LLAS Season 2 Wrap-Up

How do I want to structure this... Eh fuck it, I'll just write til I get tired. Have fun reading my angry ranting about a stupid mobile game story for like 20 minutes.

For what it's worth, one thing I liked about season 2 is that they do grow some. For better or for worse, many characters do develop more depth than just being a one note character archetype (obviously not needed for people who already got more development like Ayumu, Shio, Setsuna). Emma's and Karin's relationship get explored, Rina sidelines Ai for the most part, Shizuku actually gets a pretty nice character arc (Karin's but good), Setsuna gets to flex her skill for once in the game, Kanata is revealed to be as big of a siscon as Dia, Rina takes off the mask(need I say more), and Ai and Karin get some interesting things... and you learn they're absolutely the worst friends in the world.

So TL;DR Lanzhu bad character. Shio lost potential. Toss Karin & Ai down the dumpster.

So Lanzhu is basically just rich prodigy. She has money and power to do anything she wants, she's skilled at everything she tries, and she's self assured to the point of being egotistical. She's very forceful and assumes she's always right and will try to enforce all her views on people. She's like Nico and Kasumin if they were the real deal and not just brats playing up an act. As annoying as they are, there's a reason you don't play these tropes straight, not at least if you're trying to a relatble and interesting character. Like this would be fine if you're trying to make A) a self insert isekai to sell to losers, or B) setting up a rival character that you either get to stomp on or gets humbled. Lanzhu's supposed to be the latter, but her issue is the payoff was incredibly unsatisfying. (Setsuna also shares this issue a little. She's the top, secret idol mafia hidden boss of their school initially, but her character's not really predicated on this part). That's usually why for most media you're not going to focus on the character w/ lots of history and skill already, but on the newcomer that works their way up to the top. People seeing the journey makes it feel a lot more deserved than being told this character is really good actually, trust.

They try to make her more sympathetic by the end, but it's far too late. It feels very forced and hamfisted. They try to show she has vulnerabilities too, but after over 10 chapters of everyone just constantly worshipping her, it rings hollow. From the very get go, she's established as capable of anything. Like literally to ridiculous levels in universe and everything goes her way. I mean like how messed up is it that she can just take over another club's classroom and just kick out all the previous members and then forbid them from practicing their sport. She's the chairwoman's daughter, but c'mon. Also I don't actually think I talked about this, but one of the reasons they got away with the PR dub is that people thought the association was the ones who hosted SIF presumably cause Shio, Ai, and Karin were in it. Like the club, Aquors, and Muse got no credit for it at the school apparently. That's why the club members had to rebuild their popularity from ground up doing the guerilla gigs(? yo object permanance anybody?). It's just really silly writing from the writers to set up the club as the underdogs.

Then when we get to her redemption arc so to speak, it happens completely indepedent of us. If you'll recall, what essentially happens is her childhood friend rebukes her singular time, and she completely cracks. From here, the MC kinda stumbles around, gets a single hint of vulnerability from Lanzhu, and then everyone else just drags MC along for the ride essentially. Like literally if MC was not part of the group for the whole section of Lanzhu running off and then returning, nothing would be different. And like it lasts all of a single chapter, so you don't even vicariously get to experience it much. IE not deserved at all. It's underwhelming and doesn't do nearly enough for the players to feel like Lanzhu really learned anything or feel like her apologies are sincere.

Anyways, all that just makes an unlikable character, but if that was it, I could eventually forgive them for making a bad character. She does technically apologize, her design is pretty awesome, and her singing is great afterall. However Lanzhu's greatest sin is how she warps the plot and characters around her. Just like the game says, everything does gravitate towards her whenever she's around, except she's garbage, so everything else gets worse too. The most obvious result of this is that everyone needs to jerk off over everything she does. It's like actually isekai protag levels of people praising her. This effect is compounded on top of the fact she stays around as an antagonist for way, way longer than Shio ever did.

It's mostly the Association members that eat the brunt of this, though you could definitely argue the other club members could be a little more confrontational if MC is really that great a friend to them because fr Lanzhu's constantly putting us down. What I'm trying to say is if Ayumu went a little yandere, it'd be really hot. Anyways let's get a poggers for Kasumin for finally having a guilt free target for the writers to rip on and not look like an asshole of an idol.

So uh let's talk how each association member came in terms of how badly I think they came out from this season from last season. Accounting for hype for new characters and music, I'll give Mia and Lanzhu an imaginary +20 on the scale as a baseline.

I think the biggest losers of this season are honestly Karin and Ai. Like I wrote this before, but I actually liked their initial reasoning for leaving the club, they're both on the less popular end for the Club and they want to be better, be more popular, be actually capable of competing with Setsuna. Because fair enough you want to be better and provided the association was just your typical rival love live setup that would have been great. The issue I have, is if you want that by joining and staying in the association that oppresses your friends and constantly looks down on them, you can't say and act like you're still friends with the other club members. It's just so demeaning and shows you really have no respect for your friends. Especially Karin because like holy shit at least Ai proved she got some tangible results that she improved, but you just ate shit and still no apologies at the end. This is also exacerbated by season 1 where everyone's set up as close friends. That even though they're solo idols, they're connected as the Nijigaku. It's such a disjoint to this season. Like if they said, "I wish you guys all the best and nothing personal, but I want to improve" that would actually make this turn more reasonable to me.

However part of Ai's reason for being the association was wanting to learn about Lanzhu and convince her that she didn't need to be harsh on the club. Instead what happens is that every single time the Association has issues (Mia being sad, Karin being depressed, Lanzhu running away, etc), she and Karin come running to the Club members to ask for help. I know it's a game and as protagonists we have to be there, but like in universe sheesh. The only concession the association ever granted the club members was due to Shio telling her fellow council members to stall as long as possible. That and the time Lanzhu realized she was getting more bad PR for shutting down her rival's shows which were gaining in popularity and also not very effective at stopping the livestreamed shows. At any rate, the point is that both Karin and Ai are bad friends, however the story portrays them as not in the wrong (well this applies to all the association girls really) while still having them be "close" friends to Nijigaku. And that blows because you know they aren't gonna have future arcs focused on them trying to make up for their behavior.

Surprisingly after these two is not Lanzhu, but Shio. Shio's character arc from the first season was actually pretty nice. She goes about solving her communication issues, helping others with their communication issues, and also develops past her jealousy of school idols taking away her sister's time... by becoming a school idol herself. You know maybe this isn't necessarily the healthiest form of therapy. Anyways point is Shio's portrayed as very compassionate in season 1 and once she gets past the trauma that her sister actually enjoyed singing and dancing more than spending time with her, she ends up very reasonable with everything else. People bettering themselves is good, but just because you're doing suboptimal things doesn't mean it's a waste of time, dreams and passion are important is pretty much the sentiment she learns from doing the club introductions. So even though she's still overall way better than Lanzhu she took a bigger loss than Lanzhu imo. From like a +150 to a +50.

Thus setting up her character like that, her growth essentially gets put on paused for a lot of the season for Lanzhu. Being the character and the type of setting Love Live is, there's no way she's just listening because she cares more about council president than fairness and Lanzhu has power as the chairwoman's daughter, but it does mean she's not willing to stand up to her old friend for beliefs she thinks are in the wrong. She sits at Lanzhu's side and instead just tries to mitigate her actions. It's disappointing that her whole first arc is learning to have an open mind and compassion to listen and communicate better to others is not put to use. She even acknowledges later that both her and Lanzhu share similar difficulties in communicating when they were younger. It's like she's perfectly set up to try to help Lanzhu. In the end, she does set off the chain that leads Lanzhu to improve, but she didn't even do it deliberately. It was just an indavertant rebuke. Lots of wasted potential as the childhood friend here I think.

Next up is Lanzhu. I can't imagine her popularity of the game playerbase is very hig- damn there's no way anybody is still reading the story, she's gonna be popular just based on design and music. The anime did way better at making her a likable character too. Anyways, she's a complete ass for the entire season. I think it's pretty self explanatory how this hurts her character. That said she actually apologize, twice even. In terms of absolute value

Mia. Uh as a stranger to the school and her biases coming from Lanzhu, Mia kinda is pretty much just a musical elitist until Rina speech checks her into developing a crush. I think she's kinda whatever, but she's a great aide for Rina's development (MASK MASK MASK). Ergo she's a great character by association (not a pun).

Finally the last association member is Shizuku... for all of one chapter. By far she has the best character arc this season including among the other club members as well. Shizuku's pretty much a nothing character in Season 1. She's the nice girl who's in drama, but there's only 1 good usage of that and that wasn't even in the season, but the intermission. This season she expresses her insecurity in being a worse idol than the others (like Karin) and decides to join the association to improve (like Karin). She improves on a technical level, but falls short on the personal style and presentation levels (like Karin). One of their previous club members, Kasumin, call them out on this failing calls them back for both the sake of their idol future and their friendships (Respectively for Karin is Emma). Shizuku realizes as much as she improved at the association, she would improve further at the club developing her own style because being a school idol isn't just about the singing and dancing, but about being lesbians (LIKE KARIN). So she comes back to the club for Kasumin and the end. (UNLIKE KARIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Like mentioned, it's more than just the association members, but as these are the most effected I did a write up for each. Inevitably every character gets dragged into it outside Muse and Aquors for the most part who are written out of the universe temporarily. Everyone must praise Lanzhu at some point or they will explode.

Overall I think the plot really meanders around this season which I mean don't get me wrong, that happened in season 1 too and for idol anime isn't really that out of place. However that season had to introduce everyone and when they got to crunch time, it was set up a large sense of urgency pretty well with SIF looming above their heads. Meanwhile in season 2, we have SIE which is also introduced like... a little before halfway into the season, but it never really sets much going while trying to maintain a drama about Lanzhu and the association for a long time. We have the auditions for SIE, but like those don't even end up mattering for the climax of the plot and pretty only serve to set up season 3 and starting the subunits. In general, it's just really hard to tell the passage of time in season 2 because there's no real urgency. Lanzhu is a pain in our necks, but it's not like the end of the world if we miss another week of practice. Is this them partially trying to return to the episodic and more slice of life idol shenanigans while keeping a dramatic story line with Lanzhu? Hell if I know, but it definitely does not blend well together.

The season pretty much just goes we spend awhile trying to circumnavigate around Lanzhu's BS preventing the idols from practicing and performing for awhile. That culminates by time Rina befriends Mia and we've made bypasses for the restrictions (practice at Muse school, do livestreams from multiple locations at once). Then the club pretty much becomes the solve the Association's problems (well Mia's situation technically already fell under that umbrella) group until Lanzhu implodes.

Honestly I'm just mad because the best parts of this season could have all easily been still been implemented if the Association was a normal rival club type beat. Like you can still setup the same rivalship and still draw the other idols by saying stuff like they're idols w/ a full professional setup. They bought actual trainers and pros and have that appeal to the club members with feelings of inadequency. That way it still makes sense for them to part, but still be on good terms. Similarly, Mia can still have her breakdown that her professional songs are missing a personal feel and the desire to make songs for herself again even if the association isn't going full totalitarian. The only thing it really elevates is how far up Lanzhu falls. Shrug, could make an already weak climax a little more boring in exchange for having Lanzhu be a lot less hatable. Meanwhile by setting it up like how they do it just brings all sorts of negative connotations about lots of the characters and how they think they should treat friends.