First Impression – Love Live! Season 2
μ’s is back!
I never did finish blogging the first season of Love Live due to Hawt getting a little busy around the middle of it (…he put everything together and did all of the work, I just kind of added in my thoughts). However, I’m here with Highway now! Yaaay.
Welcome to the Love Live! Second Season First Impression! (Yeah, I just thought that was a funny phrase.) Doing First Impressions for sequels is always a little different than a brand new show because, for the most part, everyone already knows what their first impressions of the show are. But let’s see how Kara and I thought this new season started out with my favorite school idol group.
Making a Good Return
Is Honoka Crazy?
Highway // I wasn’t kidding up there when I said that μ’s is my favorite school idol group. I absolutely love their music, and have since I first heard it in the opening of the first series. In the 15 months since, I’d say that their songs are probably one-fourth of what I listen to regularly, and I have more than just a handful of favorites. I’m planning to make a post about the music (it was one of the early things I was hoping to do when I started writing at Metanorn, but never got to it) this season while it’s topical, but just know that I love all the different styles of music they perform. You also might have noticed that my new banner and icon are Umi.
Someone has a very wrong idea of what it means to be seitokaichou
It seems that not much time has passed in between season one and season two here. We’re now in fall, it seems, and after ‘saving’ the school, which is announced right off the bat, they announce next year’s new Student Council President (pretty early changeover, you think?). I’d ask who thought it would be a good idea for Honoka to be the seitokaichou, but it’s pretty quickly stated that it was Eli who recommended her for the position. And thinking about it, it’s not the worst choice ever, although you’d have to think that there would be someone else who wanted to do it. And of course, now Honoka’s learning the lesson of how much work it is (although Eli proved it’s possible to be in μ’s and be the seitokaichou) and as always, Umi is there to keep her on it and Kotori is there to provide moral support.
Time for the Big Finish
Karakuri // Love Live kind of surprised me in the first season by having the girls not win and being more of cute girls doing things while occasionally doing idol things (since then, I’ve watched more idol anime and learned that this is kind of par for the course). The second season seems to have started with them not wanting to join the Love Live at all. …Which seems silly, considering that it’s the title of the show and all, but I guess they’ve already accomplished the school revival, which was the goal for becoming idols in the first place.
Umi lets Honoka know about how much work there is
I like the majority of the characters in this anime, but there are others that tend to annoy me from time to time. Nozomi has suddenly moved to my “like” list due to more consistent voice acting, but Honoka’s indecisiveness kind of grated on me in the first bit. Honestly, she seems like the last person who should be in charge of a large group of people due to her flightiness. Though I suppose that if they’re going to have anyone be the student council president, it makes the most sense that the leader gets the role. Anyways, back to her not wanting to join the competition, it took forever to reach a decision on it, and her reasoning behind it was more focused on Honoka’s personal problems than what the rest of the team wanted. The poor sempai are leaving soon, after all. So maybe this wasn’t the most enjoyable opening episode in terms of plot. However, the characters all seem to be doing well and other than Honoka not wanting to participate, it was nice to see them again.
The manageable first year group + Nico
Highway // I think it’s good that they tend to split up the group of 9 into smaller, more manageable groups. Nico and the 3 first-years make a good group of mostly comic relief, since Nico’s less mature than any of them and Maki and Nico play off each other so well, and the trio of Honoka, Umi, and Kotori match up well with Nozomi and Eli for more serious topics, as well as the boke / tsukkomi with Umi and Honoka. And apart from Honoka being the president, there’s another serious topic: the new Love Live!
The more mature group… that somehow Honoka is in
Going into this season, I was wondering how they were going to work Love Live! into the series with this group, because as they make a big deal of, 1/3 of the members are graduating in a couple months, and can’t really be school idols after that. So it’s convenient that they moved the next contest up to the end of winter and that they got rid of the rankings (although I thought μ’s would have been moving up the rankings since their re-debut). Sure, it’s transparently plot driven, but you don’t really care in a show like this. But even with all these amazing coincidences, Honoka balks at the idea, mainly because she’s afraid of causing trouble for everyone, even the whole school, if she pushes too hard again. But we can’t let that drag out too far, so she comes around by the end of the episode and we’re off to the races.
A dose of reality from her imouto
More of the Same
Honoka finally gets on board
Highway // As expected, the show’s pretty much exactly the same feel again. The main dance sequence in this episode was the season’s OP song, played at the end of the episode, and it shows the same style and flair that most of the performances do, and the same mix of CG dancing and hand-drawn closeups that all of the performance videos show. I think I’ve figured out the two main issues that make them look different: necks and hair. The CG necks are just a bit narrower, and the CG hair isn’t nearly as active, which leads to just looking “different” when they swap back and forth. The song was good, and hopefully they put a few good songs in the series again, because some of my favorite songs of theirs are from the first series (No Brand Girls! also has the best coreography of any of their videos).
Like I said, the voice acting certainly seems more consistent this time around. Nozomi and Maki don’t sound like completely different people whenever they speak, and I’m definitely way less annoyed by Nozomi’s voice because of it (…I always pretended to overlook Maki’s because I’m fond of her singing voice. I know, I’m terrible with my biases). The animation budget seems to have been improved too, maybe. I can’t really remember how the movement looked in the first series other than that one really awkward steep hill of death that either Rin or Hanayo walked down once. …I’m pretty sure it was Hanayo. Anyways, I can’t wait to see what new songs and dances Muse comes up with this time around. The new one that I assume that they’ll be using for the OP looks pretty cute. Especially the outfits~.
So a good restart to Love Live! and hopefully we get more of what made the first season so good. It looks good so far, with enough new pressure from Honoka’s position as seitokaichou to make it interesting. I expect the same kind of can-do attitudes to prevail, mild tribulations, and successes and failures as they move into the Love Live! contest and the rest of their school year.
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Ah, the most unlikely to lead is the one that shall lead them.
I loved that musical number, and I don’t care what you seay, they could do that all the time. When will we ever get a chance to get singin’ llamas?! No. I kid ;-P
Yep, a very good start to the new show. It’s just enough of what we loved with the first outing, and enough changes to make good on a new story.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I like musicals, but the problem for me would be that they break up the flow of the show, and put the brakes on any plot movement. And they have to be integrated into the story pretty well or they just seem like they’re tacked on. Doing the occasional song as a planned event works better for me in the long run.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
And while Honoka would seem to be, at first blush, a terrible pick for seitokaichou, I think that she actually has a lot of qualities that would serve her well in the task. No, she’s not the most diligent person, but she is someone who (now) sticks to stuff and gets it done.
POWUH: Occasional (51-75) with 51 comments
The random school musical number had me rolling. It was absolutely silly and I love it. Pretty much evokes those classic spontaneous musicals and I always enjoyed those. At least before Glee ran it to the ground
I love all the little references to the franchise. Like how Honoka tossing the Mic into the air is exactly like how she did it on my favorite Love Live PV.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
They are very self-referential. I was mentioning to Karakuri that the individual cutaways in (what will be) the OP sequence are references to the art that came with the Original Music CD’s between last season and this season (with Maki in the “windiest room ever” and Eli in a bikini).
I wouldn’t exactly agree that Mogyuuto is a favorite PV, it’s probably my least favorite, actually. I just think it’s too static, and like the dynamism of the others, especially Wonderful Rush. 🙂
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
…Sometimes I say intelligent things when tired. Other times, it comes out “the windiest room ever” xD
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I thought it a pretty perfect description. 😀
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I don’t even get the reference but I feel inclined to use it…Heck, I think I may live in that room, sometimes.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
So Love Live is back for a second round. Alright then. For a moment, I thought there’d be a considerable time but it didn’t turn out that way since there’s already a deadline for the group to stay together. Face palming was imminent after seeing Honoka being nominated student council president. Of all the choices, they picked the most carefree. However, she showed an increase in maturity for her selfless attempt to leave the Love Live tryouts to better herself for the student body.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Yeah, they can’t move too far into the future, because they don’t want to trim off 1/3 of the group.
POWUH: 500-599 with 519 comments
Whoooo! Love Live is back! 😀
When Honoka came out as the president…I was not expecting that at all. Honestly, I cannot see her her student council material at all. Umi maybe. Honoka…not so much. >_> Her indecisiveness this whole episode also annoyed the crap out of me.
Also, did everyone’s eyes get smaller? 0_o Their faces seemed a bit off to me while watching the episode.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
There’s a place for, if not necessarily a ‘figurehead’, a person who is much better at devising goals and inspiring others to be the leader of an organization. And I think Honoka did show that she has those qualities that a leader should have. They went through that in the first season when they were trying to pick who should be the leader of mu’s. Even though Honoka isn’t the most reliable, she’s the person who should be the leader.
So even though it’s a surprising choice when you first see it, when you think about it, and then learn that Eli was the one who nominated her for it, it makes a bit more sense.
I don’t really think that the models changed much. Didn’t really seem much different.