Note: Love Live! Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukoukai is a real mouthful of a title, so I refer to it as Nijigaku in this review.
Nijigaku is a new path through familiar territory. If you’ve seen any other entry in the Love Live! series, or indeed, any idol anime at all, your preliminary guesses regarding what this show will be like are probably spot on. There is a group of high school girls, they each want to be the very best school idols that they can be, and they all have certain setbacks which they must overcome to make this dream come true. It’s a simple setup, but told well, as it has been in past Love Live! entries, it can serve as the base for some great anime.
Where Nijigaku differs from its predecessors is mainly in how little it does to build on this base. Idol shows are not known for their complex narratives, but even in the straightforward world of its genre, Nijigaku’s overall plot is remarkably thin. It begins with some mild conflict caused by the disbandment of the School Idol Club, but once this is resolved, the show drops almost all pretensions of having any overarching narrative whatsoever. Now, this probably sounds like a pretty damning criticism, but don’t fret quite yet, because while Nijigaku may have abandoned a central plot, it does still have a story to tell. “How is that possible?” you might ask. Simple: rather than following a grand narrative, Nijigaku shifts its focus to a series of character-based mini-narratives. Each of these mini-narratives span exactly one episode and each ends with a performance (i.e., a song and dance routine) by the relevant character. In other words—and this is incredibly important—rather than telling a continuous story, Nijigaku is largely an assortment of episodic character arcs. Whether you think “episodic character arcs” sounds like a good idea or a terrible one will probably play a central role in determining how much you like the show. And what did I think? Well, that’s what the rest of this review is for...
First thing’s first, the success of this character vignette focused setup hinges heavily upon one simple question: are these characters worth telling stories about? Thankfully, Nijigaku manages to answer this question with a more or less resounding “yes!” Granted, this is an idol anime, so none of these characters plunge particularly far into the depths of the human psyche—and that’s okay! To put it rather clinically, the goal in a show like this is to have characters that are complex enough to feel novel, but simple enough that a satisfying arc about them fits into one episode. For a show with ten (10!!) main characters and only thirteen episodes, Nijigaku does an astonishingly good job of crafting these kinds of simple but effective characters. Ayamu and Yu, in particular, are standout examples of how good Nijigaku's character writing can be. At the start of the series they are a simple case of "aspiring idol + friend who supports her," but by the end their relationship had grown to be complex and compelling in a way that I absolutely did not expect coming into the show. I will say, though, if you’ve seen a lot of idol anime, or even a lot of anime in general, you will probably recognize the general form of many of the faces here. We have the Socially Awkward Tech Genius (Rina), the Friendly Foreigner (Emma), the Sleepy Big Sister (Kanata), and my personal favorite, the Cute Gremlin (Kasumi), among others. But the point is, given the genre and length of the show, Nijigaku’s characters are as interesting as anyone could reasonably hope.
Unfortunately, the storylines that surround these characters are not quite as successful. In fairness, some aspects of the narrative writing work well—the tone, for instance, wavers delicately between being touching and lighthearted without ever veering into sentimentality or silliness. The problem is this: because of its episodic narrative, episodes of Nijigaku tend to be structured in a very formulaic fashion. Specifically, in each episode, a character…
a) is revealed to have some problem which is holding them back from reaching their full potential as an idol...
b) overcomes this problem, often after remembering why they love school idols in the first place...
c) gives a performance which reflects their newly self-actualized perspective...
d) cedes the stage to the next character.
It’s a pretty by-the-numbers approach to storytelling, and at its worst it is a little too transparent. Some of the after-credit scenes are particularly egregious in this regard: it can feel painfully artificial when one girl’s arc ends with another saying something to the effect of “all right, it’s my turn on the character development”. That being said, despite the simple form of the episodes, the inherent strength of the characters usually does carry through in the end. I found many of these girls’ stories at least a little bit compelling, and a few of the episodes even made me pretty emotional. When Nijigaku’s episodic narratives do work, it’s usually thanks to three key factors. I’ve already mentioned the first two—simple but effective character writing, and a tone which balances being touching and lighthearted. The third factor, however, I’ve only touched on thus far, and it’s importance really cannot be overstated: the phenomenal performances which end each episode.
To get straight to the point, these episode-ending performances are the high point of Nijigaku. Moreover, they are the element which, to me, comes closest to fully vindicating the new character vignette approach to storytelling. To begin with, on a technical level, the dance sequences are consistently the best the series has seen. Historically, the Love Live! series has been rather notorious for the jarring use of computer graphics during its dance sequences, and while CG does make a return here, I am happy to report that it’s no longer jarring at all. Yes, you can still pretty easily tell which cuts are hand drawn and which cuts are CG, but no longer does the CG animation suffer from the lifeless, washed-out look it used to have. Partly this is due to improvements in lighting and framing, but in larger part I think it’s due to the transition to solo performances. The ugliest uses of CG in School Idol Project tended to be during group shots, and now that those are gone, the result is much prettier overall.
Of course, it helps that on a directorial level, Nijigaku’s performances are the most visually interesting the series has ever seen. Now that the girls are performing solo, the animation staff is free to incorporate more abstract and character specific visuals, which greatly increase the amount of variety on offer. But beyond that, the visuals are just… generally more creative. This is, admittedly, a hard point to justify without a slew of examples, but I hope it will suffice to link to Kanata’s performance and let its quality speak for itself. This is why I say that these performances are the element of Nijigaku which most fully vindicates the character focused approach: because the girls perform solo, a) the performances look better, b) there’s more of them, and c) they are more varied visually than ever before. Put simply, if you consider performances to be one of the main appeals of Love Live!, Nijigaku is an absolute dream come true.
So, what’s my overall impression of the new character-focused approach to storytelling? Well, I was mostly a supporter, but it came with enough problems that I would hesitate to call it a strict improvement on the approaches of the past Love Live! series. More than anything, Nijigaku feels like a series of tradeoffs. The focus on individual characters makes for more complete character arcs, but the overall plot is left feeling insubstantial as a result. The solo performances are consistently the best the series has ever seen, but the episodes that lead up to those performances can feel somewhat formulaic.
If I had to guess, I would wager that Nijigaku will end up being somewhat divisive among Love Live! fans. For those that valued the group dynamics and overall story of the previous entries of the series, it will probably be a minor disappointment, but for those that valued character development and musical performances, it will be viewed as easily the series’ peak. Whatever the case may be, ultimately it’s clear that after the rather mixed reception to Sunshine!, the Love Live! series needed some kind of shakeup, and this is a role which Nijigaku quite effectively fills. So, while it’s not without its problems, this show feels like a good omen for the future of the series. If Sunrise was willing to rethink the Love Live! formula enough to produce Nijigaku, then hopefully they’re also willing to make the necessary tweaks going forward to make an even better followup.
Thanks for reading! Here's a bonus unhinged Kasumi for making it to the end:
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