YOHANE THE PARHELION has ended but the Love Live! catch up continues for me. As you can see, the next show on the list is the first season of Love Live! Superstar!!, the fourth iteration in the franchise. I’ve thought about covering this one in episode reviews for some time and earlier this year, I actually watched the first episode and had a draft of this respective blog post. Ultimately, I put the series on hold once I decided to finish Nijigasaki Season 1 first and after I was done with that season, I got pre-occupied with covering Sunshine!! and YOHANE. At long last, I’m finally getting around to this darn show. As often is the case with retroactive coverage, I’m only promising the entire first season for now and how I feel about it will dictate if I go into Season 2 (as well as Season 3 when it airs). That said, I am pretty deep into Love Live! at this point so the usual disclaimer might sound a little moot in this case.
The prospect of Love Live! Superstar!! is a bit strange to me. Sunshine!! came out once School Idol Project ran its course and likewise, Nijigasaki came out after Sunshine!! ended. It was one generation at a time and that’s a sensible route for any franchise to take with its releases. This is not the case with Superstar!!, however. It was announced before Nijigasaki began airing and while it is technically the fourth iteration in the franchise, it has been running concurrently with its predecessor. It’s an odd and risky arrangement though I suppose from a business perspective, marketing two installments of a successful and popular franchise is potentially more lucrative than working with just one. And if both shows end up being good, then fair enough.
Superstar begins by introducing us to Kanon Shibuya (Sayuri Date), a Tokyo resident beginning her first year in high school. She has orange hair so there’s a 99.9% chance that she is the main protagonist of the show. Kanon is a talented singer but she also has a bad case of stage fright. Because of the latter trait, Kanon fails the entrance exam for the music program of her school of choice, Yuigaoka Private Girls High School, and she gets enrolled in the school’s general curriculum instead. Demoralized by her failure, Kanon is begrudged to pick up singing again. On her first day at school however, she meets Keke Tang (Liyuu), a half-Japanese and half-Chinese transfer student from China who wants to start a school idol club at Yuigaoka. Keke overhears Kanon’s singing on their way to school and she becomes so enamored with it, that she immediately wants Kanon to join her prospective club.
Right from the start, the two have a fun dynamic with each other. Keke appears to be overly energetic one in the cast and poor Kanon is the straight man who simply can’t handle it (at least for now). Keke also has a fun gimmick where she defaults into Mandarin when she gets too excited so hilariously, this is the language she uses when she first talks to Kanon. Suffice to say, the two don’t start off on the right foot and a couple of silly chase scenes ensue as a result.
Once Keke clears the air, Kanon declines the invitation and instead tries to find someone else to join the club. When that reaches a dead end, Keke tells Kanon that she still wants her to be a school idol and she promises to help her overcome her state fright. At first, Kanon runs away but she soon comes back to take Keke up on her promise. It’s a pretty good bit of drama that gives a deeper layer to the relationship between the two characters. Even though Keke just met Kanon, she recognizes that the latter loves singing and she genuinely wants her to pursue it. Obviously, she’d prefer it if Kanon is a school idol alongside her but the prospect would actually be ideal for Kanon since it’d force her to perform in front of crowds. Plus, being in a club together would make it easier for Keke to support Kanon and fulfill her promise.
The show briefly introduces the other major characters. First, we have Chisato Arashi (Nako Misaki), Kanon’s childhood friend and a talented dancer in Yuigaoka’s music program. The second is Sumire Heanna (Naomi Payton), Kanon and Keke’s classmate who appears to be a bit haughty and is implied to be famous to some degree. Last but not least, we have Ren Hazuki (Nagisa Aoyama), the daughter of Yuigaoka’s founder who currently has a low opinion on school idols. Obviously, these three girls will join the school idol club. It’s just a matter of when. I’m going to go on a whim and assume Chisato joins first, followed by Sumire, and then Ren.
You may have noticed a couple of changes with Superstar‘s main cast compared to previous Love Live! series. While more characters apparently join the inevitable club in Season 2, Superstar!! starts off with a cast of five idols as opposed to the standard roster of nine. Also, all five main characters in Superstar!! appear to be first year students. It’s not like the past three series where the idols are evenly split across all three high school grades. To be honest, shakeups such as these are to be expected. By the time Superstar!! premiered, Love Live! has been running for a little over a decade and it’s had three anime series. You definitely need to mix something up for the fourth installment. There’s potential to be had with these changes as well. Having only five characters to work with makes it easier to give even amounts of attention to each of them. Making them all first years could make it interesting should the story get to the next school year and introduce underclassmen to the cast after they’ve spent a year being school idols on their own.
Being the first episode of the series, we of course get the obligatory MV at the end. Oddly enough, the MV features all five main characters performing together. I’ve long accepted that Love Live! takes liberties with the continuity when the music starts playing (and that’s putting it mildly) but this is a weird move. Like, imagine if Sunshine’s first insert song had all nine members of Aqours, before any buildup and development is spent to band them all together. It’s a big deal when everyone performs together for the first time so I’m stunned to see Superstar do it from the get go, before its cast unites and before the club actually begins to exist. I would’ve preferred it if the episode opted for a solo performance by Kanan or a duet by her and Keke. Regardless, the song is catchy and in-universe, it’s a good excuse to have Kanan performing out in public and make her realize that she can overcome her stage fright.
Watch Love Live! Superstar!! on Crunchyroll and Funimation.
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