English Dub Season Review: Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Ayumu Uehara and Yuu Takasaki are two best friends who are just living their best lives when they discover the world of school idols. After seeing a performance that captivates them, they decide to join Nijigasaki High School’s Idol Club. The only problem? Wouldn’t ya know it, but it’s disbanding and all the members are going their separate ways.

It’s up to Ayumu and Yu to keep the club and their dreams alive by pulling together and bringing new life to the idol club while attracting new members and convincing older ones to recommit to the struggle of school idol life. But the dream of becoming school idols isn’t necessarily shared by the two girls — can they find common ground and continue forging a new path forward together?

Our Take:

Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is the latest in a long line of Love Live! stories. The popular idol franchise is long running, but this is my first real experience with it, and I’m pleased to say it’s a lot more fun that I was expecting. I’m not normally a big fan of high schoolers singing and dancing in fancy outfits, but this series is fairly light on the idol aspect and leans more into the slice of life/drama side of things, which makes for a pretty compelling show to watch for an easygoing evening.

It all starts with Yu and Ayumu, who are two of my favorite main characters in recent memory. It’s a combination of the dub performances, the character designs, and the writing, but combined they really feel like real people and the dynamic between them feels very realistic and grounded from the beginning. There’s even a fair bit of a romantic angle later on in the show, which I have mixed feelings about. They definitely had some notable chemistry from the get-go, but if the show was going to put them together romantically, I would’ve liked more clear confirmation. The way it is framed is just abstract enough where you could read it as a very possessive friendship if you’re so inclined.

The rest of the characters are pretty well thought out and defined, too, although none are as memorable as the two leads. Mostly that’s because there’s just so many of them. I know it a characteristic of idol shows to have a bunch of girls thrown at the screen in hopes that some will stick, but the more characters you have the less time each of them gets to be developed more deeply, and that definitely has an effect here. Some of the side characters in the club get more fleshed out episodes, but others remain pretty much blank canvases which don’t really add anything to the show as a whole.

From an artistic perspective, the show is adequately animated. Of course it’s not flashy—this is a slice of life show mainly, so there’s no need for that. But the direction is solid and the character designs look good, even if there’s a pretty big gap between the unique-ness of Yu and Ayumu and the rest of the cast. The dub is really good here, especially the main cast members. Madeline Dorroh’s role as Yu is particularly noteworthy to me, as it’s a very natural sounding performance. The writing does a good job sounding like actual teenagers talking for the most part, although there are cringe-worthy lines here and there. One thing I really dislike is that, as usual, Funimation has declined to dub the songs at this point, which is hard to excuse for any show that revolves around idols and music.

Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club isn’t going to automatically shoot to the top of any best idol anime lists, but it’s a pretty solid show overall that I can easily recommend to idol fans, slice of life fans, or anyone who appreciates a more low-key kind of series with great leads who grow and change by the time the final episode rolls around.