I gave the original Love Live! School Idol Project a whirl back in college, around the same time I got addicted to the School Idol Festival game (RIP). I watched ten episodes of the first season but for whatever reason, I didn’t finish the whole series. I later tried Nijigasaki when it premiered and as some of you may know, I’ve spent much of last year catching up on the franchise in episode reviews. My original plan with Love Live! was that if I stuck with covering it in episode reviews, I’d start with Nijigasaki‘s first season and continue from there. Anything before that I’d likely cover in series reviews. However, I ended up covering Sunshine!! in episode reviews as preparation for Yohane and I realized that once I’m up to date with Nijigasaki and Superstar!!, the only mainline series I haven’t covered is School Idol Project. So as a bonus, I’m wrapping up this 90+ blog post journey with the original series. It is funny to cover this last but that’s how the cookie has crumbled.
School Idol Project begins with Otonokizaka Academy, a high school located in Tokyo, announcing that they’ll be shutting down after all of its current students graduate, due to a lack of applicants. This comes as a huge shock to our main protagonist, Honoka Kosaka (Emi Nitta), and I do mean shock as she literally faints and briefly goes into denial over the news. Along with her best friends, Umi Sonoda (Suzuko Mimori) and Kotori Minami (Aya Uchida), Honoka wonders if there is any way the school can be saved. A light bulb lights up when Honoka checks out UTX, the prestigious school her sister Yukiho (Nao Toyama) wants to attend, and she learns about its school idol group, A-Rise. Noticing A-Rise’s popularity, Honoka decides that she and her friends should become school idols and save Otonokizaka from shutting down.
It’s obvious from the fact that this is the very first series but yes, this is where Love Live! started the whole “school idols save the school” plot that’s become traditional for the franchise (the only series that doesn’t do it is Nijigasaki). I’m curious to see how this will fare. Without spoiling too much, I thought Sunshine‘s approach was good but even as someone who didn’t finish the original series, it felt like Sunshine!! was retreading old ground. Meanwhile, it’s barely a thing in Superstar!!, so much so that I don’t know why the series even bothered with it. I imagine this plot worked in School Idol Project. Otherwise, I’ll have to wonder why the franchise kept doing it. I do think it has potential. It fits with the school idol concept, it offers a high stake to the plot, and it gives us something to root for besides the characters simply doing well as school idols.
Right from the get go, I like the initial trio. They have a good mix of personalities, with Honoka being the cheeriest and most carefree of the three while Umi is more serious and Kotori falls somewhere in the middle. Subsequent Love Live! series have an initial roster of their own and I like all of them but I don’t think it’s nailed variety as perfectly as this original trio here. There’s also some good conflict between the three over Honoka’s school idol pitch. Umi thinks it’ll be another one of many ideas Honoka randomly has and never follows through on but she struggles to shrug it off entirely and Kotori points out that everything they’ve done with Honoka has been fun and worthwhile at the very least. After seeing Honoka practice some dance moves, Umi realizes her friend is honest about her idea and she decides to join prospective school idol group with Kotori. It’s a solid bit of drama to start the series on and it makes great use of each of the three girls’ personalities.
We briefly get introduced to the rest of the main cast. During her visit to UTX, Honoka runs into a presumed school idol enthusiast named Nico Yazawa (Sora Tokui). Parallel to that, we see two friends, Hanayo Koizumi (Yurika Kubo) and Rin Hoshizora (Riho Iida) join the crowd in watching a recorded performance by A-Rise. Later, Honoka has a chance encounter with Maki Nishikino (Pile), a student with a passion for both singing and playing the piano. The most prominent two are third years Eli Ayase (Yoshino Nanjo) and Nozomi Tojo (Aina Kusuda), Otonokizaka’s student council president and vice-president respectively. These two are trying to keep the school afloat to meager success. When Honoka tries to get a school idol club approved, Eli rejects it and she advises Honoka and her friends not to waste their time with saving Otonokizaka. Having seen the other series, I realize now that Eli is the first case of a now long running archetype: the student council president who opposes the existence of a school idol club but has a 99% chance of joining them down the line.
Episode 1 offers three insert songs. I think that’s actually the most a Love Live! series premiere has ever done. A-Rise performs a song via a PV for UTX. It would be weird if Honoka got inspired without any music to go along with it but I completely forgot that A-Rise performs on the very first episode of the show. That’s record time compared to the other rival groups in the franchise. Maki performs one song during her introduction; it’s an nice solo and piano rendition of a song recorded by the main cast before the anime aired. Bookending the first episode is a peppy pop song performed by the initial trio. I’ve come to the opinion that the first insert song is almost never one of the best or most memorable songs in their respective series but this one is pretty catchy.
One thing that really stands out about the trio’s MV, as well as the show’s OP, is the CGI dancing. I think Love Live! ultimately became one of the best anime when it comes to CGI. It’s gotten to the point where it blends seamlessly with the 2D animation and it’s sometimes hard to tell the two aesthetics apart from each other. That’s not really the case with School Idol Project. It’s very easy to tell when the show is using 3D models and despite these girls being anime characters, I get this uncanniness from their CG rendered eyes. That said, there are some recent CGI anime that looks about as good as this 11 year old show so I don’t know, maybe School Idol Project really was ahead of its time.
Watch Love Live! School Idol Project on Crunchyroll
Xenodude Scribbles 
I don’t watch idol anime, but I’ve nevertheless been witness to the amazing evolution of CG dancing over the past decade-and-a-half via Precure ending credits. The franchise tradition of CG dancing EDs began with Fresh Precure in 2009, one year before Love Live. Because there’s a new Precure series every single year and each series also gets a second ED song halfway through, it’s an interesting way to follow the progress of the art.
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