Love Live! Superstar!! Season 2 Collector’s Edition Review
With the first season of Love Live! Superstar!!, Sunrise and Bandai Namco took the franchise’s tried-and-tested formula and refreshingly modernised it, cut down the cast, and produced a mature, character-driven story. Now with this sequel, they have the challenge of building on those established themes, driving it to new heights, and allowing Liella! to finally get the success they deserve. Can they muscle up and deliver on that? Let’s dig in and find out!
Season 2’s story largely takes us over three separate arcs which will feel familiar to long-time fans: the introduction of new members, a showdown in the Love Live! competition, and a decision to be made on the future of the group. These have been tackled in the franchise’s other series, yet Superstar!! does plenty to take them in a new direction.
Initially, the focus is on the new additions to the cast, as Liella! jump into the new school year trying to hunt for new members. As series fans will know, 9 is the magic number, and the group themselves want to bring more people in to not only diversify their range of voices, but to set the group up for the future.
There are challenges here and a search for a new direction, as the group seem too high a level for new members to join, yet there’s a lot in this first half where it’s just relishing in the franchise’s goofiness and comedy as it rolls in the new girls and tries to pull out what makes them tick. I love how we see this right from the start, as we look through the eyes of one of the new girls, Kinako Sakurakoji, instead of the existing members.
Kinako is a fun, rustic girl from the sticks up in Hokkaido, so getting around Tokyo is both a wonder for her and a massive challenge and she soon gets lost! Of course, she somehow magically finds herself at the door to the school and stumbles into one of Liella!’s practice sessions. The way this plays out is a little hard to believe, but we’ll hand wave it away for now, as it’s at least an approachable way of introducing newcomers to the show without having to take up too much time with exposition.
Through Kinako we quickly learn that Liella! is a super talented group aiming for greatness, and their gruelling training puts off any of the other first years from joining. Yet, as always, all of our key characters are already in place, and soon enough, they start to be pulled into the group’s orbit.
For the most part, I think the new characters are great additions and bring a lot more breadth to the group, giving them more opportunities than they would have had as just the original five. Kinako takes the franchise back to Hokkaido (which was previously touched on with Saint Snow in Sunshine!!), while you’ve got Mei and Shiki, who are a fantastic couple of nerds who not only show anyone can be an idol but also get a few “squeee!” moments, thanks to their very close friendship. Then there is Natsumi, who is a struggling content creator whose dreams have been sacrificed just to make the big bucks, and she offers the series an opportunity to reflect on both how difficult producing an idol group is, and that money isn’t the sole definition of success.
They do follow some of the original archetypes still in some ways, but I think every character has their own quirks to make them stand out. While Kinako ends up getting the most screen time, I found myself pulled towards Mei, as I liked that obsessive idol fan side of her sitting under a stern exterior.
For those of you who liked the original cast though, sadly there’s less time spent with them with the focus being on the new girls. However, I think there’s enough bubbling away in the background that everyone is at least touched upon. Ren gets her own stand-alone episode, Keke and Sumire end up in a fight over Keke’s conditions on being sent back to Shanghai, while Chisato has to step up as club president and support the other members.
There’s also one other new character that I haven’t talked about yet who is one of the main driving forces behind this season and its main theme – Wien Margarete. This brash, abrasive and over-confident middle schooler is a bit of an enigma at first, but with her stunning music performances she quickly establishes herself as a front-runner in a competition she thinks is a waste of her time and talent.
Her inclusion fixes one of the glaring issues in the first season, that being the lack of competition in a music competition, as Liella! and Sunny Passion didn’t really battle each other on screen. Here Wien is effectively Liella!’s Saint Snow – a true rival with arguably better music who comes out of nowhere to blow everybody away. Her values may be misplaced, but you can’t ignore her sheer musical talent, while the war of words between her and Kanon is great to see and really raises the tension.
Wien is more important than just her music though, as she serves to tie in with the main theme of the series, which is essentially how do you fulfil your dreams when they either feel so far away, or you’ve tried and tried and tried and things still won’t work out.
It’s not as nuanced or as dark as some other music shows have been spinning out recently, but in the scope of Love Live! it works nicely, fleshing out a heated rivalry into something a bit deeper. It does peter out towards the end as we reach an inevitable conclusion, but honestly, I was happy with it overall. The show is good at putting each character’s dreams and desires forward and making individually decisive moments genuinely emotional ones. So, while it does start off as quite a goofy series, by the end it’s really showing you its heart, and that’s honestly so very similar to the first season that I think they’re on equal footing.
That goes for the visuals as well, as I think Sunrise have produced something that’s really consistent with the first season, which is no bad thing as it was one of the best-looking entries in the franchise. In Season 2 there are some very pretty scenes that really pull you into the show, while it also shows good direction for impactful moments, knowing when to make a dramatic pause or an even more dramatic cut. The scenes in the Hokkaido flower field and Wien’s performances are a couple of the standout ones for me, but there are definitely more than I have time to mention here!
The music also continues to impress, even though I felt there are fewer defining tracks in this season, at least nothing as big as “Nonfiction” or “Starlight Prologue”. Yet we get something very different from Wien in “Butterfly Wing” and “Edelstein”, while on the Liella! side there are some fun and catchy tracks like “Vitamin Summer!” and “Chance Day, Chance Way!”. All the performances though are pretty stunning! Meanwhile, Yoshiaki Fujisawa returns as the composer for the series’ score, complimenting existing themes with a range of fun, mellow and dramatic pieces that highlight the on-screen action.
The Japanese voice cast also remain great to listen to and are never overbearing. Well, I guess Natsumi’s catchphrase (“Oninatsu!”) might be a bit cringe, but that’s the entire point! Anyway, there’s some great casting choices here for the new members of the cast, who were all relatively unknown in the industry at the time. I’d maybe highlight Yuina, who does a great job at getting across Wien’s haughty coldness while also having a great singing voice, and Nozomi Suzuhara, who does a good job giving Kinako a distinctive twang.
Love Live! Superstar!! Season 2 comes to us via Anime Limited, available in both collector’s and standard editions. The collector’s edition only comes with a small booklet as an extra, but I prefer the collector’s art box over the standard edition’s awkwardly bordered key art.
On the discs you’ll find all 12 episodes in Japanese with English subtitles. There are a couple of subtitle errors and some awkward placement against on-screen text, but we do get full song subtitles this time around. Extras include trailers and promotional videos for the series, and oddly only the second half of the Liella’s Song animated song segments. There are supposed to be 12 of these (one for each episode), but the first half is missing from the set. Sadly, none of the extras are subtitled.
Overall, Love Live! Superstar!! Season 2 is a strong and consistent entry in the franchise, offering a solid follow-up to the first season, ironing out the niggles, and giving us not only a thrilling and rewarding music competition, but also a series that’s full of heart-warming character drama and goofy goings on. We do end on a cliffhanger so Liella’s story isn’t quite finished yet, but it’s hard to see how much further they can go from here.
