there’s a beach episode. Of course the girls dress up in cafe maid costumes, there’s merch to be sold of that! Of course some of the girls have surprisingly low IQ for high schoolers, not knowing what 5 squared is and randomly forgetting basically grammatical structure in one scene only for it to never come up prior or after, we need tests!
And of course, having your boobs squeezed as punishment, which was probably a low point for me in regards to running gags that weren’t funny the first time.
In contrast, the drama actually feels like the opposite. It’s not something spread out throughout the show, but rather, mostly transplanted entirely in the final episodes for the sake of it.
First off, it is only in the episode 11, the day of their festival, that it is stated where certain clubs are positioned is due to lottery. Such a thing was never stated before and feels inserted for the sake of cheap drama and about two minutes of crying. And then, immediately after, Honoka, in practicing, decides to do so alone, on a cold, dark, rainy night, gets a fever and collapses midway through the show because of it. Again, it makes it hard to care for the show’s drama when it feels so forced. Then, following that, more drama pours salt into the wound, and rather than thinking about a sub member, like many actual bands, Honoka decides to QUIT IDOLS FOREVER?! Jezz lousie....Thankfully the slap that follows felt incredibly satisfying in consequence, but everything at the end felt needlessly heavy in contrast to so much to bring something apart only to bring it together at the very end. The ending is admittedly nice and sweet, if a bit predictable, but the ride there was...to put it simply milquetoast up the hill and bumpy down the uptake partly both at its best and worst when it focused on character interactions.
The characters, in general, contribute to the vanilla feeling of the show by feeling like they were designed specifically to be merchandised, but there were some bright spots to ultimately make a passable bunch.
Starting with the lead, Honoka, she’s basically the self-proclaimed Red Ranger of the group, the one who brings the passion, cuteness, pushiness, and forced drama at the end. She could have a few likable moments as the lead character, though I feel like she needed to do more in terms of actual contribution. There’s an episode dedicated to who should lead the group, and Honoka, who WAS the leader, wins out because of how much she cared. Hooray. Also, to put it simply she’s....not very bright. Somehow not knowing what 5 squared is in 10th grade, and getting a 53 on her final exam WITH excessive studying. You could argue that justifies some of her decisions, but it did not make her incredible tendency to push everyone along for things that much less irritating, nor the fact that she’s rewarded in the end for being selfish.
She’s cute and marketable though, so I guess Sunrise succeeded somewhere.
Umi, her closest friend, is probably one of the best characters for being generally level headed and being the Only Sane Girl in a lot of cases, and her moment near the end in calling out Honoka was a highlight, but aside from a miniskirt line that reminded me of Fullmetal Alchemist, not much about her really stood out with me.
Kotori is mostly passable. She has two separate dramas, both of which are pulled out of nowhere and resolved quite cleanly. Not much of an issue the first time, very much so the second. Seeing her pursue her own passion and not be led back by Honoka’s selfish one would’ve been a more interesting setup for a possible season 2, but her character is generally fine.
Rin and Hanayo are basically pretty decoration (also merchandise). They get one episode of their own, which wasn’t bad, but then disappear completely. Rin also has the shy girl thing Kotori already covered. Moving on.....
To cover both Maki and Eli at the same time, both of them were against the whole idea of idol performances at first, and had me worrying that they would be seen as Strawmen. For those who don’t know, a Strawman is someone so steadfast in being wrong that they can easily be defeated by our protagonists. But in actuality, they actually had some of the best character growth of the bunch. Maki especially, the ending of Episode 10 was another highlight for the series thanks to her revelation. Eli annoyed me a lot at first in how much she seemed to be against them, and while her reason for developing felt a bit too convenient yet separate from idol-ing, her being a more big sister coach near the end was a bright spot and she was tied up well.
Nico, despite being infamous for her annoying meme catchphrase, was probably one of the better characters overall. She had a strong personality, and her point on memorable personas was pretty solid, even if it (and hiding in public) never amounted to anything of consequence. Props to Erica Mendez in the dub for giving her a lot of expression.
Ending off with my least favorite, Nozomi. She was by far the hardest to like. Not for being a stealth mentor, that’s something I can buy, but for basically being a gag machine. One gag. Specifically. That being, squeezing boobs of the girls as punishment. It became her only character thing for a while and the One Squeeze gag was not funny the first time yet was consistently repeated to my annoyance. Gotta have that fanservice right?
Everyone else was basically there to preach idolism, whenever it called for it. It was a solid effort to try and develop so many main characters, but I don’t think it paid off, as with some exceptions most show as pretty faces on toys more than anything else.
However, speaking of pretty, gosh darn it this show can look great in the best of times. Mecha oriented Studio Sunrise took the reins for an idol series, and when it wants to, the show really shines. Lots of bright colors, polished character designs, a large variety of different outfits, some gorgeous view shots and even the CGI used for the dancing is relatively high quality. Only real catch with the visuals, basic character designs being a minor thing, is the constant switch between 2D to 3D during the idol performances. I didn’t like when Luck & Logic did the switches for no reason and I’m not a fan of it here either. It’s jarring, and plays a weird eye trick on me when they change back and forth. Still though, great animation and pretty colors, adds to the image.
What’s more disappointing is the soundtrack. I get that I’m not really an idol fan, but aside from the OP, no particular showcase track really stood out at all. Maybe I’d have to relisten to them, but even Kyoukai no Kanata’s 1 idol song was more memorable than any of these. They weren’t bad, they did their job, just didn’t leave a strong impression which is disappointing for a music anime. The ED is perfectly fine and listenable, same for the background music. As for the dub, we have some solid performances from Erica Lindbeck as Eli, who brings an air of maturity to the role, Caitlin Glass as Maki, and even though I could be annoyed with Honoka’s character at times, relative newbie Marieve Herington captures just enough energy to make her cute in the best of times. Again, special mention to Erica Mendez for capturing the personality in Nico’s character. Everyone else did fine, nothing exceptional but nothing outright bad.
Conclusion
So, after all of this, would I consider Love Live a sellout? In some ways yes. The plot is incredibly shallow and sometimes forced, it relies a lot on pushing current trends to be a follower and the characters aren’t too much to show for, but I can’t deny that, once in a while, the show had an honest to god sweet moment, a moment where I excepted depth comes into play, or a charming scene. Despite how simplistic everything was, my enjoyment was decently high for a while. Then when the end drama sprouted its way into the final three episodes, I became annoyed more than anything else. Annoyed with what I saw unfold, creating substantial pathos before quickly having it brushed aside. It became a lot harder to emphasize with Honoka, and it didn’t end well for me despite the ending being sweet. Love Live has earnest effort, at times I can see that, but with exception to some moments and characters, feels misguided, perfectly in the norm, and hard to distinguish otherwise. It’s a show that failed to have me engaged and sadly fell too close to the disinterest that kept me away from it for so long.
