Love Live! Season 2

Love Live! Season 2

Love Live! School Idol Project Season 2 anime series cover art
Love Live! School Idol Project Season 2

Overview

Since this is the review for the second season of the anime Love Live! School Idol Project, there will be spoilers for the first season included in this post.

Once again we find ourselves following the school idol group known as μ’s (Muse). After they failed to make it to the Love Live! in season one, the girls find out that a second Love Live! is already being planned. This time around they are determined to make it.

In case you’ve forgotten, μ’s is made up of nine members, three from each year at the high school they attend. The first years are Rin, Maki, and Hanayo, the second years are Honoka, Umi, and Kotori, and the third years are Eli, Nozomi, and Nico.

The first Love Live! used a ranking system to determine which school idol groups were good enough to compete, however, the system in place for the second one is a bit different. There are no more online rankings to determine which school idol groups can compete.

This time there are three different stages to the competition. First, each group puts on one performance, and the top four groups from each region get invited to perform at the regional stage. Then, the winner from each region is invited to participate in Love Live!

While the competition should, in theory, get harder as μ’s progresses through the competition, they’re actually in the same region as the previous champions A-RISE and so will have to compete against them at the regional level.

Spoilers

So what’s really different between season one and season two?

Other than the setup of the competition, there isn’t actually too much of a difference between the two seasons other than their predictability. In the first season, I was actually surprised that our main group, μ’s, didn’t even get to participate in the Love Live!

However, since the second season is the final season following these characters, I was sure that this time around they would not only make it to the Love Live!, but win it too. It just isn’t the kind of series that I would expect any other ending from.

Unfortunately, this means that the second season was more predictable and therefore less interesting to watch. As a viewer, I knew they were going to win each competition in this season so there was no real sense of suspense. Further, since they did win each competition there was no sense of shock that they lost.

That said, it still had an emotional ending and I don’t really think I would change anything about it.

Umi, Nozomi, and Honoka from the anime series Love Live! School Idol Project Season 2
Umi, Nozomi, and Honoka

Conclusion

So what does this all mean for the rating? In the end, I decided that the second season of Love Live! School Idol Project wasn’t quite as good as the first and so only gets a 6/10. It was a good end to the story of μ’s, but it lacked the twists I enjoyed from the first season.

As I’m sure I mentioned in my review of season one, I’ve been told that the Love Live! series gets better as it goes on so even though I liked this season slightly less than the first, I still have high hopes for the next chapter in the series: Love Live! Sunshine!!

For now, though, Sunshine!! isn’t one of the anime I’m expecting to watch in the near future since there are a lot of other series I want to watch first. However, I will definitely be watching it at some point and there will definitely be a review of it.

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