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So I went and got that first season of Love Live done.
As a side note, I should explain that the reason I've just suddenly gotten into this rather than something else of its ilk is pretty irrational. Simply put, an artist I really like now does it over Touhou and so I felt keen to give it a proper check. My Tumblr dashboard might also have had something to do with it.
EDIT: Totally forgot to mention, the animation on the music videos is superb. But then what else did you think they'd spend their animation money on?
Though Love Live is all about the music, and it has this anime, I got into it for neither of those reasons. I was into the characters and so they're mostly what I'll be judging here.
If I'm honest, from looks at fan art of late I'd already established my two clear favourites. They both remain my clear favourites, but behind them I couldn't have possibly expected who I liked and who I didn't.
I suppose I'd better start with those favourites. By rights, my absolute favourite should be Maki. At times she just looks gorgeous and her singing voice is the best by miles...her normal voice, not so much, but w/e. Annoyingly she's got a pretty irritating tsundere-light personality that does her no favours - and which probably has made her the most popular all by itself somehow (seriously, how does the tsundere personality appeal at all?). But it doesn't matter because she's so sweeeeeeet.
Despite this, she's not my actual favourite. That accolade rests with Eli.
It's hard to explain why this is so. Actually, without making me look mad, it's nigh-impossible...Somehow though, she has that little extra something that just makes her so much better than the rest of the cast. As expected she was a bitch at the start, but as it turned out, this was a good thing...more on that later. She is also the second president I know with an annoying catchphrase, after Hanekawa Tsubasa...who I really like.
So that leaves the other seven and I'll say them in the order they're listed on TVTropes - possibly the order in which they're main characters. (They put Eli second which seems about right realistically.)
First is Honoka and oh my ****ing god what a despicable character she is. How utterly annoying she is from the very start and how unfortunate it be that she is the main character. The quality of the franchise would be improved immeasurably without her being the main...but then again it wouldn't have gone quite the way it did if she wasn't. Still. I was expecting her to be average, a non-relevance and just there to be the main character and do the right things at the right time. She did everything wrong. Her voice was also all wrong and doesn't sound good in the songs either. Everything about her annoyed me and frankly it's a testament to the rest of the anime that I still think it's very good despite her presence. Hate her.
Kotori is rather better. She's got a cute voice but it's not stupid. It doesn't sound good in songs either though. Ultimately she's rather inoffensive and there's nothing wrong with that.
Umi was a very good surprise. Her no-nonsense approach is super cool and she's simply an all around good person. Her voice is one of the best whether she's singing or not. And I've gotta say, her reaction to Honoka quitting was perfect. I'd wanted someone to knock some sense into her for so long and "You're the worst!" is totally correct. +rep for Umi.
Rin isn't someone you see a lot. Her cat-like stuff doesn't really add anything, I think her voice is really kinda odd on both counts and she's also, dare I say it, rather ugly.
Her mate Hanayo was the biggest surprise - and much better. I was expecting her to be the most irrelevant but she ended up being even more stupidly cute than she looked. She's always pretty funny as well and even though her voice is ridiculously high I'm used to that sort of thing now. She reminds me a lot of Uiharu out of Railgun actually. Only I thought I'd like her from the start...
Nozomi is just really silly on every level. Also a little bit weird and creepy plus the way she was doing **** with u's behind Eli's back makes me wonder if she really is #LoyalToHerHoes. Still, she's hardly harmless in the grand scheme of things. But sometimes she just seems like comic relief. A little less than I expected given that she was the one I really knew about before I got into Love Live. (Seriously I had so much art of her long before I thought about getting into her, it's ridiculous)
That leaves Nico and I'd heard that she divided a lot of opinions. I mostly thought she was little more than an annoyance, but I just did what everyone does in the anime and plain simply ignored her. So she was mostly an irrelevance.
Now onto the less important stuff. The anime itself was totally fine but it started running out of life after episode 8 - which was of course when Eli joined. Needless to say, her antagonism over everything made the first half of the season that much more intense and I dare say it kept the story interesting single-handedly. That's something about her, I guess. Afterwards it just seemed all a bit like a soap. Drama for drama's sake. Still, I liked it.
The music was pretty much as you'd expect, your basic J-Pop, but since it's the center of the show I actually paid attention to each of their individual voices, as you might have noticed. Maki is obviously the best by a country mile, but Umi is also superb and, if you manage to catch the two seconds of solo Eli gets at the end, hers is great too. Everyone else is either too high-pitched for comfort (Honoka, Kotori, Hanayo, Nico) or too weird (Rin, Nozomi).
So I'd say it's made a very good first impression. I give it an 8 with my lenient anime marking. Though it might be difficult right now, I'll find some time to watch the second season, then the movie. What I do from there, we'll see...
If I'm honest, from looks at fan art of late I'd already established my two clear favourites. They both remain my clear favourites, but behind them I couldn't have possibly expected who I liked and who I didn't.
I suppose I'd better start with those favourites. By rights, my absolute favourite should be Maki. At times she just looks gorgeous and her singing voice is the best by miles...her normal voice, not so much, but w/e. Annoyingly she's got a pretty irritating tsundere-light personality that does her no favours - and which probably has made her the most popular all by itself somehow (seriously, how does the tsundere personality appeal at all?). But it doesn't matter because she's so sweeeeeeet.
Despite this, she's not my actual favourite. That accolade rests with Eli.
It's hard to explain why this is so. Actually, without making me look mad, it's nigh-impossible...Somehow though, she has that little extra something that just makes her so much better than the rest of the cast. As expected she was a bitch at the start, but as it turned out, this was a good thing...more on that later. She is also the second president I know with an annoying catchphrase, after Hanekawa Tsubasa...who I really like.
So that leaves the other seven and I'll say them in the order they're listed on TVTropes - possibly the order in which they're main characters. (They put Eli second which seems about right realistically.)
First is Honoka and oh my ****ing god what a despicable character she is. How utterly annoying she is from the very start and how unfortunate it be that she is the main character. The quality of the franchise would be improved immeasurably without her being the main...but then again it wouldn't have gone quite the way it did if she wasn't. Still. I was expecting her to be average, a non-relevance and just there to be the main character and do the right things at the right time. She did everything wrong. Her voice was also all wrong and doesn't sound good in the songs either. Everything about her annoyed me and frankly it's a testament to the rest of the anime that I still think it's very good despite her presence. Hate her.
Kotori is rather better. She's got a cute voice but it's not stupid. It doesn't sound good in songs either though. Ultimately she's rather inoffensive and there's nothing wrong with that.
Umi was a very good surprise. Her no-nonsense approach is super cool and she's simply an all around good person. Her voice is one of the best whether she's singing or not. And I've gotta say, her reaction to Honoka quitting was perfect. I'd wanted someone to knock some sense into her for so long and "You're the worst!" is totally correct. +rep for Umi.
Rin isn't someone you see a lot. Her cat-like stuff doesn't really add anything, I think her voice is really kinda odd on both counts and she's also, dare I say it, rather ugly.
Her mate Hanayo was the biggest surprise - and much better. I was expecting her to be the most irrelevant but she ended up being even more stupidly cute than she looked. She's always pretty funny as well and even though her voice is ridiculously high I'm used to that sort of thing now. She reminds me a lot of Uiharu out of Railgun actually. Only I thought I'd like her from the start...
Nozomi is just really silly on every level. Also a little bit weird and creepy plus the way she was doing **** with u's behind Eli's back makes me wonder if she really is #LoyalToHerHoes. Still, she's hardly harmless in the grand scheme of things. But sometimes she just seems like comic relief. A little less than I expected given that she was the one I really knew about before I got into Love Live. (Seriously I had so much art of her long before I thought about getting into her, it's ridiculous)
That leaves Nico and I'd heard that she divided a lot of opinions. I mostly thought she was little more than an annoyance, but I just did what everyone does in the anime and plain simply ignored her. So she was mostly an irrelevance.
Now onto the less important stuff. The anime itself was totally fine but it started running out of life after episode 8 - which was of course when Eli joined. Needless to say, her antagonism over everything made the first half of the season that much more intense and I dare say it kept the story interesting single-handedly. That's something about her, I guess. Afterwards it just seemed all a bit like a soap. Drama for drama's sake. Still, I liked it.
The music was pretty much as you'd expect, your basic J-Pop, but since it's the center of the show I actually paid attention to each of their individual voices, as you might have noticed. Maki is obviously the best by a country mile, but Umi is also superb and, if you manage to catch the two seconds of solo Eli gets at the end, hers is great too. Everyone else is either too high-pitched for comfort (Honoka, Kotori, Hanayo, Nico) or too weird (Rin, Nozomi).
So I'd say it's made a very good first impression. I give it an 8 with my lenient anime marking. Though it might be difficult right now, I'll find some time to watch the second season, then the movie. What I do from there, we'll see...
As a side note, I should explain that the reason I've just suddenly gotten into this rather than something else of its ilk is pretty irrational. Simply put, an artist I really like now does it over Touhou and so I felt keen to give it a proper check. My Tumblr dashboard might also have had something to do with it.
EDIT: Totally forgot to mention, the animation on the music videos is superb. But then what else did you think they'd spend their animation money on?
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