Lovely Live and μ's (Muse)

From the title you might be able to guess that this post is about Love Live! the anime.

It's been probably 3 years since I first heard about this strange venture into an idol group made up of assorted characters, cds, and 3DCG music videos. I'm not sure about the original reception of the MVs, but for me it was interesting but lukewarm at best. The CG was awkward and strange, sort of reminding me of MMDs or those really silly Pretty Cure ending themes. Although of course the quality of the CG should have been higher since it is produced by a professional company right?

Anyways enough about the past, I really didn't look into them to much, but I just saw them in a random magazine.

I recently completed the first 6 episodes of this anime so I'm up to date as of this post. I came in a bit sceptical because of the story, but hey I just completed AKB0048 and I love Idolm@ster so why not have another idol anime in the mix?

And though a tiny bit slow at first, I grew to actually enjoy this series somewhat. The premise of saving the school from closing really reminded me of Manabi Straight, even though that's through sheer positiveness and character instead of singing and dancing (even though there was a bit of that too). It's nice to see a group that is struggling a bit to achieve a goal while also becoming better in ways they would never expect. What starts as just saving the school could very well lead to national fame... but of course they obviously don't start that way.

For the 6 episodes, it's very much half characters introduction/induction into the club, and half building up their skills to be better and better. Not much to say about them other than that some of them can really singing, while there is at least one who has such an incredibly squeaky voice that it completely threw off the song that they sung for their first live. Of course this is just my opinion, but although I'm quite happy listening to some so-called "cutesy" voices of Yui from K-on (as an example), I was really off put by this. Perhaps it's just the combination of voices that throws it off.

I guess it also goes without saying that some of these girls can really sing quite well. I'm really liking the sound of the pianist girl, Maki Nishikono, plus the girl that somewhat reminds me of Mio from K-on, Umi Sonoda. I almost deluded myself into expecting a stronger vocal cast, but oh well I can ignore the squeaky voice for now.

All in all, I guess I'll continue watching to see where these girls are headed in the end. Will they save their school? Will they become top idol? Will the student council girls sound wonderful?


Also, this post is sorely lacking pictures as it is currently. Perhaps I'll edit in some screencaps of random moments later. And the title is also a reference to the concert DVDs I just finished watching of the great MomoClo 410 concert. I'll do a post on that sometime in the future.