It’s showtime…
What They Say:
Otonokizaka High School is planning to close within three years. However, nine female students come together with one thing in mind—form a pop idol group to revive the school’s popularity and keep it from shutting down. ‘In order to protect our beloved school, there’s only one thing we can do…become pop stars!’
The Review:
One training trip later, and the girls have a new song, new outfits and a new routine. They’re even practicing – in between stints of browsing the Love Live website & catching up on the contest’s rules. It’s not just song and outfits that the girls need to worry about – they’ll have to live-stream their performance, and we all know how well technology tends to work in a pinch. No-one said being a school idol was easy – and that’s before stagefright and having to compete against local ‘megagroup’ A-RISE are taken into account. Once the preparations are all done, it’s time to take to the stage…
A-RISE have been keeping an eye on μ’s, as well, which leads to a rather fun little meeting between the two groups which does a good job of turning μ’s erstwhile rivals into real characters – a necessary thing if, as seems likely, this season is going to hang on competition between the two groups. (Also makes it easier to sell A-RISE merchandise, I suspect, but moving quickly onwards…) It also points out to Honoka and friends just how seriously they need to take their preparations.
All this leads up, of course, to both groups making their prelim round appearances, which is the highlight of the episode with both groups putting in expectedly good performances. If there’s a problem here, it’s that they’ve maybe made A-RISE too nice. Taste in music is subjective, of course, but I’d say their song is better than μ’s, while the introduction given to the three girls shows them to be a lot, well, nicer than the impression given of them in the snippets we saw of them in season one. Suddenly it seems okay to root for them instead of our heroines. Make your choice…
Through all this, of course, runs the show’s usual cheery and optimistic tone. The girls are having fun, whatever pressure they’re under; no-one’s being mean or nasty to anyone else; and I found it impossible to lose the smile on my face throughout the episode. Love Live! is certainly one of the best ways of dealing with any lingering beginning-of-the-week grumpiness you may have.
In Summary:
So far, this season of Love Live! is shaping up to be better than the first. There’s a prerequisite that idol shows and a constant positive attitude both appeal to you, and fair enough that’s not going to be everyone, but as an example of fun, mostly-harmless and downright enjoyable anime, this is hard to beat at the moment.
Content Grade: A-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 27” Apple iMac, 2.9GHz Core i5, 32GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.9
