“This is our final Love Live!”, this line hit me extremely hard when Ren said that. For a split second, I felt so many emotions going through my head: a hint of sadness, because some of my favorite girls were about to reach their conclusion, and a big sense of disappointment because of what this entry of the franchise could’ve and should’ve been, the ultimate statement that Love Live is the ultimate idol show. After all, what other idol franchise can brag about its massive influence, amount of media, amount of money, and number of fans across the globe? Sure, Idolmaster is a staple of idols, but it does not come close to them. Bang Dream, while not inherently idol, does not come close to Love Live. Idoly Pride, Selection Project, Shine Post, and IDOLiSH7 cannot talk about having a history such as the one of Love Live, they don’t dispose of such influence. Love Live is not perfect, this is well known, and while its story, characters, logic, and overall technical parts of being an idol are not perfect, the reason why so many fans love this franchise is because of how relatable the characters are on their own, how human they feel, how strong their emotions are and, most of all, can feel the love in the project.
I am the prime example of a diehard fan of Love Live: I loved School Idol Project throughout my watch, it was magical, and I was pleasantly surprised at how something so opposite to my taste could catch my heart and touch sensitive spots that were never before; the love I felt for u’s was real, I honestly cried every time I rewatched the movie and their final performance was displayed, I am so attached to them, and the feeling of comfort I have whenever I see the faces of those 9 goddesses still exists today. Sunshine was the point that I deeply fell in love with the franchise, being the only experience that nothing will ever come close to in terms of what I felt: I honestly cried a lot, I felt the desperation and determination of the girls, I reflected so many times on what Chika, Riko, and other said many times; more than anything else, I saw myself in Riko so much and it was impossible not to watch the anime without seeing my own person it. Ironically enough, the events of Riko’s life were extremely close to mine, without the idol side, of course. While not fond of Nijigasaki, I learned to appreciate it as well, it was something just fun to watch in the second season.
I remember just like yesterday the day I got to watch the very first episode of the first season of Superstar: I rushed to find the episode and began watching it, it was so weird for the first moment. The colors were so different, the music was much more tender and soft, the overall animations felt light and less rough, and the sight of new girls was so odd to my eyes. Over time, rather quickly, I instantly fell in love with the new group and loved them so much, loved their songs, loved everything. To prove if my feelings are still real, I rewatched the first season some months ago and everything was still there in place, one of my favorite anime ever. I lamented a lot about the second season, slowly got over it, and I never forgave the staff for creating such a pointless, heartless, and extremely faulty series of episodes that simply stinks from any point of view; while it does have some great episodes, the majority are a total waste of time in my opinion, and the ending itself was one of the worst pulls I had ever seen in my entire life.
The space between the end of the second season and the start of the third season was a period of time in which I experimented new franchises and even got closer to Love Live again, despite drifting away massively, thanks to the Hasu project being genuinely fun, even if really rough and raw, and some subunits like Kaleidoscore and Dollchestra. The biggest thing that happened in this time was watching Bang Dream with a friend of mine, a show that gradually improved in my list and I ended up liking a lot. The biggest thing that really shocked me from Bang Dream was watching MyGo, it clearly was an absolute gamble and dare in terms of direction of the tone and writing, but it sure did pay off because it was absolutely incredible to watch weekly. This led me to think, “They tried out something completely out of their ordinary, and it was a huge success. Why can’t Love Live do this for the third season? They sure can try and go out of the lines, it may be a little late but they have a whole new season for that.”
Watching the first season of Superstar felt surreal, just 5 girls chasing a dream, and so many differences that put this group far away from the other idols of the franchise in terms of uniqueness and how they interacted with each other, feeling a really strong link. After all it’s logical, it’s only 5 of them, they don’t need a million episodes to get closer, and that’s what happened at the end of the first season with a group of, seemingly and purely, best friends to each other, some bonded by love more than the others. Of course, there were shortcomings and the whole deal with Keke was a major aspect that I wanted to see in the second season or the hypothetical movie, as the tradition wants to, but that did not happen not there or even the movie, instead a whole third season.
I say it again: after the first season of Superstar I was ready to watch the second and post its review with the title “The perfect idol anime”, but this did not happen.
Me and somebody else kept making the same exact comparison throughout the airing of both anime: Bang Dream MyGo and Superstar, because these two anime are so similar yet complete opposites.
On one hand we have Bang Dream, a franchise that has always been on its own quiet rise, has done many funny collaborations that resulted in various types of media, has a great mobile videogame that I am guilty of playing, but it never managed to have its anime to be spoken about as much, despite having 13 entries between the main story, side stories, movies and such. It’s pretty simple to understand why because it’s the exact trope, already used, by Love Live: wonderful colors, positive meanings, and little, short problems solved by the friendships for each other; Although the anime showed amazing qualities, such as the incredible top-notch level of the performances in the show which made me feel overwhelmed, it simply was not able to shine. I will give praise to Garupapico for being a hilarious chibi spin-off that I absolutely love, and I will also talk about it again in this review because it purely showed what the staff can do if given the freedom to do anything they want.
Then, the 14th entry was released last year, BanG Dream! MyGO and it changed everything. Bang Dream showed its crudest, rawest, and most disgusting human face to the spectator in a supposed sequel to Poppin’ Dream that is simply a complete 180-degree turn. It doesn’t even feel like a sequel to a franchise that elevated the concept of having fun through music, it felt like a standalone project that highlighted how the pursuit of a passion can bring to the madness of an individual and the desire to destroy. Sure, MyGo is not entirely dark, let’s put it straight, but it has a much more mature tone that is enveloped by the overall feeling of Sakiko’s dread for Tomori, contrasted by the cheerful ambient of the MyGO band, and ends up with the dark and unemotional Ave Mujica, not made of bonds and love for music but purely to destroy somebody else; MyGO serves as a reminder that, despite how everything can look fine and happy, there is always something or someone that will bring darkness over your shine. The final scene of Sakiko returning to her home is the perfect example of what I mean.
Now, on the other hand, we have Love Live. I’ve already mentioned the massive legacy this franchise is, so I will just say this: does this franchise want to be the grumpy Grandpa saying “my own way is the best!” because he is afraid to take on changes and try new things, or does the franchise want to continue being the meta, the “man to beat”, the reference point? I am assuming that it chose the former.
I am confident that I can state, not opinionate, this: this new form of Liella is a total failure in the writing, promotion, and production.
The second season shamefully failed to bring the breath of new air, or continue it, and instead opted to add new characters with the sole purpose of money. Some may argue that it was clear it was going to happen and, to be fair, I agree. The anime started with a new school, everybody started in the first year, and it was clear that it was going to happen as the seasons went on. What was not obvious is how and when it was going to happen because the marketing of the 5 girls of Liella was beyond titanic and the narration suggested that they were going to keep being that way, after all they did promise each other to win the Love Live together, right? My main complaint of the second season is the time, that ended up wasted, on introducing the new girls unevenly, funny enough. Kinako would get more characters than Shiki and Mei, Natsumi would fall under the same fate as well, and the original 5 girls of Liella just went under the radar, except for Kanon as she was keeping her role as the leader of the group. How did they fix this? A filler episode for Ren, that I honestly enjoyed a lot, and a plug for a SumiKeke episode, which was good and emotional, but felt forced as an excuse to munch on episodes.
A fantastic side of Season 2 was Margarete. What the series needed was to have a cocky, arrogant, and dislikeable antagonist to the main girls, somebody that could ignite that desire and need in them to drastically improve, following the repeated losses against her. Why make her join them? Why? It was finally the first time since Saint Snow that we had somebody that was superior to them, or at least on the same level, and somebody that could’ve given a real opposition. A-RISE was never a good opponent to begin with, with just 1 song that was actively shown in the anime; Saint Snow, despite how amazing of a unit it is that I really love, was reduced to simply becoming friends of Aqours, which is totally fine but it still doesn’t give a new concept of real “person to beat”. So, why make such a great “villain” that is easy to hate due to her irritable nature and then make her join them? It was the perfect idea for an actual rivalry, after all, the Love Live Staff is known for simply forgetting and never using again the rival in media (A-RISE having just 2 songs and Saint Snow being forgotten since Dazzling White Town), so why even bother forcing Margarete to join?
Removing Margarete from the opposition, effectively, removes any pure challenge to Liella that even made the second season appealing to watch. What happens when you are at the top? Everybody will seek to beat you, you are the benchmark, and Margarete was the only one able to put on competition. SunnyPa, despite their 2 minutes of screentime across the 2 seasons, is gone and no longer competing, so who’s there to fight against you? It will be a “flat-out domination” as it is said in my sport and you are your own competitor. The idea that Margarete could join Liella and try to demolish them from the inside was, unfortunately, never used either: cocky, spiteful, obsessed to win, and with the promise to beat Liella, this was the perfect pretest to cause chaos within the group, but it never happened either. What makes me angry the most is that I went from hating Margerete to absolutely loving her because she is cute, she blushes a lot, I love Yuina too, I love her songs, and I came to love her attitude; liking such a character was never meant to happen, even if I have a weak spot for girls just like her and her design is literally what I love to see. This is a huge failure highlighted by my own preferences, I should’ve never liked Margarete so much because she was supposed to keep being the hated opponent to the beloved and shining Liella.
Tomari, to my eyes and feelings, is the single worst character in all of Love Live. I have never seen a character that serves less purpose than her in the franchise, even the students gave me more to my eyes and heart, and Tomari just serves no reason to exist other than filling a spot that the Staff came up with to make more money in a franchise that is continuously earning less and less as years advance, and I wonder why, huh?
Typically, I love talking about characters even if I don’t manage to fully understand them or even write about them, it’s only fair to miss some aspects of them as long as I can give myself an idea, but with Tomari? I don’t even know what her role is supposed to be. Natsumi, supposedly, had her own resolution in the anime, so why bother expanding her even further with her sister? Isn’t that a massive offset in screen time for, effectively, almost a side character and her sister? What about Mei and Shiki, who got basically 2 episodes for them in the whole franchise, what about Keke, who never truly had her own episodes, not shared with Sumire. Tomari is a pointless character just like her own personality, flat-out, boring. Her own reason, her own backstory, serves no purpose other than a strictly artificial problem that leads to an even more artificial resolution, and everything is summed up in simply 3 lines:
When the second season was rolling after the first half the first thing I thought to myself was: “Man, how cool would it be if the first years decided to start a unit on their own?”, you can only grasp how excited I got with Tomakonote, partially.
Tomakonote is the first sign, to me, that the Staff realized too late their mistakes and tried to patch the already bleeding wound, poorly. I mentioned how I wished for Margarete to become the real opposition to Liella, so you can imagine how intrigued I was when the idea of her, Kanon, and Tomari joining together as a, somewhat, kind of rival to Liella, now without their original leader. This aspect was, honestly, extremely interesting when it first played out: Liella would have to see how they behave without their most important member, Tomakonote has two powerhouse singers and one extremely talented rookie, which results in a massive advantage for the three of them; So, the possibilities of this scenario are endless: the Liella girls could either crumble or come together to find a unison that was never shown before, and the same way Tomakonote could’ve been a massive fiasco or the rise of a new benchmark for school idols. Exciting, right?
Some may argue that I am going off trail, that this is a simple SoL of idols trying to just catch their dreams, which is absolutely true and I am the first that speaks about this, but so other franchises such as, yet once again, BanG Dream, who had the same exact face as Love Live but then decided to change everything. Be proud to dare, be ashamed not to try. In this case, Love Live is in the spotlight of pure shame. The three talented girls were reduced to nothing in the very end and, what was a big deal, became of nothing. The lifespan of Tomakonote was too short to even have a word about it, especially compared to the weight it was meant to have in the anime because its existence can be seen just as Tomari’s: pointless, empty, flat, without a single meaning.
Tomakonote’s existence played a role in Margarete gradually warming up and opening herself, ultimately leading in her acceptance of Liella. However, this development occurred alongside her interactions with the other girls in various instances, such as when in China.
Tomari’s growth, which can be attributed to her pajama party with Kanon and Margarete, was heavily impacted by Natsumi’s words, so not the 3 girls' group even.
Great idea, pointless execution.
This is the one, the most infuriating part. The one part that got me screaming “What is going on?” when, the biggest deal of season 1 and season 2, was done and dusted in barely 2 episodes.
In the first season, it was said that Keke had to win the Love Live in order to stay in Japan, but Liella lost in the final episode, and what EVERYBODY that I know of thought was “Well, we are going to have a second season about Keke in China, right?”. That was not the case, as we well know, because the writing yeeted everything and decided to magically let her mother change her mind, despite the high stakes placed up Keke, despite the high expectations, despite the massive weight of this decision to try something new in a completely different country. “Mom said I’m fine”, the show is not fine. But then, out of absolutely nowhere, we go to China and we finally confront Keke’s weight.
To say the least, I was happy that Keke got finally her own space, her own space that was not shared by somebody else in an episode, but it was way too short for what the big deal was.
The introduction of her sister was intriguing and funny, honestly, and I did like her a lot. I felt her sense of care for Keke, how much she deeply wants her little sister to continue the pursuit of her dream as a singer, and remembering everybody how much she put at stake, but that’s about it. While I cannot ask too much out of a side character, I just cannot help but feel that this arc, this very important arc, was rushed. The performance itself too, given how heavy of importance it was, sucked, not musically speaking but in the terms of how it happened: why would Kanon speak Japanese to Chinese people? How did Tomakonote get time to practice the routine? Where are Keke’s parents giving her the approval or at least understanding? This was merely an excuse to have a song in China, wasn’t it?
Unfortunately, just like with Tomakonote and Tomari, this was too short and empty to even talk about.
This season can be summarized simply as “lazy” because its writing is shallow, the events are there just to exist with little purpose to the story, or simply to fill the missing time. We got Margarete and Tomari in the group, and we gave Keke her arc in China. What’s now? A series of increasingly lazy episodes that do not make the events progress linearly: what is the purpose of giving Kinako yet another episode? She literally had almost 3 in the last season, and so we forgot about Mei and Shiki (no, that episode about Shiki as the center sucked and I cannot simply see it as a character episode); So, we forgot about Sumire? She has barely spoken this season. The same can be applied to Ren, but oh boy she got her screen time with Kinako in the shared episode, that’s lame.
This is the exact issue of this installment; it is too much to handle. Was the answer to this to have a third season? No, straight up, because the 5 Liella girls were the absolute perfect idea to revitalize Love Live, but this did not happen. Shame. Yet again, the first season introduced everybody, the second season had to introduce everybody new again, and wasted precious time; And, the third season did the same thing again, however, there wasn’t enough content to fill the missing time in the episodes, or simply it was handled terribly wrong, which is what happened to my eyes. The distribution of time and lines is not even in the slightest, leading to a loss of attachment to the characters because they essentially disappear, and everything got to the point of “yeah, let’s just do it” to literally cover anything that could be covered.
Liella! is an insult to what u's built and what Aqours cemented, with the added support of Nijigasaki in what it could. It's indeed impossible, nowadays, to recreate something like u's in the world of Love Live, it simply cannot happen, and even more, it's harder to even recreate a particular story like the one of Aqours; However, Liella! had every season on this planet to become the next big thing, to clarify where this franchise stands, supposedly at the top, but it failed miserably with this tragedy of season and project.
As the cherry on top, in a bad way, the 11th episode of Superstar Season 3 is the exact example of what this season has been, yet again: underwhelming. The back-to-back win was underwhelming, the supposed "climax" of the season has been underwhelming and nowhere close to what we had in the past season, the same goes for the first season of Superstar being spectacular and emotional. Here, they showed up, sang, and won without making too much of it. In contrast, u’s had an emotional build-up of each other’s memories, and Aqours’ final effort was their love letter to the city, and school, which loved them until the very end. What is the symbol of Liella winning back to back, something that never happened before? Where is the build up to the final performance? Where is all the “I am doing it because”?
There is no love in this project, or rather it simply faded quickly. And so, no dignity can be seen.
On a good note, the animations are once again fantastic. I found the CGI to have slightly improved, now it appears a little smoother than what I could remember, and the overall backgrounds in the songs are nicer than the last season, to my eyes. Traditional 2D arts, again, simply wonderful.
Music wise, meh. Here is the thing: I don’t like anything past the 5 Liella when it comes to singing, there is too much going on now and the voices simply do not marry each other. However, the subunits are pretty damn good. To any of my friends is no surprise that I am a massive Kaleidoscore fan, after all it has my 3 favorite girls from Superstar all together too lololol, but Nagisa, Liyuu, and Yuina simply sound too good together. 5yncri5e! sounds really good as well, their gentle and high tones all match each other. CatChu, eh let’s forget about that.
I have some bias for Kaleidoscore, I won’t argue that. Also Velour is my new favorite song of the Love Live franchise, lololol.
Ironically enough, Kaleidoscore is a unit that likes to sing love songs where the girl wants to forget the lover, because her love is so strong yet she feels deceived and walls being put between them, and this is exactly what it feels like for me with this damn franchise: I love it, I hate it, but it puts barriers between us, and I will just wait to see its kind smile like the one I saw in the past.
Unfortunately, this project hurt me, and hurt many other fans and former fans, because it went from a love story between show and spectator to just a cry of the show about keeping its traditions and being scared to advance and progress, unlike other franchises. The embarrassing situation of the mobile games can be put in the conversation too, where they terminated servers a few months after the launch for whatever reason
It saddens me to feel like this because, as I said, Love Live has always meant a lot to me, but I cannot keep having the same feelings for a product that shits on the consumer more than ever. I felt all the love put into u’s and Aqours, but Liella has none of it. This product has no love in it.
Typically, I would get really sad when watching the episode where the girls go over their upcoming futures, but the type of sadness I felt from this was simply “what if” and “what it could’ve been”, because nothing has been tried to help this project, despite my hopes.
The great expectations set by the first season were not fulfilled in the second one, and the girls' third arc did not even try to make them shine. If the first season was incredible, and the second season had something to praise, the third season has nothing good to it, just plain laziness.
The Superstar Project is a failure.
Story: 4/10
Characters: 4/10
Music: 5/10
Animations: 9/10
Overall: 4.5/10
What has happened to the franchise I once loved?
77.5 out of 107 users liked this review
