Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Live!
Name: Love Live! School Idol Project ラブライブ!
Sequel: Love Live! School Idol Project 2
Status: Complete
Episode: 13
Release Date (for eng subs): -
Summary:
Otonokizaka High School stands on the border of three cities: Akihabara—a pop culture mecca that's evolving by the minute; Kanda—a conservative, cultured city where history and tradition reign supreme; and Jinbo—a quiet area reserved for a more mature, sophisticated population. Amidst this culture clash, the school now faces closure due to the enrollment of fewer and fewer students.
With the school planning to close within three years, 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!"
Their goal is simple: Become an overnight sensation and use their nationwide media exposure to promote their school and bring in a wave of new students to the ailing area. A simple but solid plan, they figure. Naturally, they're nervous and wonder if this plan can really succeed, but for better or worse their new journey has begun...
"All we can ask for is just a tiny bit of support from you. We truly believe that with your help, we can change the world around us. We will make our dreams come true!"
Summary Source: NIS Americ
Personal Ratings: 2.5
Honestly, I don't like Idol type of animes. So I only started watching this anime when my friend told me to watch it. Turns out like it's like any other Idol anime out there.
I think that the thing that usually keeps me watching an anime, even though it's not nice; is the characters. So luckily this anime has a character I like. Honestly, by having so many members in a single group, of course they would have incorporated many different and extreme character so that there would at least be one that the viewers like. That was a smart move. However, they did run the risk of having personalities that people dislike to watch.
The huge factor about this anime that I didn't like was probably the level of reality of the anime. Honestly, after looking up to so many idol groups (mostly K-POP, SNSD anyone? keke) I obviously would like to know more about the procedure of how these idols work and how they get to be so successful, so that type of knowledge is really appealing to me. It is in this aspect that I think that this anime lacks a lot.
Firstly, the members of the group. I know that they want to have a balance between the year 1, 2 and 3, so that have 3 people from each level in the group. But I think choosing members from the different age groups randomly would have been a better idea. There are think when I think that some of the members of the group should have been older or younger. But since they didn't really make their age stand out, this wasn't really a big deal.
Secondly, getting popular. I know that they are trying to show extreme sides of the popularity of the idol group. Which probably led them to making the whole hall empty when they have their first performance, which in my opinion is not possible. As long as there are advertisement going on to let the word out about such a concert, (and not to mention that it's sort of a school event), there is no way, not even one student came to watch. It would have been a lot more realistic that some students who came to watch their performance didn't like it and started throwing garbage at them.
Thirdly, the starting. When they start to make new members, I actually liked that part, where the members all slowly start to join the group. Of course the best way to actually make this part more interesting is that the members that joined the group were of pure coincidence. However, in the first part of this procedure, I find that it was plain boring, to the point that I stopped watching and practically had to force myself into continue watching it. The slow start at the beginning really bugged me the whole time. It was really slow, and not to mention, irritating. Of course since the other members joined pretty quickly after the first one joined in, it ran a lot faster and was a lot more interesting.
As for their songs. I didn't really like how they didn't pick a main song for them to sing. It was kind of like new songs every single time they perform, of course this way they wouldn't be known for any song. But I have to say I like the first song they sang, start;dash.
I like their rival group; A-Rise. Of course every idol group has to have a rival. But when reality kicks in, I don't think it all possible that A-Rise, the top idol group, is to be their rival. I would have totally preferred it if for each arc there was a different rival group, where they slowly show their progress up the ladder of popularity. Of course they would have to constantly show their good connection to their past rival groups, or maybe pick one which their super close with. I'm sure that would have worked a lot better than have them suddenly picking a fight on the top idol group.
Boring, dumb and some really irritating parts, but there is still some interesting parts to this show that keeps you going. To me the 2nd season had a lot more interesting parts to it. I think it's partly because this season lacks the spread out focus on the different people in the idol group, they mainly only focus on the main girl.
Art Ratings: 3
Nice art. I think that the animation was quite good and smooth, not stiff.
For the character design, I think that making all of them contrasting from each other was good, but I think that it wasn't really enough to bring out the personality in each of the character. Only some character seem to have the perfect character design, not all.
As for the designs for the costume... I'll talk about that in detail in the 2nd season's review as this season doesn't really show case much costumes.
Recommended for:
Gender: Both
Age: 13 and above
My Ratings: PG-13
No comments:
Post a Comment