English Dub Review: Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club “Overlapping Colors”

Overview:

Students from Y.G. International Academy approach the club to put on a joint concert. Emma tries to invite Lanzhu to participate.

Our Take:

The school idol club is still preparing for the festival, but they decide to join in on another event. They look to perform at a join concert with Y.G. International Academy. They find out that Lanzhu has been putting on solo shows, so Emma tries to get her to participate.

Naturally, Lanzhu declines and insists she won’t share the stage with the club until their festival. Emma and some other members don’t give up that easily, so they check out her solo concert. Afterwards, Lanzhu invites them back to her house. The girls try to convince her their club is a good fit for her again, but Lanzhu disagrees.

This is a classic story of a group thinking something is bothering someone and they want to help. It’s a kind enough gesture, but we don’t have much to go off of right now. On the surface, it wasn’t even hinted at that something is troubling Lanzhu. It just seems like she has a different view on what an idol should be than the others. Her view is a bit cynical maybe, but again, we surely don’t know the whole story.

We also meet Mia Taylor, who came to Nijigasaki with Lanzhu. She’s a member of a famous family and on the path to become a famous composer. She’s also younger than the club members, but a third-year due to her excellent grades even though she barely shows up to class. It’s also revealed that she doesn’t view Lanzhu as a friend. She says she just wants her songs to get more attention and Lanzhu singing them achieves that goal.

Regardless, Emma, Kanata, Rina, and Kasumin decide to do a group number at the joint concert to show Lanzhu that being in a group is different than she thinks. I expected this sort of thing, but I’m still interested to see how their plan will work.

It’s clear that there are plenty of details that we still don’t know about Lanzhu and Mia. While this episode does a decent job at setting that up, I feel like its delivery is a little lacking. We just get more of the same attitude from Lanzhu and Mia’s appearance didn’t leave as much of an impact as I feel it was meant to.

I’m waiting to see what the payoff will be to all of this. The build up has been fine enough that its managed to keep my attention, but I’m still wanting a bit more from these characters.