Blow the girls a big KISS…
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:
It’s Halloween, and both μ’s and A-RISE have been invited to perform at the local festival. It’s also given the girls an idea: changing their look to improve their “impact”, and try and keep one step ahead of the competition. And get themselves a little positive press in advance of the next Love Live! round. Problem is, how to do about creating the “impact” they’d need to one-up A-RISE? For inspiration, it’s over to Gene Simmons, amongst others ~nya…
You can’t just change your style at the flick of a switch, no matter how easy A-RISE may make it look, but that doesn’t stop the girls from trying – in a variety of amusing and yet painfully embarrassing ways. From dressing up as members of the school’s various clubs, through pretending to be each other, to shamelessly cribbing of certain other well-known groups, nothing really seems to work.
All of which gives the girls the excuse to goof off, at least. What other story-advancing quality it has is up for debate (I’m betting: Not much). The lesson to be learnt is that there’s more to being an idol group than just trying for “impact”, but as always it takes a little while – and a decent amount of fun – for the message to sink into everyone. There’s more than the “impact” of your personalities – there’s your appearance or outfits, and the songs you perform. And what you learn along the way when you screw up.
To be honest, it’s all pretty entertaining stuff. It’s silly, taking what on the surface could be a sensible enough idea and overplaying it for all it’s worth, but in the context of this show it’s what you’d expect and it works really well.
In Summary:
Another enjoyable episode, then, and another new song to go along with it – which is just what we’ve come to expect from Love Live!. The day it starts taking itself too seriously is the day I get seriously disappointed. Light-hearted and simple fun.
Content Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 27” Apple iMac, 2.9GHz Core i5, 32GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.9