Love Live is a multimedia idol franchise that was first launched in 2010. As of writing this, the series has five different groups across several generations; µ's, Aqours, Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, Liella!, and Hasunosora Girls' High School Idol Club. It consists of media such as music CDs, anime, video games, live concerts, a musical, and even a VTuber group.

I was first introduced to the series in 2017 via the Love Live: School Idol Festival gacha game. Someone who I knew at the time kept comparing it to how another gacha game ran events, and I got incredibly curious about them even mentioning the game. What I did not expect, however, is for Love Live to become a special interest of mine that lasts to this day, all because of getting Ruby's initial UR in a solo pull on day 3 of playing SIF. Ruby is still my favorite Aqours member to this day. I played SIF from June 2017 to March 2023, when the game ended service after almost ten years.

The start of my Love Live journey mainly focused on Aqours, where I'd watch the Sunshine anime (this was back when Crunchyroll actually let you watch episodes for free a week after they released), playing SIF and reading the Aqours stories there, and draw Ruby again and again because of how much I adored her as a character. At the time, she was the most relatable Love Live character to me!

But School Idol Festival was not the only Love Live game out there. Another game was being developed as I was getting into this series, and it is arguably one of the most important games in my life:

Love Live! School Idol Festival All Stars, originally known as Perfect Dream Project, was a rhythm RPG game that launched on September 25th, 2019 and ended service on June 30th, 2023. It was originally made to promote Nijigasaki, which I argue was successful due to the respective group getting its own anime in 2020. I literally played SIFAS from launch to EoS, and it truly meant a ton to me as a game. It was where I met Rina, one of my all-time favorite characters in any media. The main thing that drew me and many others into this game was the 3D MVs, along with the fact that said 3D MVs were customizable to the point you could create your "dream" performances. We had way too much power with this. I MLB'ed every single Rina card I had (only missed two limited URs of hers).

I really enjoy all of the characters from Love Live and can find positive traits in every single one of them, but my absolute favorites in the franchise for each main group are Rin, Ruby, Rina, Kinako, and Hime! I may actually make a Rina shrine in the future due to how much she means to me as a character I can strongly relate to!

SIF2 was... an experience. I am incredibly disappointed with how it was essentially rushed in development compared to SIF1/SIFAS (they rushed it for an April 15th release date, which was the day SIF1 released back in 2013). While I am planning to get the Nijigasaki visual novel and BeXide's Yohane deckbuilder game, I'm begging for Bushiroad to do better if they ever make any more Love Live mobile titles.