My only experience with Love Live is with the original anime. I thought it was ok, but didn't fall in love with it NEARLY as much as others seemed to. I was really hopeful Sunshine would be the one that finally made me GET Love Live. Buuuuuuuuuuut....... I'm so confused... I'm really trying, I promise. I have no interest in fandom wars of any kind, anymore. I WANT to enjoy Love Live. Maybe it's just a matter of needing to play the games to fill in the gaps of the show. But I just found myself very confused with the whole "School Idol" concept, even more so than I was with the original show. It's almost comical how much the show flip flops between success and failure.
From scene to scene, it can be "We can't start a school idol club because we don't have enough members!" to "We suddenly have a fully song and dance routine and professionally made outfits prepared with the entire town coming to our debut concert!" to "We're the least popular school idol group in the world!" to "We're being invited to Tokyo to perform in a professional competition!" to "We had zero votes for our performance!" to "We won the entire competition!" to "Our school is shutting down due to lack of success!" to "We won Love Live!"......LITERALLY WHY!?!?!?
It was so stinkin obnoxious and every new obstacle just felt like forced drama with nonexistent resolutions. It just feels like we only ever get shown the end of every journey and completely skip over how we got there. The new cast is... ok. But it's obnoxiously copy and pasted from μ's, as is often joked about in the first season. The amount of callbacks to μ's in general is just exhausting and gives this show next to nothing of its own to make itself stand out. I get its to have a lesson about finding your own path and discovering your own identity in the end, but it shouldn't have taken the ENTIRE first season to explain that!
To their credit, μ's does not get referenced a single time in the second season or the movie. The same pacing and format issues still persist, but I at least got to get more attached to these characters, rather than having the old ones shoved in my face over and over. The music is nice, but like the last show, it's hard to get attached to individual singers when every song is a group song. Awaken The Power was my favorite and Ruby is best girl. The animation is solid all throughout. If it weren't for the framerate shifts, I honestly wouldn't even be able to tell when it switches between 2D and 3D.
Overall... I'm sad I didn't care for this show as much as I was hoping to. I guess it might just be a matter of "You had to be there." I'm happy if you like this show and if these characters mean a lot to you. It didn't click with me and I think I'm just gonna leave it at that. As for other Love Live shows... I honestly didn't even know that any other branches existed beyond μ's and Aqours, until a year ago. I think my Love Live journey is gonna end here, in that case. I'm glad I finally got to meet these characters, but I'm good with parting ways with this franchise rather than forcing myself to watch every single series just for completion's sake and not having much positive things to say about it in the end.
5/10
