This is just gonna be a really short review of my immediate thoughts after completing this new season of love live.

Story: 9 | Characters: 10 | Audio: 10 | Visuals: 9 | Personal Enjoyment: 10

I'm kinda shocked at how much I enjoyed this season of Love Live! Genuinely one of the most fun shows I've watched and a MASSIVE improvement in every aspect compared to the past seasons. The decision to stray away from the formula that worked for the past 2 shows with having solo idols in this show worked perfectly and resulted in so many great songs. The visuals were way better this season too with the CGI moments being still way better than past seasons at their worst and practically indistinguishable from the regular animation at its best. It's true that obviously there's been a couple years since sunshine so of course cgi has improved a ton but I think it's still worth pointing out how far animation technology has come considering there hasn't ever been a studio change for the Love Live! series.

The characters felt so much more developed this season because rather than having pre-determined friend groups to support each other like in the previous seasons, most of the girls in this season felt the urge to join the club stemming from their own personal desires and struggles which made the story much more interesting as it essentially follows 9 unique stories. Also, each girl had their own personal solo song and they all fit their characters so well.

Speaking of the music, the opening and ending of the show were both phenomenal (NEO SKY, NEO MAP! has easily become one of my favorite songs since first hearing it). They're both songs that have all 9 girls singing together but have moments where you can pick out individual voices and being a show that has the idols as solos rather than an official group, that works perfectly. Even when they are singing altogether, the voices are blended together way better than in the past because they're done in short bursts of 2-3 girls at a time so it's designed to showcase each girl's individual voices that work together rather than just having the whole song be everyone singing together. That's the same reason why I'm a fan of songs like Hop? Stop? Nonstop? from Sunshine: Over the Rainbow which had many moments of individual singing, especially Mari's solo part in the second half of the song. Also, the insert in Episode 13 (Yume ga Koko Kara Hajimaru yo) was amazing to end the season on!

tl;dr, The characters are amazing, every song was fkin phenomenal, the animation/CGI was so much better than anything in the past, and I personally found so much enjoyment watching this new set of girls and I'm absolutely in love em!

Listen to TOKIMEKI Runners and Love U my friends they are also great songs featuring all the girls.