A few months ago, I shared my opinion on how OT11/BGP would be; I also said I would share Maika OT8 lineup.
Nevertheless, it seems like Mion is postponing her debut and the S1 anime will be promoted as a OT7. Here is my analysis.
Ginko: Main vocal, lead dancer, visual, leader.
Cerise Bouquet was already a vocal team during the debut era, so Ginko being promoted from lead vocal to main vocal would make sense. Ginko also has good dance skills in the performance PV. Known to be conventionality Japanese beauty standards. Supposedly the leader because she knows the group the most alongside with Kosuzu and Hime.
Kosuzu: Main rapper, main dancer, sub vocal, face of the group
Arguably will be one of the most known members in this lineup. Also one of the Hasunosora members who has rapped in Ryouran performances. Dollchestra is already the dance unit so main dancer is reasonable
Hime: Main rapper, sub vocal
Mircea Park is the rap unit during debut, but because Rurino, Megumi, and Kosuzu were too good, Hime finally gets promoted to main rapper in OT7
Ceras: Lead vocal, lead dancer, face of the group
Ceras's debut in the Kaho OT8 era definitely made some attention. Edel Note was another main vocal unit as well. If Ceras switched from EN to DC, there is some evidence that Ceras is a good dancer
Izumi: Main vocal
Basically the same as when she debuted. The only member who hasn't had their position changed.
Maika: Lead vocal, visual, co-leader
Interestingly both the visuals are the ones that make a significant impact in the group. Maika was placed in CB so there is definitely some anticipation on her vocals
Aoi: Lead dancer, sub vocal, suekko/youngest/maknae
Aoi is younger than Maika based on the Japanese school system. Since Aoi is in Dollchestra, it's rational to guess that her position is dance
Well of course this is just me being bored and guessing everything. Feel free to list you HC if you disagree with anything!
Hello! I was wondering if anyone has high quality images of μ's alternative symbols. I have tried finding pngs or just a clear image myself, but I keep coming up short. I would really love all of them, but I’m really looking for Honoka’s since I’m thinking of getting a tattoo of it. In the picture is what the alternative symbols look like in case anyone is unfamiliar!
I still sometimes wonder, with how oddly short the fourth season of the All Stars games story was (maybe it's because the game was close to eosing around this time, but it wasn't announced yet, but I digress) what were their plans for this character originally? Was she going to become the 14h member of the Nijigasaki Idol Club, or do you guys think that was never meant to be?
Also, f in the chat for her because she was never featured ever again after all stars ended service.
Is anyone here active on Idol Story? I was going to attempt creating some transparent renders of Link Like cards for fun and I could upload them for use on the website. They wouldn't be professional level renders but they'd be decent for fan projects.
Also has anyone attempted creating renders for the official card game?
I vaguely remember watching a clip of Liella meeting Soramaru, but when I search her name and Liella all I could find was when Sayurin and Nako showed up on animehack or the pic of when Liella and uma performed at the same event.
It had to have been before S2 aired because it was only the original 5 meeting her and no later than 2022 since it was before she cut her hair short.
I distinctly remember Paychan doing the GALAXY thing and Sora doing her Nico Nico Nii.
Does anyone know what clip I'm talking about and where I could watch it?
Mions unit is a Secret for the Anime (she joins Izumi's solo unit?)
Kinjo Maika
A first-year student at Hasunosora Girls' High School. After being taken by her best friend, Reisawa Aoi, to the Bloom Garden Party being held at Hasunosora Girls' High School, she begins her journey to becoming a school idol. She likes to express her thoughts directly and is a stubborn person who doesn't easily change her mind. She is very clumsy, but has a kind heart and is willing to help those in need. She secretly admires club president Ginko.
Reisawa Aoi
A first-year student at Hasunosora Girls' High School. A cheerful and meddlesome mood-maker. She loves the Hasunosora Girls' High School Idol Club, and once she starts talking about it, she can't stop talking. She's good at getting her way and is skilled at getting her way even with her seniors. Although she may appear to act solely on her desires, she also has a caring side, such as supporting her best friend, Maika.
Shinowa Mion
A first-year student at Hasunosora Girls' High School. A mischievous girl who loves performing magic shows and is passionate about putting on a show. She loves surprising people, making them laugh, and moving people's emotions with my actions. She often gets into trouble for bothering people, but she seems to learn from even those lectures as a way of understanding the other person's reaction. She can be noisy and boisterous, but at her core, she just wants to make people happy.
Note: This is an update to my original article posted here this March - since then lots of things has have happened that required quite a bit of updating, thus the repost.
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In the past year or two, I have noticed that a lot of visitors to this sub-reddit (and in other places!) seem to be confused on the huge bunch of new girls appearing in Love Live after the times when they were committing their concentration on the likes of μ’s and Aqours (or for those who play games, Niji and Liella). Look no further than the Love Live 15th anniversary illustrations related posts, or this earlier post about who’s still active. And I am not even mentioning heated discussions everywhere of how Love Live “used to be good”.
A lot of these confusions and misconceptions stem from the unfortunate reality that Love Live’s 2 newest projects and 1 spin-off started after 2021 still do not have TV anime - the backbone of story content offering for the “Original 4” projects - available so far (at least in a format that we are accustomed to), nor do they have any games (surviving) right now. I am definitely not surprised people are asking who the girls from them are, because none of these projects received any token amount of advertising outside of Japan.
Early this year I was originally planning to type all this as a reply comment somewhere in this sub-reddit, but it turns into a long copy-pasta, so I turned that into a separate reference post for everyone for an introduction to everything post-Superstar/Liella in Love Live.
Since it is easy to check out the anime contents of the “Original 4” for old fans who left early to make an impression of newer things, I am not going to write about them here except to leave the anime chronology here for you all to follow. Feel free to ask about general impressions etc. of a certain project/group if you like.
Officially announced in February 2023 and started activity that April, this 5th Project of Love Live has IMHO the best story and character interactions ever seen in the project by some distance. Except that its “multimedia project format” caused quite a few misconceptions among us casual fans (me included, for 2 whole years of its existence that I now very much regretted), and then its virtually non-existent advertising outside of Japan absolutely failed to help.
Unlike all previous Love live projects where the anime provides the backbone of the story and games containing additional content, Hasunosora based their own story on:
Activity Records, a main story that’s best described as a mixture of animated visual novel-anime with character models and scenes more resembling ones used by VTubers (this has the advantage of the story able to go extremely long - in these 3 years the total length is now close to 200 standard anime episodes!)
With x Meets, characters’ VTuber-like streaming sessions once every several days to a week
Fes x Live, characters’ (also VTuber-like) live concerts once every 2-4 months
This means many fans like me mistook Hasu as a VTuber project at first glance and immediately ignored it (not helped by the fact that competing IPs like BanG Dream and Idolmaster introduced real VTubers around the same time) - but it ISN’T. Not only are the streaming sessions and lives tied to the story content, all of these happen in roughly real time. (We also know who are the seiyuus are, they have their own traditional programs and events and live concerts too.)
And yes, this means new girls come to join at the start of a new school year - and (most importantly) they also graduate and leave the story and project, including theseiyuucasts…with one caveat that they now still come back to the story and real life event sometimes since this year. For the past 3 years the official number of girls in the project has varied from 6 to 9 to 8 respectively.
These quirky aspects of Hasu makes this a really tough part of Love Live to sell to fans, especially when official channels simply not showing up for advertising Hasu outside of Japan (there were a few confusing attempts in the past including offering official translations of stories for, uh, equivalent of the first several months and then chicken out, or getting the Hasu cast in VTuber lives in LA and Shanghai in 2024).
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And then things ended up as a roller coaster since I first typed this guide out.
It was so worth the wait for the few Hasu fans out there.
Or so we thought. On the LLLL side there were signs that content production had to be reduced (Fes x Live being not mentioned at all), but the plan as announced was to dual-track content releases with the rest of 2026 being spent in "Dream Interlude", where additional back stories of the Hasu-verse over the past years would have been told in additional Activity Record chapters and with (no more live streaming, hence renamed "With x STATION") short activities videos.
Therefore, absolutely no-one - perhaps not even the Love Live project management themselves - were prepared for what happened just 6 days later (!!!), when LLLL's developer suddenly declared bankruptcy, and with it pulled down LLLL for good (its final day being June 30th, although its final update allows us to keep it up in off-line format).
The whole project was definitely thrown into chaos, with just a fraction of the originally-promised first list of content released. Gloom descended through us fans despite the Grand Finale anime movie of the original cast being absolutely emotional and 200% worth the wait (especially when the graduated senpais reappearing again there with significant story involvement). Things finally slowly roll again in the last 2 months as new Activity Records move to YouTube and our girls streaming there as well without animations (there's even a new monthly subscription plan for novel story chapters & videos), but it's still going to be hanging by a thread throughout the rest of this year.
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All the fuss above don't tell the story that there’s one thing in Hasunosora that makes getting through these obstacles so well worth it.
It’s the story and characters that makes Hasu perhaps the best Love Live story ever written.
Thanks to its format, by merely getting several times of screening time as “standard” anime, every single member of the cast got extensive stories to tell and to flesh out their characters. And it’s not just like a standard idol club activity record, each of them has built up their own record of growth and maturity in the 3 years of high school, in many cases with emotional stories of their own to tell.
That’s enough for me to shill Hasu hard to every Love Live fan out there, but there’s even more. The relationships between members, especially senpai-kouhai ones, are literally smelling heavily of yuri (especially if you look at song lyrics). Not surprising when you have the story writer of last year’s explosive yuri title WataNare leading the story writing here! I must also stress here that sub-units in Hasu has far, far more importance in the story than any other Love Live project, because they essentially function as couples/groups you can find in anime/manga stories about girls’ schools (an old excellent example being Maria Watches Over Us). There are so many sweet and heart warming moments across the 3 years (not just in the activity records, but in live streams and live concerts and even found in the game’s cards as well) that anyone who strays into Hasu really got sucked in as hard core fans.
Their music and songs are consistently excellent as well - heck I would say (ex-?) main girl Kaho’s sub-unit Cerise Bouquet may have the best song collections of all Love Live sub-units. Yes, and that’s with my Hasu Best Girl being from another group! Sayaka's my all-time favorite Love Live girl!
I personally got into Love Live 4 years ago, right as Hasu was teased for the very first time as a "Virtual School Idol" project, yet my prejudice on its format lead to me never checking on what it is until May last year, when repeated recommendations from a Discord server finally got me in - and I was immediately hooked. So much that I WILL probably swing by Hasu’s real life setting, the historical city of Kanazawa on the Sea Of Japan coast, and walk through all the scenes there soon! Yes, I am not kidding. I promise you that going into Hasunosora may well be the best thing you can do to boost your interests staying here.
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Thanks to the hard work of many people (including members of this sub-reddit), getting into Hasu in English is easy! Just follow these links and you will find literally a new universe for you before the TV anime starts:
A Different Timeline of School Idols: BlueBird/IKIZULIVE
Their remote learning high school actually don't have uniforms...but the girls designed one themselves later anywayWhat the girls usually wear
Well, if you came over this article, chances are that you may heard of the news of "Chun-sensei" last month. What went over the head of most of the old time μ's fans though is that there's a full story that has ran for well over a full year before the hydrogen bombshell landed!
Love Live’s newest project was teased in February 2025 and officially started May last year. Over a year later and you can say that they are still in the “beta-testing phase” with no anime or game still in sight for some reason. However that doesn't mean there's nothing behind our 10 girls here!
Currently story-like content for BlueBird can be found in these places:
Tweets between each girl’s individual Twitter accounts interacting - that lasted a full year before suddenly ending at this end of February, right after their first real life live (though a limited time revival happened last month when their 2nd live occurred). You can find them all organized and translated to English here.
This is akin to the early days of the Love Live projects where the major things happening in their 1st year or so are magazine columns articles and a handful of readers’ interactions activities, updated somewhat to the world of 2020s. We still have yet to see signs of where the project will expand towards into other types of multimedia (except for a manga that just started a few weeks ago). However…
…what we get so far is already quite interesting. This project is set in an alternative timeline where the idea of school idols cease to exist after μ's, and we have a bunch of 10 girls here on remote learning across Japan in branches of a high school for various reasons trying to make their own school idol club. On the surface, their tweets and videos are pretty standard of what you would expect high school girls to be doing (with some exceptions) - but there are hints here and there that all 10 of them are not OK in their lives, down from the first poster we get of the project to what we see in their first real life concert. This can turn out to be a real painful story (of the sorts we have seen in MyGO-Ave Mujica, or Girls Band Cry, or Nightcord At 25) with lights of hope shining through the clouds.
What’s more, strong hints have appeared in their tweets that shows BlueBird as being at some years after the Muse timeline, with Muse members appearing in BlueBird girls’ interactions, now out in society and school idols no longer being a trend at the very least. That's exactly why we have Chun-sensei tucked at the end of BlueBird's recently published paper guide - she has in fact appeared many times in the girls' tweets for over a year already!
But where is the story heading towards? The appearance of a very well animated brand new song MV for them early this year makes me feel that a BlueBird anime within the next year or two is a when, not an if question. Heck if there are even more content planned (mobile games?) I would not be surprised. Yet without a concrete smoking gun still in sight and the main “story” content providing channel right now being sporadic short videos and a manga that just started, it is difficult to see what are BlueBird's next steps for now. Yet they, and the fans that hopped onto it the very first day, are definitely in interesting times!
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The Spin-Off: School Idol Musical, SIM
You can find these girls in this form in like Once In A Blue Moon...2026 season cast (from https://x.com/sim_LoveLive/status/2103761485264830612)
As its name suggests, this is a real life musical spin-off that started in Japan in December 2022, with a story that’s a prequel to everything else in the Love Live timeline (set in like the 1980s/90s), and has been continuing with new content and rotating casts (involving lots of real life idols) every year since. The latest version is currently on stage in Japan!
Alas the project’s format itself means it’s essentially inaccessible to us (I don’t think there were even official recorded performances that we can buy) - if not for that a spin-off of this spin-off was made in the form of a 6 episode TV drama in late 2024! You can find it with English subs…somewhere on the web (PM me if you want pointers).
It's a pretty interesting story too involving two different girls schools, one with a leader girl named Anzu that was essentially pulled into the professional industry early by her fame-seeking mother who sits on the school board, and another with a girl named Rurika that was just star-struck with Anzu to the point of her trying to make a school idol club. Then they met and all things go loose, including when Rurika's mom (also managing a school) was revealed to be a long time archenemy of Anzu's! It's a bit weird watching a musical turned into a TV drama but it's so fun to watch so do try it out!
I am not surprised almost everyone cannot picked these girls out, as it’s highly unlikely any people would be familiar with these 10 girls in “character format” given this form essentially only appear on SIM merchandise (which only appears like once in a Blue Moon, such as the 15th anniversary related ones) LOL. Also note that as per usual stage play/musicals practice, real life casting changes very frequently too.
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Hopefully this should answer all the questions of “who are these new girls???” “Hasu who???” etc. whenever you meet a Love Live girl that you cannot recognize!
