Fair warning: This review contains spoilers!
On paper, the concept sounds simple: a series about cute school idols singing and dancing their way to stardom. While the concept itself admittedly didn’t excite me all that much in the first place, the flimsy plot and its boring structure still managed to disappoint. The initial conflict, the school of the protagonists closing down and merging with another school, is uninteresting. At a point where the cast isn’t even properly introduced yet, there isn’t any actual investment present. Consequently, I couldn’t have cared less about the school “closing down”, and honestly I still wonder why the characters did, anyway. Now, building on this… questionable initial problem, Honoka decides that forming a school idol group will make the school more popular. This is supposed to save the school from closing down. A very simple problem-solution relationship, in the mind of Honoka, at least.
An empty auditorium. No audience at all. This is the picture painted by the first performance of their newly-founded idol group, Muse. This empty auditorium as such symbolizes the start line, the start for a story of this group ascending from rags, unpopular amateurs, to riches, universally beloved and popular school idols. This display of passion by Muse is recorded by an anonymous spectator, later revealed to be Eri (who actually is shown peeking into the auditorium and then leaving, but I digress). Slowly but steadily, the group grows into a group of nine girls of fluctuating distinctiveness.
Seemingly out of nowhere and with little fanfare, the eponymous competition Love Live is introduced. Measured by an arbitrary level of popularity which is never properly explained, the 20 top school idol groups compete for the title of “the best idol group”. The plot gradually loses track, loses focus and during loosely related events only introduced to serve as a platform for short concerts, Muse grows increasingly popular. Little to no feeling of progression is actually present through the whole ordeal. Instead of showing other idol groups, how they are different in style and skill level, the show presents meaningless numbers that mean little and tell nothing. Due to the pacing and the poor handling of the supposed new main attraction Love Live, it becomes obvious that there isn’t enough time left to actually have the competition take place. The show has to make do with another kind of finale, while still leaving the potential goal of winning Love Live open for another installment.
The introduction of another conflict was foreseeable. But, somehow, the show still manages to introduce something way out of left field. Kotori gets an invitation to follow her dream of fashion designing. Honoka is so eager to practice on the last night before her final concert that she decides to do it outside, in the middle of the night under pouring rain. She catches a cold and collapses right after their first song. Muse (like expected) withdraws from Love Live and Honoka throws a fit, the situation escalates until Honoka gets slapped in the face. This supposed “climax” left nothing but confusion and frustration. The whole conflict did, really. Kotori’s interest in fashion design and her possibly leaving the country in the future gets introduced too late to feel like a genuine “threat”, like something that could actually happen. It is obvious from the get-go that she won’t leave the country and will stay with the group, because it’s obvious this "threat" is only introduced for it the be resolved as the series’ finale. It is obvious that this show will follow the most formulaic storytelling possible. The whole conflict feels like it doesn’t belong in the show at all. It all ends in a very cliche scene in which Honoka stops Kotori at the last possible minute and they make up. They make up because Honoka is selfish and puts her desire to have a group of nine with Kotori in it (rather than just continuing as a group of eight or recruit a new member) over Kotori’s dream. Because Kotori didn’t actually want to leave, apparently. Love Live manages to be both predictable in its overall structure and unpredictable in its sheer stupidity.
The plot does follow established formulas all the way through. However this doesn’t only apply to the overall structure, but to about anything else as well. It comes off as no surprise that the character cast of Love Live consists of flat and tropey characters. In an attempt to include as many different girls which appeal to as many different (otaku) people possible, the show neglects nearly all of them completely. The most prominent example is Rin. Initially interested in track, she urges her friend Hanayo to join Muse, then decides to join too while she’s at it. For the rest of the show her being athletic will never be brought up again and her only character traits are that she likes Hanayo and the usage of “nyan” while making a cat mouth. Hanayo herself is at first a shy and quiet girl that loves school idols, then devolves into a character whose only trait is liking idols right after joining the group. However the saving grace of this show, Nico, is also mainly defined by loving school idols however, compared to Hanayo she excels at it. Therein lies the next big problem of the show: There is a lot of overlap between the character casts’ traits, to the point were they are hardly distinguishable at times. Apart from Nico and Honoka, the cast feels too same-y, like interchangeable trope characters. The few attempts at constructing interesting (albeit also cliched) character relations such as the relationship between Eri and Nozomi, get wholly destroyed through the show’s numerous reiterations of that very relationship. While it is clear for any onlooker that Nozomi is very close to Eri, for some reason the show needs the characters to outright state that this relationship exists through the characters pointing it out several times. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the most popular writing advices and for good reason. These moments are oleaginous and make the character relationships feel artificial.
Love Live isn’t all bad however, and while the visuals don't stand out as much as a whole, the backgrounds are consistently pretty and pleasing to look at with a lot of detail. The character designs however have the same problems as the characters themselves: They all are colorcoded to fit their respective archetypes and their body figures cover the most ground possible to appeal to the largest number of (otaku) people possible. If not for the aforementioned colorcoding I would have trouble remembering the characters; all of them, again apart from Nico and Eri, are bland to a fault. Character movement is for the most part well-animated, although admittedly only Nico stands out from the crowd with the by far most energetic movement and most expressive faces (again).
The performances themselves were okay. While the constant changing between 2D and 3D animation is pretty jarring (mostly because the CG isn’t all that pretty), all of the performances were energetically animated. Overall they were more fun to look at than to listen to though. The songs themselves never go farther than average to mediocre J-Pop with the only song remotely resembling a standout track being “START:DASH!!”. It’s also a shame that the supposed standouts, Maki as a singer and Eri as a dancer, never actually have standout moments during the show.
Love Live is a show that is mediocre all the way through: Boring archetype characters, poor plot with forced melodrama that doesn’t fit the overall tone of the show and bland J-Pop songs merge and create an overall bad experience. The few moments of genuine fun, mostly in the form of Nico’s fun shenanigans, shine through here and there but they aren’t enough to save this show from feeling like a oleaginous corporate product.
