I had a bet with a good friend of mine; whoever could finish Love Live! (Both seasons and the movie) first wins, loser has to do this.
I think the bet started with us watching a lot of SiIvaGunner, who is known for using Snow Halation for his rips, and even does rips of Love Live songs, a few examples are listed here. We decided that it was the best idea to watch the source material, so we made a bet out of it.
Spoilers by the way as I start laying down what I think of this show.
I'm listening to Aishiteru Banzai! as I work on this post, which probably shows how much this show has actually impacted me. I'm not sure if impact is the right word for this, but this show was definitely more emotional than I thought it was going to be. I was expecting moe SoL and memes, but I got emotional sadface time at the end, and I was not expecting that. More specifically I'm talking about the graduation episode from S2, I started to feel super sad around that point, which is odd because I usually don't feel sad for these sort of things, but this one somehow hit (I just realized that the Aishiteru Banzai! from the graduation episode is different from the normal one). I really enjoyed the show a lot more than I was expecting,
In fact, Love Live! is the second show I teared up on, the first show being Gurren Lagann One of my friends actually was wondering how this 'meme-fest' show actually made us feel empty inside after watching it. The friend whom I made the bet with actually made this comment and I think it fits well as to why I actually felt emotional towards this show
"Because the characters are likable and you get attached and then they get sad and so do you it's called good writing"The main drive for this show is its characters. The characters were all diverse and likable, and there were many episodes dedicated to a character so that they can flesh them out, and other episodes where you learn a bit about a character that in retrospect is kind of useless, but it helps you to understand them more. It also helps that there is a lot of info about each individual character. I'll use Maki as an example, she is 15 years old and comes from a rich family, which is standard, but the creators more more time fleshing out this character, her blood type is AB, she likes tomatoes, her birthday is April 19. Most of these things are not covered in episodes, yet you can still learn so much about them, it's clear that the creators took time to make characters who are all different and unique. You also get to learn all the relationships between all of these characters, who all interact differently with each-other, which I found great.
The ending was emotional.
It was really hard for me not to tear up a bit during the last 3 episodes of Love Live! Somehow after learning a lot of things about the characters, their fun times, interactions, victories, etc. it had to end somehow. In particular what really got me was the fact that they decided to disband μ's got me. I think it was the realization that these 9 people I got to know and learn throughout the series are the reason I watched it, and without those 9 people, the group would not have the same dynamic. Episode 12 was incredible, I really liked the speech before they sang, then they gave their all and left the stage, which at this point was typical, there was always a idol dance number at the end, but then the credits started to show, and everyone was shouting "Encore!" Then they started dancing to the OP in the first season, which was brilliant. Episode 13 hit me like a brick, the graduation episode reminded me of the last episode of Angel Beats! the way it was shot reminded me of it, plus they both had the same emotional aspect to it. When Honoka started to sing Aishiteru Banzai, I started to feel the tears, the version they sang was made for the graduating class, so it had a lot of moving on lyrics in it. A brilliant thing that they did was slowly made everyone sing the song, then they would cut back to the graduating seniors from the group, all crying as they sing along, it was really well directed.
Final Thoughts
Yeah, it was a surprisingly great show, I did not expect much from this show, but I ended up enjoying myself a lot. This post is really jumbled up, but it's the first part of a three part series I'm doing with the show. The next part will be about how much I related to this show (there's actually a lot) and the final part will be an interview/review of the show with the person I made the bet with, that will be a lot of fun
"C'mon, let's sing our hearts out. We didn't come this far for nothing, Right? let's sing!"
-Honoka Kousaka.
And as Always
Keep on Watching
(Wow I haven't said that in a long time)
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