Love Live! School Idol Musical the Drama: An Interesting, Yet Flawed Take on the Series (Review/Thoughts)

Taking a look at the 2024 live action adaptation of the series' musical theater production

The Love Live series: one of the most recognizable 2D/fictional series in Japan and quite possibly a quintessential example of what a multimedia franchise should look like, as it seems like it has touched nearly every facet of the otaku-focused, entertainment/pop culture. Whether it be anime, manga, feature films, video/mobile games, concerts, merchandise/goods, a musical theater production, as well as the series even getting its own dedicated card game; Love Live has been an extensive project that has captivated so many people throughout its near-fifteen year run (thanks to various aspects such as the characters, the music and the voice cast), to the point where it has garnered a sizable fanbase around the world.

Personally, I became a fan of Love Live back in early 2017, when I first listened to “Snow halation”. Sure, my first exposure to the franchise was through a silly meme but I figured I’d check out whatever this project was, considering that I was already somewhat familiar with the concept of idols through watching the original iDOLM@STER anime. What resulted was a deep and genuine appreciation for the nine-member group of μ's, how varied their personalities were, their upbeat & infectiously catchy songs, their determination and will to succeed, and- most importantly, how tie-knit of a friendship they all had with each other.

This snowballed into me checking out the other groups, songs and voice actresses in this series, and I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration when I say that this franchise has had a major impact on my life. I’ve made a lot of cool memories through this very series and discovered many gifted and lovable talents within its cast, and while I’ve said this before, I truly don’t think I’d be doing what I’ve been doing for the past eight years (whether that be on this blog or my other social media accounts or following various idol groups) if it weren’t for that one “Snow halation” meme I stumbled upon on YouTube.

That said, being someone who tends to be open-minded with the Love Live series and the many additions they throw at us every year, my interest was piqued when it was recently announced that they would be adapting its musical theater stageplay (titled ‘Love Live! School Idol Musical’) into a produced drama series for television. Now, I had *some* prior knowledge about the SIM—such as it featuring a ton of different real life idols in its initial and current cast—but given that the stageplays themselves have only been shown in Japan and, from my knowledge, no one has subbed any recordings of it, I haven’t been keeping in touch with this ‘part’ of the franchise.

But luckily with this new live action TV show, and thanks to a few fellow fansubbers (such as Skewed Translations and Team ONIBE), a lot more people have been able to get a taste of what the ‘School Idol Musical’ and its groups are all about. And that’s what we’ll be focusing on today.

I surprisingly have a lot of thoughts on this, so let’s jump right in!

(spoilers ahead)

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« synopsis »

image source: Mainichi Broadcasting System

Love Live! School Idol Musical the Drama (ラブライブ！スクールアイドルミュージカル the DRAMA) is a Japanese live action TV series, directed by Totsuka Hiroto and first aired in November 2024. The show revolves around two rivaling schools within the Kansai region: Osaka’s Takizakura Girls’ Academy, known for its successful entertainment program and dedicated idol club; as well as a traditional and prestigious preparatory school located in Hyogo, Tsubakisakuhana Girls’ High School.

While Tsubakisakuhana and Takizakura constantly find themselves in competition, which is played out through long-running hostility between each school’s president, their daughters—Tsubaki Rurika (played by Watanabe Miho) and Takizawa Anzu (Tomita Nanaka)—end up crossing paths due to their mutual interests in being school idols. Despite their different upbringings, Rurika, Anzu, and the rest of the Tsubakisakuhana and Takizakura idol clubs try to navigate their young journeys to follow their dreams and become the best idols they can.

(info sources: Mainichi Broadcasting System, MyDramaList)

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« thoughts »

An Inevitable Comparison

Allow me to preface by saying that I have seen every single Love Live anime and film that has been released so far. While this may come off as some sort of weird flex, it’s more of the fact that I think I have a pretty good idea of how the series writes its stories and conflicts, which is definitely one perspective I came into this TV show with. Obviously not everyone who ends up watching this drama is gonna have a similar level of knowledge/experience with the LL series, and I’m sure there were people who just decided to watch this despite not knowing anything about this franchise (especially considering who's in the cast).

However, in the case of myself and I’m sure with many other Love Livers, it feels almost impossible to come into this without making a few comparisons to the previous stories. And it’s only natural, I’d say. The franchise has expressed a specific tone and narrative throughout its now-four animated series, especially with how they’ve repeated certain ideas and dilemmas that have become staples we now expect when it comes to watching a brand new Love Live story (most fans will know said staples, but I’ll get to that in a bit).

But I mainly wanted to go over what this series does differently, and one thing that stood out to me when I watched the first episode is that it felt like they were trying to do their own thing here by building off of familiar ideas. Not only because it takes place in the real world this time around but it’s especially the case with how this story puts the focus on two schools and showing off the activities of two separate idol clubs. And more specifically, we get to follow the happenings of two main characters—Rurika and Anzu—both of whom have completely different personalities and struggles they’re going through.

On one hand, Anzu is the most popular member of a well-known school idol group, yet the overwhelming expectations and immense pressure from her mother (and her fellow group members) leads to uncertainty about continuing her idol activities. On the other hand, Rurika has put all of her focus on being a class-A student due to her being in-line to take over her family’s school once she graduates; but after finding out about school idols, she gains an unwavering desire to become one herself. Essentially what it boils down to is that Rurika wants in on the whole school idol phenomenon, while Anzu wants out.

That’s… a pretty intriguing premise, not gonna lie. Of course, Rurika’s overall character and motivation towards being a young idol can easily be compared to what we saw from Honoka (μ's) and Chika (Aqours), where this happy-go-lucky girl discovers school idols one day, and tries to find any way to achieve that dream of creating her own idol club and to shine as bright as the ones who influenced her. A pretty standard procedure within the Love Live series, which I don’t mean in a negative way (I did like Rurika a good amount in this show, ngl).

But what caught my attention the most was Anzu's situation, since we get to witness a much different perspective of the whole ‘being an idol’ idea. It’s like the opposite of what most Love Livers are used to, as we see Anzu starting off as an incredibly successful & popular school idol, but her interest quickly wanes and she desperately tries to get out of this life that’s only brought her stress. It gets to a point where Anzu musters up the courage to tell her mom that she quits the club ahead of the group’s major debut, and even goes as far as to (coincidentally) transfer to Tsubakisakuhana to put more focus on her studies.

This leads me to another thing I noticed, which was how much of a presence the *adults* have in this show. With the exception of one or two people, the parents in the Love Live universe are *mostly* shown off as side characters that sometimes interact with the main cast, whether it be for brief pieces of advice or some quick & funny joke. However, we instead see Rurika and Anzu’s mothers both being integral parts to this story by having massive impacts on how these groups operate, as well as them being the roadblocks that stand between the two MCs and the things they want to do & achieve as aspiring talents. It’s certainly an interesting change of pace, compared to what we’ve normally seen with fellow *students* being the ones who go against the MC’s wishes. And because we have these actual, authoritative, and even family-related figures serving as- I guess, the main ‘antagonists’ of this show, it brings a different and even bigger obstacle for these girls to try and get over, especially considering that the two moms tend to be blinded by competition and self-gain.

That said, with the show dealing with two separate parties, they do a decent job of intertwining them together to present a fairly cohesive storyline. This is not only through the fact that the moms have had tensions with each other since they were both in primary school, but to see how Rurika and Anzu themselves crossed paths and ended up influencing each other in their own individual journeys with being a school idol was actually quite enjoyable. Rurika’s strong desire to become an idol was rooted from Anzu, and seeing her beauty and impeccable skills; while Anzu’s joy and ambition for singing/dancing was reignited through mentoring Tsubakisakuhana’s brand new club and becoming friends with a girl like Rurika.

And of course, this wouldn’t be a Love Live story without the threat of someone’s school being shut down. This is something that *does* come up in this TV series, and while I won’t go into too much detail about it for the sake of extreme spoilers, I will say that they could’ve handled it a bit better. The fact that they pretty much shoved most of the urgent drama into the last two episodes, even going as far as rushing to the ultimate resolution within the final few minutes of the entire show… it’s easy to tell that time was not on the writers’ side here, but I’ll expand on that later on.

Supporting Characters and A Lack of Opportunity

However, I feel like this is where the drama starts to show its major flaws: the characters.

I’ve already gone into detail about Rurika, Anzu and their moms. But Love Live has always been centered around a whole *group* of girls who come together to do this school idol-ing thing. So given that, what about the other people in the cast?

Well, the thing is… most of them didn’t *do* much.

I will give them this: the way they provided us with a general overview of each idol club and how they have their own personality, upbringing, background, issues, etc, was fine. Takizakura is an already established, professionally organized, and sometimes egocentric group of talents with extremely high expectations on them, while we see Tsubakisakuhana’s group consist of a bunch of close friends and them learning the ways of becoming a school idol. Again, because we’re seeing these two clubs simultaneously being idols in their own separate ways, it was interesting to go back and forth between the two.

But the issue here is that essentially everyone not named Rurika and Anzu couldn’t get enough screen time to make a meaningful impact on the story and/or the viewer. And I truly believe the Takizakura ensemble got the absolute shortest end of the stick here because 1) members like Toa and Rena barely got any lines, 2) they ended up not being all that likable, and 3) it also felt like they didn’t show any signs of improvement or potential that they could succeed without Anzu. The latter in particular kinda sucks because they, especially Misuzu and Airi, had all the belief in the world that they were worthy of reaching new heights, yet not a whole lot really transpired from that motivation (although, I guess it couldn’t be helped due to how the show concluded).

And while I did, in fact, like watching Tsubakisakuhana’s group A LOT more due to how they echoed the fun energy & camaraderie that I’ve enjoyed from the previous LL groups, they suffered from similar problems as well, as it felt like the majority of them were mostly there to support Rurika’s dream and to provide comedic relief. Which isn’t necessarily ‘bad’, it helped give some personality to these girls, but I guess it lacked a bit of meaningful substance for them individually.

I’m not gonna sit here and say that this SIM drama is the only one in this entire franchise that suffered from a lack of character screen time/representation. Love Live has always had issues with this; even from its first couple iterations with characters like Hanayo and Kanan (which is a shame since I really like both of them). But again: rather than putting all of the blame on the writing, it’s impossible to not consider the fact that they only had six episodes to work with, as well as the main cast consisting of a fairly large group of ten (10) idols. Both of these limitations do end up, unfortunately, amplifying the ‘irrelevancy’ of most of these characters.

A Stacked Cast of IRL Idols

Similarly with the other live action-related posts I’ve written in the past, I was intrigued by this upcoming TV series because of its cast. It’s always cool to see a familiar face be involved in a TV show or movie, especially if it’s an opportunity to see them go into the ‘acting world’ for the first time.

Top: Yura Akari, Asai Nanami, Watanabe Riho, An Julia, Yamauchi Mizuki ● Bottom: Nakamura Yuna, Yasumoto Ayaka, Tomita Nanaka, Yamamoto Airi, Rina

And once again, this drama happened to feature people with actual pop idol backgrounds. In fact, literally everyone in the main cast has had prior or current idol-ing experience; many of whom come from well-known and popular units. But before I go into *how* these talents did in terms of their acting skills, allow me to show you who’s in this cast and the insane connections this series has:

• Watanabe Miho (Tsubaki Rurika) — ex-Hinatazaka46

• Tomita Nanaka (Takizawa Anzu) — ≠ME

• Asai Nanami (Sumeragi Yuzuha) — ex-AKB48

• Yasumoto Ayaka (Wakatsuki Misuzu) — Shiritsu Ebisu Chugaku

• An Julia (Hojo Yukino) — Cho Tokimeki♡Sendenbu

• Nakamura Yuna (Kurusu Toa) — Shiritsu Ebisu Chugaku

• Yamauchi Mizuki (Amakusa Hikaru) — AKB48

• Rina (Suzuka Rena) — Namie Yoshihatsu Kumiai; ex-CROWN POP

• Yura Akari (Mikasa Maya) — ex-SPL∞ASH, STU48

• Yamamoto Airi (Harukaze Sayaka) — Ma’Scar’Piece; ex-Last Idol, Fujun Bungaku Shoujo Kagekidan

…my god. Even from someone who- to be honest, has only scratched the surface with being a more general idol fan, it’s crazy to recognize some of the names here (and as you can tell, there’s a solid representation of 48G, Sakamichi Series and Stardust Promotion in this cast). It’s also worth pointing out that a few of the actresses from the theatrical cast got to reprise their roles in this TV adaptation, like with Asai, Yamamoto and An; the latter in particular I quickly became interested in when the SIM series started to get going and someone who led me to becoming a fan of Tokisen in 2024. But at the same time, it was nice to spot some new talents in the mix such as Yura Akari (vaguely know her through the D4DJ franchise) and Yamauchi Mizuki (previously talked about her when I reviewed the Girls Drive film back in August).

But if you’ve followed the blog or my social medias for the past year or two and how I’ve become a big fan of the Sashihara Rino-produced idol groups, the inclusion of one Tomita Nanaka was what excited me the most about this drama.

I was incredibly happy that someone from ≠ME got a main role in a drama, especially one in a franchise that I’ve loved for many years (I even joked on Twitter/X how it would’ve been cool if they also casted fellow member Tanizaki Saya, who is a massive Love Live fan). And while I may sound really biased here since I *do* like Nankachan a lot, I actually believe casting her as a main character in a series like this makes a lot of sense. While Kanisawa Moeko is the official ‘leader/captain’ of Noimii (and does a fantastic job with that role, no doubt), Nankachan has essentially become the group’s image girl, given that she’s been featured as the center in many of their most popular songs. Her superb, deep and strong vocals, as well as her beautiful appearance, definitely has caught the eyes of many people; and to that point, having her play a character with a slightly similar background—in terms of being the one member who has a ton of the spotlight on her—was fitting, in my opinion.

As for her acting abilities, they were okay. With how many shows/movies I have watched that feature idols in its main cast, I’ve started to accept that these are people who don’t act on a regular basis and because of that, I personally cut them some slack. Sure, I thought many of Nankachan’s lines felt exaggerated to some degree, which is a completely fair criticism. But I also can’t help but to keep in mind that this was her very first main role, and at least in my eyes, it felt like she was genuinely trying her best here.

And that’s kinda what I’d say about the other ladies’ performances as well. In the case of this series, it feels like there was an attempt to emulate the same vibe as what was shown in the animated TV shows into a real life environment. This was most apparent with the dialogue from certain actresses like Nankachan, Nanami, Julia, Ayaka, and even Mizuki where it felt like they were trying a bit too hard and thus made most of the conversations feel somewhat unnatural. However, I think Watanabe Miho’s performance as Rurika might’ve been the one that worked the best- or, at least, I thought was the most enjoyable one to watch. Again, she expressed that known Honoka/Chika personality type really well, and the positive (and occasionally funny) tone she put off made it hard not to gravitate towards & root for a character like Rurika.

Songs = Surprisingly… Meh

Last thing I’ll go over is the auditory side of this drama, which was also a bit iffy.

I absolutely love the music from the Love Live series. They’ve performed SO MANY songs in the various anime shows that still stick with me to this day; whether that be the iconic performance of “START:DASH” with Honoka/Kotori/Umi, Aqours’ with “MIRAI TICKET” and “MIRACLE WAVE”, the solo songs from Nijigasaki, and I even considered Liella’s latest ending theme (“DAISUKI FULL POWER”) to be one of my favorite songs from 2024. This is a series that is heavily rooted in their music compositions, and I’d say is a big reason why these groups resonate with a ton of people.

However, and I really do hate to say this: most of the songs in this show weren’t very memorable.

Apart from the opening, titled “Mikansei Dream!” which I did like and occasionally pops up in my head now-and-then, I can’t really say that I remember many of the songs Tsubakisakuhana and Takizakura both performed. If anything, there were snippets that I can recall such as the ‘kirari-hira’ intro in Takizakura’s “Kirari Hirari Mau Sakura” (also used as the show’s ending theme); same with “Yumemigachi Girl”, during the times when they were practicing without Anzu. And for what it’s worth, especially after going through some of them again: I noticed there’s a clear difference of quality, as Takizakura’s stuff sounds a lot better in the production side, while a song from Tsubakisakuhana felt much more amateurish with its simpler composition and lyricism (such as with “Fukamaru Naka” in episode 4), which I thought was an interesting touch and expressed a bit more realism, in terms of the ‘making music’ aspect of this franchise.

But like… none of them resonated with me all that much. This may be a case where I’ve become ultra spoiled with how much good stuff we’ve gotten from μ’s, Aqours, Nijigasaki, Liella and Hasunosora, but I’m not sure if these are songs that I’d go out of my way to put on in my spare time. I realize I’m being pretty harsh here, and there always is the possibility that they’ll warm up to me once I give them another legitimate shot. But in the context of them being presented in this show, I just don’t really think they were that notable.

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« conclusion »

This show was… alright, for the most part.

As much as I’ve been very critical and nit-picky of this show, I think it’s still a fun thing to spend a couple hours watching, especially as a seasoned Love Live fan. Just being able to experience this franchise through a much different lens, and to watch another set of characters go through unique ways of being a school idol; it’s short but does enough to bring something new to the table. Plus, I think it also has the potential for existing Love Livers, particularly those who saw them during the previously-held Ijigen Fes event, to look further into the Tsubakisakuhana and Takizakura groups (it’d be even cooler if it gets people to follow some of the IRL groups that the actresses have been a part of).

However, if someone who is interested in getting into Love Live asked me where to **start**, this drama would not be the first thing I would personally recommend.

I just don’t think it does enough to encapsulate why people love this series. People love Love Live for the characters and the music, and while the School Idol Musical drama does a decent job retelling certain story elements, you’d be much better off starting with School Idol Project or literally any of the other anime series since those express the charms of the franchise so much better.

And trust me, I understand that it is completely unfair to compare this short drama to its 2D counterparts and their multiple seasons & films-worth of story, and I will admit that some of the things I talked about may have been… unreasonable (😅).

But man… it really does suck because I wish this live action show had more time to cook; I genuinely believe the story and the characters would’ve been much more gratifying if they were able to make a few more episodes. Yet with how it turned out, and considering that this could’ve just been a production to promote its upcoming theatrical performances (as a user on MyDramaList suggested), it’s fine for what it is but does leave a lot to be desired.

Rating: Definitely worth checking out

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Now looking back, I do feel bad about some of the critiques I laid down but to reiterate: I did not dislike this drama. Despite the issues, it was genuinely a fun time watching these two groups do their thing, as well as seeing all of these different IRL idols interact/bond with each other. It’s a solid addition to an already great franchise, and I’m sure that the actual musical theater performances will enhance/go further into the stories of Tsubakisakuhana and Takizakura. Plus, I would not mind if this got a second season, however the chances may be.

That said, I appreciate it if you got to this point! If you watched this show yourself, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. I can say some dumb/incorrect stuff in my posts, so I’d be glad to get a different perspective on what I said or the show as a whole.

Thanks for reading!! :D

-al

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