12 Days of Anime 2022 – Day 03: Love Live! Nijigaku

I wrote about season 1 of Nijigaku in one of my top 5 posts, and with season 2 which aired this year elevating it to my favourite anime in the Love Live franchise, it is a perfect candidate for one of my 12 days posts this year.

With the Love Live animes you can’t help but compare them to each other, as even though they each stand on their own, they still very much retain the essence of the original Love Live.

So how do I compare Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukou-kai with the rest?

Well the original was popular and for good reason. What it did worked. It currently has 3 separate spinoff anime series and after 10 years, new anime in the idol genre rarely even come close to the standard Love Live set.

Nijigaku is the third entry in the franchise, and while I’m not sure about Japan, it seems that at least for English speaking anime fans, this show didn’t seem to gather much interest.

Why did it get so little attention? I have no idea. Maybe people found Sunshine underwhelming and just didn’t bother trying a new Love Live anime.

In any case, as I said at the start, Nijigaku is my favourite in the franchise so I definitely wish more people would give it a shot.

As for what it is about. The theme of school idols is the same as usual, but Nijigaku does something different from the others. Instead of having the group preform all together it focuses instead on solo performances, or groups of only 2-3 people.

Solo performances are pretty cool to be honest. It does mean that the characters themselves have to stand out on their own.
Luckily Nijigaku has nailed this though, as almost every character in the show is likable.

So yeah, I think Nijigaku is good. It avoids the problem Sunshine had with its characters by not going on too strong with the characterization, and most importantly utilises what made the original Love Live anime good and improves on it.

Info:

Title: ラブライブ! 虹ヶ咲学園スクールアイドル同好会 | Love Live! Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukou-kai
Aliases: Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club
Source: Social game/Anime original(?) | Studio: Sunrise

(For my 12 days of anime posts this year I am showcasing some anime from this year which had a low watched count. For more information see the introduction post.)