Love Live! The School Idol Movie takes place after the second season of Love Live. While the anime provided a satisfactory closure, this movie closes it for good. If you thought μ's was a big deal in the anime, they eventually get even bigger now, which is a bit hard to accept. The group gets invited to help promote Love Live even more and given the chance to travel to New York to perform. This lends to some team bonding scenes and lets the characters experience another culture. However, this section does exaggerate the characters' defining traits such as Umi's shyness and Hanayo's love for rice. While you do expect various insert songs and most of them feel natural, there are a few scenes where it suddenly breaks into a performance which feels jarring with the transition. As μ's completes nears their final performance, you are supposed to feel elated and satisfied but since the group already kind of sorted this out in the anime, it doesn't have as big an impact. So while in the end, Love Live! The School Idol Movie is enjoyable if you like the franchise, the plot is too melodramatic and exaggerated to take seriously.
