Love Live! Superstar!! Season 3 Collector’s Edition Review

In a break from franchise tradition, Love Live! Superstar!! marks the first entry to get a third season of the TV anime, rather than concluding the story in a film. While a risk, this offers an opportunity for the franchise to go beyond what it’s done before and take things in a very different direction. Does it give fans something new to dig into, or does it fall into the trap of being too familiar? Let’s take a look at Liella’s final outing!

Picking up off the back of the bombshell cliffhanger from Season 2, Kanon’s opportunity to study music abroad in Vienna is put on hold as she is given the task of tutoring Margarete. Because Liella! won the competition, Margarete’s parents think she still has a lot to learn, and nobody’s leaving until she has!

However, Margarete hates the idea of teaming up with Liella! and decides to go her own way, creating a rival school idol club! Despite the flying sparks, Kanon knows that she needs to keep a close eye on her rival, so decides to temporarily leave Liella! and join Margerete’s group, hoping that she can eventually push the two back together. Add in new first year Tomari (Natsumi’s sister!) and you have the trio of TomaKanoTe fighting against Liella! for the right to represent the school at the next Love Live! competition.

The first half of this season largely focuses on this inter-group battle, and I personally found it to be the better part, as the conflict helps to tie the meaning of each episode together. There is a lot going on early doors, but with the group having won the Love Live! competition last season, it offers something distinct for both the characters and the series to work towards.

Key to this is the huge clash of personalities between different members of the two groups. You’ve got Margerete stomping her feet at everyone while the Liella! members question Kanon’s sanity in joining up with their old rival, but there’s also a battle between sisters as Tomari struggles to believe that Natsumi has finally found something worth sticking with after she spent a lot of her childhood trying and failing to be good at something.

The latter of these really hits hard and gets the feelings going as you realise these are both good kids who are trapped by the fear of failure. I think that’s just something really easy to sympathise with so it’s easy to connect with the characters. Finally getting an explanation for Natsumi’s behaviour is also a good thing, and it makes it easy to see how far she has come since she joined the group; something the series does well for all the characters.

I don’t think there’s much to say about Kanon at this point, except that she now has a mature feeling about her even though she has her doubts and troubles – both Kanon and Chisato feel like the adults in the room when there are petty squabbles going on! She does however get a nice couple of episodes toward the end of the series about her worries of moving away from her friends and I loved the grounded and down-to-earth approach to her character.

Margerete though I’m divided on, as she is designed around being this upstart rival to Liella!, and throughout this arc she is gradually defanged and loses a lot of her drive in the process. Yes, she does come out of things as a better person, but it makes certain plot points feel like a foregone conclusion.

The climax to her arc is hurt massively because of this, and what should have been an explosive moment in Episodes 7 and 8 ends up as a whimper, taking all the oomph out of the story. It’s not without precedent – the Saint Snow girls become close friends with Aqours in Love Live! Sunshine!! – but seeing the main purpose of the season just vanish does leave you feeling a little disappointed.

Yet I think we have to remember that Superstar!! isn’t really about this big bombastic competition, which is easy to forget after a more music-focused second season. Season 3 brings the show back around to its initial focus of being a character drama first, and it’s all the better for it. Sure, it might feel a bit dated when you’ve got so many other similar shows now piling on the dark melodrama, yet maybe Superstar!!’s childlike whimsy and happy-go-lucky attitude is what we need in a more depressing world these days?

The second half of the series doesn’t feel as tight as the first, as it returns us to the age-old Love Live! battle, but the music competition isn’t really the point here, instead focusing on the graduating members and their choices for the future. It’s absolutely wild seeing how far they have all come, and there are plenty of heavy, emotional moments where I just teared up because I felt proud of these kids taking their initial steps in finding their place in the world. You do sort-of feel inspired to reflect on your own dreams and where you are in life, and while maybe not everything has panned out, I think the series does leave you with a sense that all this struggle is worth something.

It is a shame, however, that it doesn’t touch on every character in detail. The second years do step up to take more ownership of the idol club as their seniors start to move on, but over the course of the series Sumire, Ren and Chisato don’t really get a lot to do. It’s understandable, as there is only so much time available and it’s easy to cut down on characters that have had large focuses on them in the past; yet it doesn’t sit any easier when one of your favourite characters is graduating and hasn’t really had a chance to say goodbye.

Elsewhere, you’ve got the usual Love Live! gags to brighten things up, and while it’s not a laugh-out-loud comedy, I think the series is still immensely fun to watch with a tight script where the characters really do just bounce off each other. Meanwhile, there are plenty of good musical numbers to jam to throughout the show, however I will say some of the songs towards the back end aren’t as memorable as ones at the start, while I fear there was some corner cutting made in choosing to re-use the opening theme, complete with animation, in Episode 9.

Speaking of animation, this season sees no drops in terms of quality from previous ones, remaining big, bold and fun to look at. It doesn’t go quite as big on spectacle as some parts of Season 2, with the closest to that being the girls’ trip to Shanghai in Keke’s arc, or the final Love Live! performance at the end; but that makes sense with the more character-driven story this time around. It doesn’t skimp out on the music performances though, which range from the really pretty and ethereal “Bubble Rise”, to the rapturous “Zettaiteki LOVER”.

Yoshiaki Fujisawa returns to score the series’ soundtrack which remains fun to listen to both in the series and on its own, putting that memorable main theme (which bombastically opens every real-life concert the group does!) alongside a range of upbeat and moving pieces.

Love Live! Superstar!! Season 3 is brought to us by Anime Limited, featuring all 12 episodes of the series in Japanese with either English or French subtitles. The Japanese voice acting remains strong here, with new addition to the group Sakura Sakakura slotting in nicely with a great performance as Tomari. Despite increasing the size of the group to 11, it doesn’t feel too crowded, and they’ve each got their own voice with something to add.

As for the release itself, the collector’s edition comes in your usual nice-looking box alongside a small booklet containing a profile for each character. A standard edition Blu-ray is also available if you need to save on some shelf space! Extras on the discs include clean opening and ending animations, along with all 11 Liella no Uta animated songs from the original NHK TV broadcast, fully subtitled this time too!

Overall, despite faltering in the middle and cutting some corners, Love Live! Superstar!! Season 3 turns the series back around from the intense competition of Season 2 to a heartfelt coming-of-age story where hopes and dreams really do come true. While some may feel it’s a little dated, its emotional weight, strong inspirational messaging, and good humour all come together to create a satisfying conclusion for a lovable cast of characters that fans have been following since 2021.