Another seemingly normal high school girl who doesn’t stand out catches the school idol bug. Will she be able to follow her dreams to stardom? Will I be along for the ride long enough to find out?
What They Say:
Episode 1 “I Want to Shine!!”
Chika Takami is an ordinary girl who wants to form a School Idol Club to be a school idol. She meets potential members, but how will she get them to join?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
In 2013, the anime world was sideswiped by a whirlwind: Love Live! School Idol Project. While the multimedia franchise had already come into existence a couple years earlier, it hit the anime world at about the right moment, riding a wave of idol shows that have made their mark upon the anime landscape in the past few years (Idolm@ster and its sequels; AKB0048, Wake Up, Girls! and the latest version of the landmark franchise whose later installments seem unlikely to be released legally on our shores, Macross—don’t take it up with me, go cast your frustration at a certain company whose name is often spoken by fans with expletives attached). Telling the story of a relentlessly optimistic high school girl who wanted to save her shrinking all-girls school from closing, Love Live! went on to chart the formation of a school idol group that would storm the school idol world (saving the school along the way).
It may not be the deepest or most complex drama (heavily leavened with comic relief) ever created that focuses on “getting the band together” and “making it to the big concert” (which basically describes the entire arc of the two season television series…sorry if I spoiled you, but…what cave were you hibernating in for the past few years?), but it was on many levels quite satisfying. It could well be that all the main nine girls could be neatly placed within standard character archetype boxes, with a checklist of features ticked off in order to appeal to an anime-loving audience. However, the formulas and formats were executed crisply and cleanly, with perhaps only the second season being a touch weaker than the first in terms of dynamism and drive.
It was lightning in a bottle. In many ways, the original Love Live! could have had a rather different fate, laughed off the stage for its hammy characters and farcical situations. Instead, it set off a storm of enthusiasm, reflected in home video sales (yes, aided by special event tickets, but still, look at the numbers) in Japan that dwarf all but a very small select group of releases (no, not things based on wordy or poorly written light novels; try Evangelion). At live events, large crowds gathered and cheered. One can hardly fault the original creative alliance (ASCII Media Works, Lantis, Bushiroad, and Sunrise/Bandai Visual) coming together again to try to trap lightning in a bottle a second time. I don’t blame them one bit for the effort.
You’re wondering where I’m going? You have cause to be wary, as wary as I am of this starting episode.
Okay, so a girl who doesn’t particularly stand out for any reason, who gets encouragement from her more athletic best friend, wants to form a school idol group since she saw one perform on a screen somewhere and wants to shine just like they do. She tries to get members, seemingly running into an assortment of slightly strange girls at her all-girls school, but is stymied by the student council president, who haughtily tells her that she’s never going to be able to succeed.
But then we know that Honoka later manages to get more members to join, including winning over that disapproving student council president, Eli.
Why am I bringing up the plot of the original series? Because…it has been copied and pasted into this opening episode, minus the drama injected by the threat to Otonokizaka High School’s existence owing to falling enrollment. Here, the sole reason for forming the group is simply because the new enthusiastic lead girl, Chika Takami, wants to shine like the girls of µ’s did.
So, episode one introduces us to the girls who will eventually form this new school idol group, whose name is not yet hinted at other than in the eyecatch. At Uranohoshi Girls’ High School, Chika and her close friend You Watanabe, who is on the swim team, hand out flyers intended to gain members, but strike out for the most part, though plenty of weirdoes…ahem…fellow students who appear in the OP and ED make their appearances. While the original 9 were pretty much standard character constructions, it seems for this round, the writing team (headed by Jukki Hanada, who also handled series composition for the original show) opted for fetishes and oddballs: a girl who attaches zura to the end of all her sentences; a girl so shy that even touching her hand innocently will send her into a paroxysm of screaming in terror; an ojousama who speaks funny and commutes by helicopter; a third-year who has to help her injured father and thus cannot attend school regularly; said student council president who is adamantly opposed to the whole idea, but suspiciously knows a lot about what it takes to be a successful school idol…can we say tsundere?; and…wait for it…a chuunibyou.
Yes, you read that right. In fact, that was the exact moment this show lost my initial goodwill, goodwill that came out of deep affection for the original Love Live! Seriously, a delusional girl who calls herself Yohane? (Thus reads FUNimation’s subs), who just happens to be childhood friends with Ms. “Zura” (real name: Hanamaru)? I was almost tempted to stop the video right there and then…but I owe all of you at least a review of the full first episode. Could the show recover from that? They had plenty of time as it was only about seven minutes into the episode.
In order to form a group, of course, Chika is going to need someone who can write music. Honoka was blessed with the luck of Maki Nishikino being in the year below her. Chika just happens to run into a girl who is about to jump off a pier into the choppy waters of this seaside town, an act which Chika thinks is crazy at this time of year (I have to assume the waters are more dangerous in April for some reason, perhaps the temperature, perhaps something else). Of course, both end up in the ocean and then bond over Chika’s recounting her desire to become a school idol. The torch is passed in a very heavy-handed and completely unsubtle way from old to new as the girl she meets, Riko Sakurauchi, who is visiting from Tokyo, reveals that she is from Otonokizaka High School. It just happens that she is a budding pianist and composer to boot…but when Chika mentions school idols, she either feigns ignorance or honestly states that she has no idea what they are.
Umm…okay.
Of course, it is a composer that Chika needs most of all, so it’s rather convenient lucky that Riko transfers into Uranohoshi the next day (this was a forgone conclusion, however. Rewatch the beginning of the episode. I only realized this on a second pass myself). Still, success must not come that quickly (we need to spend several episodes getting the group together, otherwise how will we be able to drag things out into a second season?) and plot (slowing) requirements demand that Riko initially turn down the offer of becoming a school idol.
And scene.
As I said, the show basically lost me about seven minutes in when the chuunibyou appeared. The repetition of the firmly-opposed student council president opening sub-plot and the lunatic asylum from which some of the cast of other potential idol group members escaped made me wince. The directing by Kazuo Sakai (whose only previous directing credit I can find is for Mushi-Uta, a 2007 series I am unfamiliar with; he was an episode director on the original Love Live! and has a long resume including episode and unit directing positions for numerous series, so it’s not lack of experience here) is, frankly, uninspiring. There are numerous attempts to call back elements of the original series, including the spinning frame shot that accentuates Honoka’s run off the steps of Otonokizaka at the end of that series’ opening episode, here used for Riko Sakurauchi’s attempted running leap off the pier right before the eyecatch. It comes off as highly derivative and lacking in creativity. The pacing overall is not a huge problem, as characters are introduced more or less in sufficient time for the audience to form a first impression of each of them.
The music is…not really interesting just yet, neither the OP/ED themes nor the background score (which was very distinctive for the original series). The animation is quite polished, but the character designs, frankly, are a bit too familiar. If the personalities had been direct transplants, one could have considered this new show to be nothing more than straight up cloning. Instead, what we have is failed cloning from heavily contaminated DNA samples. Which leads us to the major failing of this opening episode…
The downfall in this successor series right now is in the writing. There is a complete abdication of creative responsibility as it relies upon largely the same initial plot points, minus the threat to the continuing existence of the school (which was actually a great dramatic hook, regardless of how far-fetched it was). The uncertainty that hangs over whether Aqours will come into existence or not does not have anywhere the same force as it did for µ’s in the original (and is not actually there to start with, as Chika has voiceover monologues at the start and finish which reveal everything, all of this, to have been for all intents and purposes a flashback, recounting the initial steps which took place before the already accomplished formation of her idol group; her narration is from a future where the group already exists). Instead, the only real attempts to differentiate this show from its predecessor are in its being set way out in the boonies (as opposed to ultra-urban Tokyo—though the new setting does not, itself, really stand out in any positive way so far) and by making several of the girls nothing more than mere fetish characters, whose weirdness is meant to be endearing and memorable.
For me, it doesn’t work. Not even our leader, Chika, works for me. While Honoka’s relentless drive forward and naïveté could sometimes be a bit annoying, she won me over (as she likely won everyone over, in-show and in the real world) through her strength of will and determination. Chika feels far more shallow, an echo of Honoka but minus that iron will and drive that was admirable (the original series’ greatest weak point was when Honoka temporarily lost that drive). Chika really, really wants to be an idol, but…why? “I want to shine.” That’s nice…why do you want to shine? “Because I want to be more than just a normal boring schoolgirl who would be Girl C in most other shows.”
Eh, whatever.
Self-improvement is a laudable goal, but just wanting to be the same as someone else, which is essentially what Chika wants, is rather shallow. The writers realized that with the original Love Live when they decided that µ’s had to end. If they had simply graduated the eldest three and brought in three new juniors who would fit into the mold…well, that’s exactly it, isn’t it? They would just be blanks thrown into a mold to come out as new cogs of the machine that is an idol group. We see that happen all the time in the real world with the major massive idol groups in Japan. Sadly, they seem to have unlearned their wisdom by creating Chika, who basically wants to be a member of µ’s, a seemingly normal girl who is able to shine (Question to viewers: how many of the members of µ’s were truly just “normal” (futtsu in Japanese)? That is, not possessing any talents or skills?).
Can it come back and wow me next week with something that is an actual hook? We shall see.
In Summary:
A new town, a new cast, a new determined young girl who wants to be a school idol star. But, the same old initial resistance from the school’s student council president and a complete lack of anything that really sets this new Love Live! story apart means that the biggest uphill climb the show faces is whether it can get my attention for the entire season. Throwing some weirdoes who are meant to be endearing, but end up being more off-putting, as new cast members isn’t going to cut it.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 12GB RAM, Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite
