LOVE LIVES IN THEATERS. LOVE LIVES ON THE SCREEN. The Love Lives just cannot be contained, and this weekend I finally got to see those Love Lives large and in charge at my local theater. The movie was very much a fanservice-filled victory lap, but I still had a fun time with it – it’s nice to see these characters again, nice to see some new performances, and holy crap was the crowd into it. Pretty much every time I see an anime in theaters, the crowd hangs on every word, but this was something else. Every joke got a full house of laughter, every sad moment a chorus of “awww”, and every performance a rousing round of applause. Seeing something like Love Live in a theater really brings home the communal nature of a show like this – it’s about characters you’ve all invested in together, and that communal investment is paid back in what you get out of the series. Fans in full costume desperately trading a Rin card for a Maki one is as much “what Love Live is” as any of the actual anime.
Anyway, you can check out my full review over at ANN!
The build-up to the movie when I first got to my screening was a blast, with everyone trading around their art boards and LLSIF codes for the characters they wanted and just talking and having fun in general. Which characters did you get for your art thingy and code, and did you trade them for others or keep them?
Somehow, my “local” showing of the movie (had to drive an hour to North Jersey) didn’t have sound. I stayed anyway, because I thought I might as well. Some folks in the back of the theater decided to add their own dub track, trying their best to make it as ridiculous and obnoxious as possible. During the street performer’s scenes, most of the theater broke out singing All Star by Smash Mouth. Whoever was dubbing for Rin made her sound like Sonic. In hindsight, it’s quite a story and I’m glad I can share it – but holy crap was it torture at the time. Glad to hear that others got to enjoy the actual movie and not the Idol Hell I went through!