Superstar season 3 is an amazing conclusion to the beautiful journey we’ve been on with the original cast for the past few years now. It’s the best, story, performances and production-wise of any love live season. A must watch for any idol fan! I don’t know if Sunrise brought more budget or just had more people working on this season, but Superstar Season 3 feels like a massive improvement in every way over previous seasons. Every episode was gorgeous and had an engaging narrative. It’s Love Live at the end of the day, so the focal point here is the performances, music and the girlsjust being wholesome. All of those requirements were well met. I thought all of the girls’ mini arcs were fun, the little Liella civil war arc was great and seeing the girls kind of find their own paths as we approach graduation was a joy. Unlike previous seasons of love live where I zoned out at times because arcs weren’t interesting, this felt action packed from the start and it was great to see various parts of the world in this season! We globe trotted from Shanghai to Vienna and the girls did their thing everywhere they went. Not a single boring episode or dull moment. While the end result of the Love Live competition was obvious, it’s more so how the studio laid the foundations for us to reach there. We see several of the members go through low points, lose their way and stumble a bit before rejoining the group and determining what they want out of life. This year’s championship felt very earned because of all the adversity and obstacles we had to overcome to reach it. I also think a lot of complaints people, myself included, had with Liella were fixed in this season. The biggest of which being that they introduced so many characters so rapidly and didn’t flesh all of them out. I mean at the end of season 2, Natsumi is still pretty annoying, Shiki and Mei are somewhat endearing, but we just didn’t know much about them! This season makes a point to give everyone some much needed development, including some of the original members. I ended this season with a strong attachment to all of the girls and honestly, it might be the strongest of any of the love live groups now. I cried and got emotional at several points this season due to how good certain characters’ stories were! Thank you to Sunrise for creating characters we can really get behind and support. Production wise, wow this looked beautiful. Character designs, animation, the music, the choreography, it was flawless. Sunrise have really mastered that 2D-3D blend that they started using a few years ago and now the performances feel much more engaging and weighty. They’re not jarring at all which is big in a series that relies on fans getting into the performances. The music itself was great too, we had some absolute bangers this season that will be in rotation for a very long time. Can’t sing enough praise about how much of an upgrade this was. I could’ve done without some of the fanservice towards the girls, which this season felt like it had an exceptionally high amount of.. but other than that, perfect. Really goes without saying, if you’ve watched the first two seasons, you need to watch season 3 to get the full story of Liella and to see the new chapter they’re embarking on. It’s an upgrade in every way on existing Superstar seasons as well as previous other Love Live seasons. Heartwarming, emotional, fun and a great experience. I can’t wait to see what this franchise does next. Love Live gets 10 notes out of 10.

On some level, I have always been able to enjoy *Love Live!* as the crude otaku capitalistic black hole that it is. The franchise has never been one to have grand aspiring messages aside from what could be easily commodified in cute mannerisms, bubblegum song-and-dance routines, and wisped happy feelings that come from a “follow your dreams” narrative structure. No matter what my overall thoughts on the previous seasons were (and they vary widely), every installment at least had something within it that either attracted me in terms of its visuals, its music, its direction, its camaraderie, or whatever it could claim as unique andinteresting, even if just at the conceptual level. The original *School Idol Project* was the point when the franchise had not quite yet determined what did or did not work, throwing its ideas at the wall to see what stuck and, ironically, giving it a freshness that got increasingly less as each new season took hold. *Sunshine!!* and *Nijigasaki,* being installments that I never really liked and each one subsequently feeling more calculated in its moe-dification, at least tried reframing either the franchise or the larger diegetic universe into something that could be molded into newer forms. What this indicates is not only an acute awareness of what the franchise signifies, but also that any significant deviation from the established formula was not going to be welcomed. The modern anime industry is increasingly wary of riskier gambits that may not pay off, even for something as seemingly surefire as school idols. Particularly in the rising of other properties like *BanG Dream!* (just to list one example), *Love Live!’s* hold on its niche is far less stable than it was even four years ago. This matters because *Love Live! Superstar!!*, at least at first, seemed to stand poised to push the series in a direction it wouldn’t have thought of before. Rather than a band of nine or more girls in its ensemble, it had only five. It also eventually appeared to adopt something akin to a genuine antagonist character in Margarete, unlike previous rival groups such as A-RISE or Saint Snow, or individuals like Lanzhu, where everyone was still friendly with everyone. Particularly with teasing the idea that Kanon would not be present in Japan for the show’s unique third season opportunity, *Superstar!!* consistently stood at the threshold to do something so daring that, even if it failed, I could at least applaud the effort to do so. And then, it never did. The warning signs were early. From the second season onwards, the show seemed to play itself like the creative team (including longtime series writer Hanada Jukki and director of the original *School Idol Project* Kyougoku Takahiko as two examples) received a memo from Bushiroad’s executives that immediate “corrections” were needed. The cast was expanded from five to nine, hastily needing to ingratiate new commodifiable kohai to a pre-established group dynamic. Margarete, herself so antithetical to the idea of idols as understood within *Love Live!*, was perpetually kept in the rearview mirror until her entire existence hinged on Kanon’s future. The end of season two with the Vienna school opportunity suspended and Margarete moving to Yuigaoka slammed the door so tightly that, in a bizarre twist of fate, the franchise that so often sings about idols and dreams within those idol ideals was to be caught in a perpetual nightmare. That nightmare comprises what might be charitably called the “Love Live! Civil War arc,” with Margarete trying to create a new idol group from within Yuigaoka to dethrone the champion Liella!. Any inherent intrigue within this premise is immediately torpedoed by Kanon’s idea to join Margerete’s group before the first episode is finished. Such an action isn’t just a paltry attempt to artificially create false conflict within the show. Part of the reason why Margerete’s defeat stung her so badly was that it was the FULL team of nine that stopped her. Kanon no longer being in Liella! means that the group that she’s actively trying to defeat is no longer as it once was, and while the rest of the group can say that they’ll keep trying hard without Kanon, it is Kanon who is the main embodiment of everything that Margerete wants to surpass. This is likewise why most of her dialogue in season two centers around Kanon as opposed to Liella! as a whole. If Kanon joins her, then what is Marguerete accomplishing by beating Liella! now? The reality is that she wouldn’t accomplish anything by doing so. To spare her that humiliating realization, the story chooses to have Margerete eventually be brought to the “good guys” with Kanon playing this absurd 4D chess. That is not a spoiler – it is the truth that *Love Live!* always abides by. It therefore comes as no surprise that the newest character in the whole of the season, Natsumi’s sister Tomari, should likewise fall in line with inevitably realizing “happiness is found in Liella!” as truth. It’s destiny; her performance in episode two spares the narrative from having to demonstrate her capabilities (compare this to Keke in season one, who had barely any endurance to speak of), so she doesn’t need to “try” at all. Any barriers she has are purely ideological, and in her case, the extent is almost comical to which she seemed to hurt Natsumi for the purposes of “keeping her safe.” So, when her buckling against the torrent of happiness dawns, it’s both abrupt in how quickly it takes place and late, only after most of the other characters have had their previous plot threads picked up and doubled down upon. At eleven characters total by the time of season’s end, the notion that even more exploration for those we have already seen and which the narrative reconciled makes for a grand misuse of time. In moving through these motions, it is as though the show is trying to convince itself that this was the right path all along and silencing its own doubts through the characters feeling old doubts return. Maybe it should have listened. *Love Live! Superstar!!* season three is essentially a declaration that *Love Live!* cannot actually have anything stand in the protagonist’s way except through the most abstract forces possible. In prior installments, it was the threat of school closure and trying to prove the brilliance of individual idols (by reducing them to caricatures of whatever realized self the show was claiming they were and failing to distinguish them from the group) by making their personal problems vanish under the veneer of “growth.” Here now, with a desperate need to validate the existence of new characters and re-validate the old ones, Liella’s! position as last year’s titular Love Live! winners trying to defend their title lacks any meat or meaningful substantiation. At its core is a center with no color. The music plays, but it means nothing. Perhaps unintentionally, *Love Live! Superstar!!* is the most overtly clear that Bandai Namco / Sunrise and Bushiroad have been about the franchise up until this point. They are an ex that promises at each reconciliation that they can change and become better, but always ends up defaulting back to the same behaviors that you hoped to never see again. What dream is there to be had in being the same? I suppose that consistency is admirable in a sad, cynical, perverse kind of way. While it may proport to be about fun and happy times, the dismaying implication of *Love Live!* is that it champions conformity clothed within the pageantry of self-identity. The characters may have a quirk or singular “thing” that distinguishes them, but the assembly-line construction of the groups at each new iteration lacks the soulful parts that add to their adorable dances. It has reached the point where it no longer hides the illusion. *Love Live!* has never been about idols – moreso than many other properties that are of similar spirit, it has been about trying to capture vague feelings that are perfectly calculated to generate the impulse to consume. This is a franchise that, at this rate, will never grow and never change, no matter how many new school idol groups it forms. This is effectively my graduation from *Love Live!* – whatever the franchise has coming next (because we know it’s coming), I’ll have already moved on.

This review will assume you've watched season 1 and 2, and there may be spoilers for those series. But I consider that acceptable, because it's probably not a great idea to jump in on season 3, particularly with *this* anime. Watch those first. I'll wait. Gosukomushi... Gosukomushi.. hey, wait. Sumire! Put down that rope! And that palm frond! Okay, here we go! Wien Margarete might be the most interesting character in the whole "Love! Live" franchise, and might be one of my favorites in all of anime. In season 2, Wien (Margarete? I guess there's some discussion/debate/otakufights (which consist of smacking each other withwaifu catgirl tails) on that, but I maintain Wien is her LAST name) was a secondary character, who ended up being the "Big Bad" towards the end of the season. She ended up losing, and the reason she ended up losing was made very clear. She didn't know how to be an idol. She was a spectacularly competent dancer/singer, but she had absolutely no idea how to connect with her audience. In point of fact, she became an idol just to stick a fork in the eye of all the "real" idols.. and she failed. Hard. We left season 2 when she donned a Yuigaoka uniform and was going to go to school with Shibuya, for reasons we didn't understand at the time. In season 3, she has been upgraded to a main character, along with Tomari, the other new addition to Liella!. Well... maybe. I think it's fair to say that this season is, in part, an exploration of the redemption of Wien, who left the previous season absolutely *hated* by pretty much everyone. I refuse to say how that turns out, clearly. But given the way Wien's character was introduced, I think you can probably take an educated guess or two as to how it might turn out, and you have a decent chance of at least coming close to the mark. Let's just say I think she's the most interesting character for a *reason*. But... This is a very predictable story. The main plot points are mostly telegraphed from miles away - I don't even really know how you'd spoil this anime because there aren't any plot twists worth speaking of. You pretty much know how it's going to turn out from day 1, and, well, this isn't ""Hibike! Euphonium", where you *thought* you did but they pulled one over on you and made you cry in the process. This is "Love! Live". We're not here for a coherent story, or realism, or anything but a barely realistic musical where a bunch of girls have a dream of winning a competition, and nothing is going to stand in their way. Not common sense, not realism, not typical high school girl competence. These girls make professional music, professional costumes, professional stages, professional everything, even though in every other way they're just typical high school girls. But, as with the previous two seasons, don't let that get in the way of enjoying this series. It's a musical, and no one ever watches a musical with the idea that they're going to get a real or realistic *anything*. It's just there for entertainment, and it delivers. Nothing more than that, but if you wanted more than that, maybe watch "Wake up girls!", "ID@LMASTER: Cinderella Girls" or maybe "Girls band cry". Even "Bocchi the Rock" would be better for that. But if you can accept this for what it is, you get to watch eleven girls singing, dancing, and sometimes even being nice to each other. You get a new idol song, new costumes, and new venue at the end of each episode. All the songs are typical idol. Which is to say, not interesting whatsoever. But if you like idol music, well, there ya go. You get lots. You know, looking back on it, I'm not even sure why I enjoyed it. The music is mid (as with most but not all idol music), the plot is mid, everything's mid. And yet, well, I did. Go fig. Maybe it's just because Love! Love is that kinda franchise - it's turned mid into art. Gosukomushi, gosukomushi.. *ahem*. Oh, yeah, that costume makes an appearance. Poor Sumire... Anyway, that's my review. If you liked seasons 1 and 2, you'll like this, because it's more of the same, with an extra dose of Wien. If you didn't like seasons 1 and 2, you'll probably not like this. If you didn't like Wien, well, give it a chance. She's not a bad girl. Just really driven, and a little socially inept. Song for me! Song for you! Song for all!!!! Recommend from me.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. When Superstar first came out, I thought of it as the Steel Ball Run of Love Live. While every new entry in the franchise features a new cast, starting with a group of 5 instead of the usual 9 was a monumental transformation that made the show into something that had true potential for mass appeal. The second season, however, demonstrated that if Love Live was gonna change, it isn't going to be with Superstar: reverting back to a cast of 9 wasn't a bad decision per se, but the poor writing really shafted itschances of hitting the mainstream. But if you have stayed with Liella! through that, you'll be glad to know season 3 is everything you'd expect coming out of any modern Love Lives, pros and cons attached. The plot lines are corny but pure and sincere; characters might be exaggerated but give way for plenty of fun and light-hearted moments; and although its animation is lacking at times, its performances always deliver top of the class 3D modeling and 2D animation within the industry. This season's Wien Margarete and Tomari Onitsuka are welcomed and well-thought out additions to the ensemble cast. Their past with Liella! provided many organic points of conflict that made for great character growth arcs and overall a great story. The ending also offered satisfying closure for fans of the series. Everybody from first gen managed to achieve their dreams and the group at Yuigaoka stayed together despite the departure of its core members. Some might have wanted something different for Superstar, given the blazing start it had had, but many would be satisfied with this same-old same-old ending, I certainly was. From Wish song to Starlight Prologue, to Egao no Promise to Superstar!!, thanks for the journey, Liella!.

The third season of Love Live! Superstar!! has come to an end, and I must say it far exceeded my initial expectations, which were very low. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I thoroughly enjoyed this season, to the point where it felt as if the second season never happened. This is ironic because the second season struggled a lot due to introducing so many characters in such a short time, whereas this time, despite following a similar approach, they managed to make it work brilliantly. One thing I deeply appreciated was the meaningful interactions between the characters.These relationships felt natural and showed real development, even though Sumire was somewhat sidelined this season. Each subplot was resolved within the same episode, but they didn’t solely focus on one character; they always involved at least two, which added depth and dynamism to the storytelling. Additionally, Kanon is no longer the centerpiece of everything, although she remains present in some way. The others now have room to solve problems on their own and grow as a group. This was a refreshing change compared to the previous season, where it felt like everyone was helpless without Kanon. This shift allowed the narrative to flow better and gave each character a chance to shine. I honestly enjoyed this conclusion a lot. Watching Kanon and her friends’ journey over the past three years was genuinely moving, even if only a little. I’ve never been a huge fan of Liella or listened to much of their music outside the anime, but accompanying them on this journey has been a rewarding experience. Truly, it’s heartwarming to think about the paths these five will follow in the future. P.S.: This season finally made me like Kinako. She’s so adorable! In the previous season, she and Shiki felt incredibly bland to me, but now she’s had her moment to shine