Spoiler Warning

Here we are with the anticipated second season of Love Live Nijigasaki. The first season received mixed reviews from fans of the series, but I thought it was the best Love Live installment at the time. This second season, however, does not properly execute based on the foundation laid by its predecessor.

This season of Nijigasaki introduces three new characters, Lanzhu, Shioriko, and Mia, but the story is centralized around Lanzhu and her interactions with Shioriko, Mia, and the girls of the School Idol Club. Her philosophy is to captivate others and put on an amazing performance, with that being the extent of it. She also disagrees with the beliefs of the School Idol Club, she believes that people should pursue their dreams without needing the help of others. This creates conflict within the characters, where both sides believe in different things. Additionally, this creates an antagonist within the show, which is a first for Love Live, as well as one of the most interesting things that Love Live has done since its start in 2014.

Where I find this anime to struggle is keeping its attention on this theme. At the start, it focuses on this quite solidly, featuring several developments between Lanzhu and the girls to further the plot. One of the main things that occurred during this development was the creation of subunits. Initially, the first subunit was made to “challenge” Lanzhu’s ideology. I feel that this progressed the plot well, carrying the themes of dreams nicely in a short, few-episode mini-arc. After this, two more subunits were formed. Why? I have no clue. The creation of these subunits made absolutely no sense. One of the more important things during the previous season of Nijigasaki was that everyone was a solo idol. Why do they suddenly want to join up when they were against it before? It’s incomprehensible.

The pacing of this season was very inconsistent. Every arc in the show is dedicated to one or two episodes. Everything that was dedicated to a single episode was rushed, yet all assigned two episodes were properly developed. One exception to this rule was Mia, where I felt she got proper development due to how differently she was written from the rest of the cast. She got a single episode to share with Lanzhu, plus little bits of other episodes. Overall, this helped make her development feel more natural and did not require her to have an entire episode dedicated to herself. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Shioriko or Lanzhu. Shioriko followed the single episode rule, while Lanzhu only felt like she got the episode with Mia and bits of other episodes. While yes, Mia got the same treatment and it worked, why is Lanzhu different? Well, she is the main “antagonist,” while Mia was more of a side character. This inherently means there should be more put behind her than the other characters and this is where her character faltered.

Another problem I had with the characters was the relationship between Ayumu and Yu. It could have been handled much more strongly. There was a deficiency of interactions within this season and it makes me question why they decided to establish their relationship in the former season. It wasn’t completely terrible though, as the show dedicated episode 12 to the two of them, which was one of the better episodes within the show.

Despite everything I said so far, not everything about the characters and story is bad. The new characters bounce off the old ones when they interact and interactions between the cast as a whole are sharper than in the previous season. I had a solid amount of fun watching these events play out. The story is starting to reach its end as well. From where they are currently, they’ve started to worry about the graduation of the third-years. Although this could be seen as generic sports anime worries, or standard Love Live “we gotta win before the third-years graduate” kind of thing, I quite enjoy it. It is not an unreasonable thing to think about, while also providing a sense of time.

The animation for this season was varied in quality, but overall solid. My biggest issue is the background art. Sometimes it looked perfectly fine, nothing too amazing, but was solid; at other times it looked like garbage. The backdrops looked like blurry jpegs without even attempting to be hidden. Characters would also be poorly composited within the scene. Outside of these moments, the show looked fine. The character models looked consistent most of the time and the performances looked solid. The animated segments of the performance all looked great, on par with the images from the game they’re based on. The CGI parts were decent. They weren’t as groundbreaking as something like Houseki no Kuni, nor as well-hidden as those in Love Live Superstar, but they looked fine.

Speaking of performances, how did everything sound? It sounded really solid. The BGM was nice to listen to throughout the episodes, and the performances sounded pleasant. Granted, some performances were stronger than others, all were at least something that I would see myself listening to. The lyrics to these songs were all nice and occasionally meaningful, linking to their character arcs within the show, or, in the case of Lanzhu during the first episode, telling you about their character.

This season of Nijigasaki has some highs, as well as some lows. From a technical standpoint, this show is pretty solid, providing captivating performances, while from a writing standpoint, this show can be lacking at times. Overall, this season has been somewhat of a downgrade from its promising first season, which has been very unfortunate to witness.

Thank you for reading.