Musing on a phenomenon - The Love Live story

Written by A. H. on 23 May 2015

The leverage of idols as a part of anime's rich tapestry is hardly new - you can find them exerting their influence throughout the entire Macross franchise, for example, while Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue took a rather darker look at what passes for pop stardom. However, recent years have seen a huge surge in the popularity of anime specifically about idols themselves - A-1 Pictures' series based on the popular iDOLM@STER video games arguably kicked off this trend in a big way, and since then we've seen AKB48 fighting in the depths of space courtesy of AKB0048, plenty of more grounded shows about the life of idols such as Wake Up, Girls!, and no shortage of series in which idol-like characters feature almost inexplicably, with Log Horizon and KanColle providing a couple of notable examples in that field.

There is currently, however, one idol franchise which rules over them all - it's massive, it's fascinating, and it's coming to the UK courtesy of MVM Entertainment mere weeks from now; read on to the end of the article for more details on their precise plans.

Its name is Love Live, and it's something you'll be hearing a lot about for some time to come. So, let's grab some glow sticks and find out a little more about the so-called School Idol Project.

The origins of Love Live

Love Live was born not simply as an anime, but as a multi-faceted, multimedia project developed by animation studio Sunrise, music company Lantis, and magazine publisher ASCII Media Works and their Dengeki G's magazine.

What really marks Love Live out from other idol projects of this nature is the extent of fan participation in the birth and progress of the group which sits at its heart - indeed, even the group's name of μ's (pronounced Muse, not to be confused with the rock band of the same name!) was chosen by Japanese fans at the start of the project in 2010, as were the three "units" with the group.

Online polls have also been used to determine costumes and the popularity of the idols within the group, which in turn has aided the selection of which member of the group takes centre stage in the Sunrise-produced music videos bundled with some of their early CDs. This agency afforded fans in the growth of the fictional group undoubtedly helped to cement their early popularity, leading to further successes via manga and anime adaptations of Love Live's core story.

The Love Live story

It was in January 2013 that Sunrise's full-blown Love Live anime adaptation debuted, bringing it to the attention of a wider audience both inside of Japan and out thanks to its appearance on streaming service Crunchyroll.

At its core, Love Live exists in the wake of a real-world issue that has gained traction in a number of recent anime series - Japan's declining birth rate, which in turn means that fewer schools are required resulting in the closure of some institutions. Honoka Kosaka is a second-year student of one such school, Otonokizaka Academy, and her determination to save it from closure takes her down a decidedly unexpected path.

That path is to create a "school idol" group, for this is a world where most high profile schools also house groups of students who double as idols, effectively serving as advertising vehicles for those schools as they perform just like typical idols would, ultimately aiming to win the "Love Live" competition devised to identify the country's top school idol unit.

Amazed by the popularity and abilities of the current top group, A-RISE, Honoka sets out to create her own group in the hope that success will bring a raft of new applicants to Otonokizaka Academy and thus save it from closure. Creating an idol group at all isn't an easy task for a complete beginner, of course, and there are countless struggles to be overcome to even bring the group to fruition, let alone reach the masses and gain the traction needed to compete and win at the Love Live.

The series proved to be a major success in Japan, selling around 30,000 copies per volume on average which led to the commissioning of a second season. With an even more grandiose Love Live event on the cards, series two sees Honoka taking on even more responsibilities as the group looks achieve their dreams while also wrestling with the knowledge that the high school life of the group's three senior members are about to come to an end, forcing a difficult choice to be made about the future of μ's.

If season one was successful, then the response of Japanese fans to Love Live's second series was stratospheric, with sales averaging around 65,000 copies per volume and its first volume clocking in well over 110,000 copies sold to mark it out as the most successful TV anime release of all time. No wonder, then, that 2015 will bring a Love Live theatrical movie to cinemas worldwide, including (hopefully) the UK.

Beyond even this, we already know that a new generation of Love Live will be emerging in the form of Love Live! Sunshine!!, as an all-new project about which more will surely be revealed in the wake of that theatrical film. The Love Live franchise isn't going away, in other words, and why would it with so much success under its belt?

Can you feel the rhythm?

Alongside its anime adaptation, the slew of music brought to bear by the Love Live project has also been leveraged in video game form - a set of three rhythm games for the PS Vita under the name of Love Live! School Idol Paradise are probably best left unmentioned (in short: they aren't very good), but the franchise has enjoyed huge success from a free-to-game developed by KLab named Love Live! School Idol Festival.

Two years after its launch, School Idol Festival boasts 9 million users, while its English language release has managed to accrue one million players in the twelve months since its launch. The game is available for both iOS and Android devices, so you might want to check it out. Not that we're addicted to it here at the UK Anime offices or anything, and we certainly don't have our own account...