The school idol tournament “Love Live” and the plot of the school shutting down are not interesting by themselves, and so the show focuses on the characters. However, there are too many characters to develop so none of them end up getting developed anyway. Of the nine main cast members, Rin and Hanayo are forgettable, Maki, Kotori, Nico and Nozomi are one-dimensional, Umi and Eli are decent and the main character, Honoka, is basically just a shonen protagonist shoved into an idol show. Honoka is a complete airhead and just preaches loudly about friendship and idols. For a character-driven show, the characters are poorly developed and do not contribute much to the plot. Although the show is objectively bad due to the (essentially) nonexistent plot and weak characters, I really enjoyed it! It was still a fun show to watch and made me laugh a lot.
Overall, the production quality is good. Despite being poorly written, the characters are cute and quirky with colorful animation to support them, and at least have interesting visual designs. The music is above average, and the seiyuus did a good job singing and voicing the characters.
TLDR; Love Live! is a fun show to watch if you’re bored, and I would recommend it to new anime watchers if you’re into shows that aren’t too plot-heavy and focus more on entertainment. I wouldn’t watch it again but I don’t regret watching it either.
