Nico being seductive? Whatever next..?!
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:
The pre-preliminary publicity is beginning to kick into gear, and Honoka gets under way with an all-out declaration that μ’s are going to win their prelim round. As a statement of intent it’s hard to beat, but it’s a bout of optimism that not all members of the group would share with her. Ater all, they have to beat A-RISE. Doubts notwithstanding, though, everyone’s keen to make the best impression at the event – although Nozomi’s idea that the group should try a) an all-new song, and b) a love song at that, truly sets the birds amongst the pigeons. Especially as such a song doesn’t exist yet…
Now that Love Live has set into a more-or-less standard routine, you can see where this is going. A moment of panic while the girls realise what they’re letting themselves in for (and a few of the members voicing doubts that this is a good idea at all, leading to the episode’s darker moments), some decent comedy while they all play out the love-themed moments they’ll need to know about to make the song themes work, before they all come together for the triumphant performance at the end.
And that’s more or less how it plays out in practice, too. No triumphant performance this episode, it’s true, (we’ve got the episode count to play with to drag that out a little yet), but we do have Nico trying to be sultry / seducive, fears of defection, late-night movies, and ye olde writing block when it comes to writing the new song. The only surprises here are in precisely how the show plays the comedy card – something it always does effectively and entertainingly – and in how serious in tone the story gets.
In general, the ups and downs that the characters will go through are clear to see – but y’know, that’s not something that I would ever hold against the series. By now, the personalities of the characters follow certain lines – I don’t like some of them, true, but I know how they tick, and there’s a satisfaction to be had from seeing them come together in their disparate ways and pulling together in the end. That’s where a lot of the fun of this episode comes from, sombre in tone as it sometimes is, and it undeniably works, even if you’re left hanging at the end on the resolution.
In Summary:
The result: another entertaining bundle from the anime world’s most relentlessly positive people. Even if they sometimes don’t seem that way. Keeping up the usual standard, and still worth watching.
Content Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 27” Apple iMac, 2.9GHz Core i5, 32GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.9
