The second season of Love Live! School Idol Project is also at 13 episodes long. Love Live! itself is a multimedia project comprised of two seasons of anime (plus a spin-off), CDs, manga and video games.
The first season had the school idol group μ's led by Kosaka Honoka, form together with its nine members. Originally, the purpose of the group was to save their school from closing down by attracting more student applications. This was a huge success and the group put their sights in competing in the national school idol tournament, Love Live. Due to various circumstances, the first season ended before that could happen.
The second season takes this missed opportunity and has the group try to qualify for Love Live, with the ultimate aim of winning it. Naturally, there was a sort of existential crisis in the beginning as the group comes to realize that in the New Year, they won't be a group of nine anymore as some members would have graduated. It is a harsh reality although this gives them the motivation required to give it their all. Love Live paints a rosy picture of the idol scene. Even when μ's is confronted with their biggest threat, A-Rise, it is all sunshine as they support each other. This carries on during the character interactions too, the overall atmosphere and tone is cheerful and positive.
The season continues to fail in conveying how much effort goes into μ's performances, although not to the same degree as the first season. Usually, we're given a milestone deadline, the group gathers to discuss on how to approach it. We see them start to practice and work it up, and then a time skip happens and it is the day of their performance, with them doing a stellar job. However, a bit of focus has been given to some other characters that were neglected in the first season, fleshing out their backstories.
The other major trend is the overly carefree atmosphere. Despite the pressure of having to perform well at Love Live, the group doesn't seem to properly consider it. The dialogue suggest that they are worried but their tone and their actions are at odds against that. Thus, coupled with a few of the more outlandish scenes, and you can take the plot seriously at times.
Each episode will usually have at least one song performance, complete with CG models that is so noticeable different to the rest of the animation. The songs and performances themselves aren't bad can be some of the scenes that you look forward to the most. Each of the nine characters retain their stereotype, from Honoka's overly cheerful attitude, Maki's seemingly outside cold demeanor to Nico's forced cuteness. They don't deviate too much from it and gags are either reused or has been used so much in other anime that it doesn't work as well as the animators would have hoped.
There are some cheesy and corny scenes which can be extremely cringe-worthy. For example, you get a scene where all the students of the school band together to physically help out the group and cheering them on. Despite that, when the ending comes, no matter what the result, there is a sad scene as three members of μ's will graduate. Overall, the second season of Love Live! School Idol Project is more of the same as the first season. It improves on some aspects but still lacks in showcasing the efforts that the group puts into their performances, such that when they complete one, you don't feel like they deserved it.
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