It’s a given that μ’s would pass the preliminaries. That’s an inherent problem with School Idol Project and really, any other iteration in Love Live!. As the story nears it ends, it becomes very easy to predict how Love Live will transpire. To give credit where it’s due however, School Idol Project does a good job dragging out the preliminary results. Just when you think the results are given, the show reveals that it was all a nightmare Honoka just had the previous night. Funny how the real results almost play out in the exact same way as it does in Honoka’s dream. That just convinces me more that the girls are still trapped in the Matrix, after the OVA.
As the girls train for the next round in Love Live, they notice that Nico isn’t around so they decide to tail her. I’m somehow only realizing now, after covering almost every other Love Live series, that all these girls are terrible at stealth. Once Nico realizes what’s going on and runs off, the others eventually meet her younger siblings – Cocoro, Cotaro, and Cocoa (all of whom are voiced by Nico’s voice actress, Sora Tokui). As it turns out, Nico’s absence isn’t all that serious. She just has to spend more time at home looking after her siblings while her parents are out of town. What is egregious however is that apparently, Nico has lied to her siblings that she is a “super idol” and everyone else at μ’s are her backup dancers.
The show does provide a justification to this insane lie. For starters, this actually predates μ’s. Nico claimed to her siblings that she’s a super idol since the start of her high school career and she kept the front even when the idol club fell apart. Once she joined μ’s, she called them her backup dancers so that her siblings wouldn’t think she’s been demoted or something. It’s less Nico stroking her ego and more she doesn’t want to disappoint her siblings. I get but it is extremely insulting to call her friends her backup dancers. Like, couldn’t she instead say everyone in μ’s are super idols? Maybe that’d devalue the superstardom Nico presents to her siblings but I think her siblings would be impressed if their big sister was in this amazing group of idols. What I will give a pass to is Nico sloppily switching her and Honoka’s faces on every picture of μ’s in her family’s apartment. That’s freaking funny.
Understandably, everyone else in the club is pissed off at Nico. Eli is about the only one who plays along with the lie for Cocoro’s sake and even then, she makes it no secret that she’s fed up. I know it’d be out of place aesthetically but part of me really wanted to see Nico’s friends beat her up in a cartoony fight cloud. For a while, I was very peeved that the girls are okay with Nico lying about them, even going as far as help her perform a concert for her siblings. It is a white lie at the end of the day but it does put into question how Nico feels about her friends so I didn’t want her to get away with it. Fortunately, Nico seems to realize that her friends might eventually kick her in the Nico-Nico-Knees as she tells her siblings that she’ll no longer work as a super idol and instead work with her friends as equals.
You’d think with all this talk of Nico being a super idol and her giving a solo concert at the end that we might get treated with a insert song solely performed by her. But nope! The show instead cuts to a Nico only version of the ED. Sorry Nico but we can’t give you the spotlight. That’s reserved for Honoka. I give the show credit for the clever cutaway but it is funny how adverse the early Love Live! series are to using a solo number, even though the cast members have recorded solo songs outside of the anime.
Watch Love Live! School Idol Project on Crunchyroll
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