Love Live! - School Idol Project

About

Love Live! – School Idol Project is a Japanese multimedia project co-developed by ASCII Media Works’ Dengeki G’s Magazine, music label Lantis, and animation studio Sunrise, and encompasses a number of different media, including an anime, manga and Light Novel series. After the series was first created, it spawned a notable fandom online, spawning a number of fan works and meme

Premise

Love Live! follows the story of Honoka Kōsaka, a schoolgirl at Otonokizaka Academy. After the academy is threatened with the possibility of closing down, due to a lack of applicants, Honoka and her friends form a school idol group in order to prevent this, called μ’s. After they successfully stop the school from closing down, the girls decide to take their idol group a step further, taking part in the ‘Love Live!’ competition, competing with fellow idol groups from across the country.

History

Love Live! began as a multimedia franchise, co-developed by ASCII Media Works’ Dengeki G’s Magazine, music label Lantis, and animation studio Sunrise. The first in the project, a manga series written by Sakurako Kimino, first circulated in Dengeki G’s Magazine starting in January 2012, and is still ongoing. This was later followed by an anime series, produced by studio Sunrise, also known for their work on shows such as Cowboy Bebop, Code Geass and Gintama, which first aired from January 6 to March 31, 2013, followed by a second season from April 6 to June 29, 2014, each lasting 13 episodes. As well as this, there have been a number of other Love Live! related media, including a movie, light novels and music CDs.

Online Relevance

In North America, the Love Live! anime is licensed by NIS America, with the series available for streaming on Crunchyroll^[1]. The series has gained a large online following on many sites, including on Tumblr^[2], Reddit^[3], 4chan’s /a/ (Anime and Manga) board^[4], Fanpop^[5], My Anime List^[6], and DeviantART^[7]. There are numerous sites that provide episodic information about the series, such as the Love Live! wiki^[8], TV Tropes^[9] and Anime News Network^[10]. In addition, the Love Live! Facebook page also has over 72,000 likes^[11].

Fandom

The Love Live! series has spawned a significant online fanbase since it’s creation, which has created much fanart and fanfiction. On the Japanese fanart site Pixiv, there are over 77,000 images tagged under “ラブライブ!”^[12], as well as over 14,000 videos on the video sharing website Nico Nico Douga^[13]. On DeviantART, there are also over 82,000 images tagged related to the series^[14].

Notable Sub-Memes

Kotori Photobomb

Kotori Photobomb refers to a series of exploitable images featuring Love Live! character Kotori Minami photobombing a photograph. The scene grew in popularity, spawning a number of parodies featuring a number of other characters from other anime series performing the pose.

Umi Card Select

Umi Card Select refers to a number of video parodies featuring character Umi Sonoda making different facial expressions while playing a game of cards. The scene grew in popularity with fans, spawning a number of parodies on Nico Nico.

Niconico Umi-chan Battlefield Niconico Weird Faced Umi-chan's Munchy Monk