Love Live! Superstar!! 2nd Season

Season Overview

Love Live! Superstar!! 2nd Season (ラブライブ！スーパースター!!) is the sequel season of Love Live! Superstar!! It takes place during Kanon’s & the other Liella! members’ second year at Yuigaoka Girls’ High School. During this season, Liella! expands to include new members.

When it first aired, Superstar!! was unique among the Love Live! entries because Liella! only had 5 members. μ’s had 9 members in the original Love Live! Aqours had 9 members in Sunshine!! And the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club had 9 members at first.

It’s also important to note that those other entries in the series had specific group makeups. Not only did they all have 9 members, but they had 3 members from each grade level. There were 3 first-years, 3 second-years, and 3 third-years. That’s not the case with Liella! in Superstar!!

All 5 original members of Liella! were first-year students, now second-year students. So, this season is all about incorporating new students into the school idol club and Liella! That’s why, even though the season ends with Liella! having 9 members, it’s different from the other entries of the series.

There are 2 main phases to this season. In the first phase, the original members of Liella! are trying to find new members among the first-years. In my opinion, the second phase is the best part of the season. It focuses on the difficulty of integrating new members into the group.

Kanon, Chisato, Keke, Sumire, and Ren have a year’s worth of experience as school idols by this point. The first-years have no experience. So, the issue is how to get the first-years up to speed without lowering the bar for Liella! performances. Could forming 2 different groups be the best option?

New Liella! Members

The 4 new Liella! members are all first-year students. They are Kinako, Shiki, Mei, and Natsumi. Overall, these 4 are pretty good additions to the group. I don’t find any of them more annoying than Keke, so that’s a huge plus.

Kinako Sakurakouji is the first of the new members to join the school idol club. Before she joined, all the first-year students were too afraid to join. They all felt that the current members of Liella! were so good, that any new members would only weigh them down.

By joining, Kinako showed that this wasn’t entirely the case. Yes, she struggled to keep up with the other members of the group. But, the important part is that by joining, she lowered the barrier to entry for other first-years.

Shiki Wakana is the second new member to join the group. Appearance-wise, I don’t mind Shiki all that much. She has a fine design. But, I’m not a fan of her personality. She’s often emotionless and her “gimmick” is that she’s really into science. She builds all kinds of gadgets, which doesn’t always feel like it fits in with the rest of the series.

Mei Yoneme is Shiki’s childhood friend who joins the group shortly after Shiki. Of the two, Mei is the one who always wanted to be a school idol. But, until Shiki joined, Mei didn’t think she had what it took to stand alongside the members of Liella! on stage.

Natsumi Onitsuka is the final first-year student to join Liella! Originally, she had no intention of being a school idol herself. Instead, she’s a YouTuber who’s obsessed with money. She started hanging out with the members of Liella! so she could make money by posting behind-the-scenes videos of them online.

Wien Margarete & the Next Season

The antagonist of the season is Wien Margarete, a singer from Austria. Her goal is to defeat Liella! and win the Love Live! Competition so she can prove how much better she is than all the other school idols. Notably, Wien considers the Love Live! Competition to be beneath her.

There aren’t usually antagonists in the Love Live! series. Instead, there tend to be rival groups that the main group wants to defeat. For μ’s, it was A-RISE. For Aqours, it was Saint Snow. And for Liella! in the first season of Superstar!!, it was Sunny Passion.

Before Wien, Lanzhu Zhong from Nijigasaki Season 2 was the only Love Live! antagonist. And, in a lot of ways, Wien and Lanzhu are similar. They’re both solo artists who believe that group dynamics only serve to hold people back.

However, despite these two having a lot in common, they’re still very different. Lanzhu is a true school idol. She might have looked down on idol groups. But, she still wanted to be a school idol. Wien doesn’t care about school idols at all. She only wants to prove she’s better than them.

Now, the third season of Superstar!! has been confirmed. This is a little surprising because Liella! managed to win the Love Live! Competition at the end of this season. Normally, you’d think that would be the end of this entry in the series. But, the ending of this season also set the stage (pun intended) for Wien to join Liella!

My bet is that Wien does end up joining Liella!, bringing the group to 10 members. That’s still fewer members than the 12 the Nijigasaki School Idol Group currently has. But, there’s also no reason to believe Wien would be the only new member of the season.

Conclusion

Love Live! Superstar!! 2nd Season is a 6/10 from me. I enjoyed this season. The part focusing on the split between the first- and second-year students was a nice change of pace. That’s not an issue Love Live! has tackled before. But, this season still had things holding it back from being a 7.

Of particular note is how rushed the ending of the season felt. The Love Live! Competition itself only took up about half an episode. And it didn’t feel like the stakes were all that high. This is the Love Live! we’re talking about. It should be the highlight.

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