English Dub Review: Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club “A Brand New Thrill”

Overview:

The Nijigasaki High School Idol Club are preparing to announce their second festival to prospective students.

Our Take:

The episode doesn’t waste much time in getting to the point. The club is preparing for the next festival and they get their message across to the prospective students. The main focus of the episode is the new transfer student: Lanzhu Zhong. She helps out the club in attracting attention. She wants to be an idol, but her goals don’t match the club’s. Her personality is pretty basic and predictable upon first glance. This is the first glimpse we’re getting of her, so it wouldn’t be fair to write her off already. However, the first impression she left was lukewarm. That being said, I am interested to see where her rivalry with the club will go.

We also see more antics from the rest of the girls. Kasumin accidentally showing the wrong video to the prospective students got a laugh out of me. While there were other funny moments, this was the most memorable and notable.

The season premiere does a good job at introducing us to the new main character and reacquainting us with the school idols we’re already familiar with. It also sets up the second festival well and gives us an idea of what to expect.

It’s a good starting point, but the since Lanzhu Zhong didn’t leave much of an impression on me and there weren’t a lot of moments that really stood out, it’s a decent episode as a whole. It didn’t blow me away, but it looks like it could be leading to something interesting by the time we get to the festival.