Characters / Love Live! – NijiGaku

Love Live! Character Index
Love Live! (μ's) | Love Live! Sunshine!! (Aqours) (Yohane the Parhelion -SUNSHINE in the MIRROR-) | Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club (NijiGaku) | Love Live! Superstar!! (Liella!) | Link! Like! Love Live! | Love Live! School idol festival

This is the character sheet for the members of the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club from Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS, Nijiyon and Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club.

Unmarked spoilers for Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, and ALL STARS may be present. You Have Been Warned!

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Nijigasaki High School Idol Club

All 12 school idols of the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club in the anime, with Yu Takasaki

^{Nijigasaki High School Idol Club debut album, "TOKIMEKI Runners", featuring the initial 9 school idols}

^{Nijigasaki High School Idol Club 3rd album, "Just Believe!!!", debuting Shioriko Mifune as their 10th school idol}

^{Nijigasaki High School Idol Club 4th album, "L! L! L! (Love the Life We Live)", debuting Mia Taylor and Lanzhu Zhong with their final configuration}

A group of 12 (initially 9) school idols from Nijigasaki High, located in Odaiba. Unlike other school idol units like µ's, Aqours, and Liella!, the idols of Nijigasaki High do not form one cohesive group and instead compete with each other as solo idols. Initially divided into trios based on the various apps/services that each girl was associated with, the girls were later divided into subunits (following a 2-3-4 member composition instead of the usual 3-3-3 followed by an additional fourth subunit) via popular vote. Following µ's and Aqours, the Nijigasaki school idols officially made their debut as the the third major school idol unit in the Love Live! franchise with the release of Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS.

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In General

Let's make a 9 colored rainbow bloom! Nijigasaki!

• Adaptation Personality Change: Nearly all of them get this to some level in the anime, due to the heavily altered storyline from the game.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • They don't have a name for their whole group, simply being known as "Nijigasaki High School Idol Club" or "NijiGaku" for short.
  • They are the first full unit whose debut and main method of exposure is from a video game (compared to the music videos, magazines and anime for µ's and Aqours).
  • Instead of a group, the school idols of Nijigasaki High are all mainly solo performers. This is reflected in their albums, which are comprised of a solo song for each member and a single full unit song. Contrast this with µ's and Aqours, who mainly perform full unit songs with solos being extra.
  • While they have three subunits like µ's and Aqours, said subunits follow a 2-3-4 member composition instead of the usual 3-3-3 used by the previous groups.
  • Like µ's and Aqours, the Student Council President of the club's school, Setsuna Yuki, is a member of the group. Unlike those groups, however, she is not a third year student, and is instead a second year. Setsuna is eventually replaced as Student Council President by Shioriko Mifune, a first year student, who also later joins the club.
  • Unlike the anime incarnations of µ's and Aqours, the club's Student Council President member in the anime is not an Obstructive Bureaucrat towards them prior to her induction into the club, and has no issues with its initial members even starting a school idol club to begin with, so long as they meet its minimum member requirements.
  • Aki Hata, the main lyricist for the previous groups^note She has written every song by µ's (except for "Koremade no Love Live!"), Aqours, A-RISE, and Saint Snow., has only written a few songs for the group: the title track of their debut album "TOKIMEKI Runners", and the anime's ending songs "NEO SKY, NEO MAP!" and "Yume ga Bokura no Taiyō sa". The group's discography is mainly handled by songwriters new to the Love Live! franchise.
  • It is the first unit where forming subunits is an integral part of the plot. Subunits are not acknowledged in the vast majority of fiction featuring the other groups, and never with the importance that the story placed on the ones for this unit.
  • It is the first group to have a member that is explicitly not a school idol, and instead supports her clubmates behind the scenes. In ALL STARS, it's the protagonist, and in the anime, its Yu Takasaki. This distinction also makes them the first group to have more than nine members.
  • While they were introduced as being comprised of nine school idols like µ's and Aqours, unlike the previous groups, this group actively added new members at different points over the course of the story. The addition of three more members, who later formed their own subunit, also made this group the first to have a fourth subunit as well.
• Cover Version: The pitch behind the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival is that each character would cover the first solo of another character, with the fans voting on which character covered which song.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Though with slightly different takes on the trope, they fit by year in S2 where the other girls join:
  • First years:
    • Melancholic: Rina - withdrawn, emotionally stunted, painfully shy, and has a lot of difficulties with socializing.
    • Phlegmatic: Shizuku - hard-working, supportive but also docile, gentle, and polite.
    • Sanguine-Choleric: Kasumi - cheerful and mischievous, but also loud, somewhat brash, and irritable.
    • Supine: Shioriko - gentle yet confident, calm, serious and hard-working. In the game, of course, it's different, since she's rather hostile, making her closer to Choleric.
  • Second years:
    • Phlegmatic: Ayumu - Kindhearted and hard-working, but somewhat shy and insecure.
    • Sanguine or Supine: Yu and Setsuna both fit here, mutually, They're pretty outgoing and cheerful by default, but they're also capable of being serious and professional, and despite some insecurities and inner conflict they're both quite confident.
    • Choleric: Lanzhu - Confident, arrogant, proud, and still somewhat hostile in the anime at the beginning (though it's played far more straight in the game where she's far more obnoxious and has a far heavier Lack of Empathy).
    • Sanguine: Ai - pure example of this since she's a cheerful, optimistic Genki Girl and social butterfly.
  • Third years:
    • Phlegmatic: Kanata - a calm, laid-back sleepyhead (though for different reasons between game and anime).
    • Melancholic-Choleric: Mia - aloof, standoffish, and initially quite abrasive.
    • Sanguine: Emma - cheerful, sweet, and very motherly.
    • Supine: Karin - appears very mature and composed on the surface and tries to present herself as such, though in truth she's secretly quite insecure and despite the seductive vibes she wants to give off, she has a dorky side.
• Freudian Trio: By year:
  • The first years:
    • Kasumi is the Id, being outgoing, rather brash, and somewhat self-absorbed and bratty.
    • Rina is the Superego, having serious difficulties in expressing her emotions and being stoic, shy and withdrawn.
    • Shizuku is the Ego, being a clever, well-balanced, versatile and kind, if somewhat shy girl.
  • The second years:
    • Ai is the Id, being rather eccentric, goofy, and very energetic and outgoing.
    • The others may switch roles: Setsuna/Nana, who are the same person, would respectively be Ego and Superego, so when there's energetic idol Setsuna, meek and somewhat shy Ayumu fits the Superego, while when there's more aloof and serious president Nana, Ayumu is a well-balanced Ego.
    • Yu is the Ego, being more energetic than Ayumu but also more moderate and reserved than Ai.
  • The third years:
    • Emma is the Id, being - while still levelheaded - sweet, cheerful and pretty extroverted.
    • Karin is the Superego, being mature, serious and slightly aloof - at least apparently; she could also be seen as the Ego indeed, since Kanata is arguably more levelheaded and organized, while Karin has somewhat of an immature side, unexpectedly.
    • Kanata is either the Ego or the Superego, being a calm, caring and well-balanced girl.
  • The trio of girls added in the 2nd season:
    • Lanzhu is the Id, being overconfident, upfront, cocky and passionate.
    • Mia is the Superego - aloof, rather withdrawn and also prefers to work alone.
    • Shioriko is the Ego - serious and hard-working, yet undoubtedly the nicest, most supportive from the start, and most balanced of the trio.
• Friendly Rivalry: Despite technically competing against each other for popularity points and the spotlight as solo idols, they are all still nonetheless True Companions who would eagerly support each other. This notion is the topic of the anime's ninth episode.
• Image Song: Unlike previous groups in the franchise, their discography focuses more on the group members each singing solos that convey who they are as characters. As a result, they don't sing as many songs as a full unit.
• Informed Attribute: Part of their initial pitch was that despite being under a single banner, the idols were in competition with each other. How straight this is played varies across different parts of the franchise.
  • In the game proper, the competition aspect is severely downplayed and the members are for all intents and purposes a unified group whose members happen to perform individually more often than previous groups in the franchise.
  • Averted in real life where the girls compete by Audience Participation for things such as a solo song for an upcoming album, the headliner and the encore performance during lives and winners of monthly polls.
  • Also averted in the anime, where being solo idols occasionally means that they have to compete with each other over who gets to perform at events with limited participation slots, such as the Diver Fes in Episode 9 of the anime.
  • This is also averted in Season 2 of ALL STARS, where Ai takes her popularity as a school idol seriously enough to cite it as a reason for defecting to Lanzhu's School Idol Association, noting that it is eclipsed by that of Setsuna, Kanata, and Kasumi.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In Chapter 22 of ALL STARS, they do this to thwart the Monitoring Committee's attempts to stop them from carrying out their guerilla live. To wit, the members all performed individually in different locations at the school and streamed the live online, so in the event that one of them was caught by the committee, she can simply switch the live feed to another member's location. As the committee did not have the manpower to go after every member, they were unable to completely disrupt the event.
• Oddball in the Series: The series is drastically different from both School Idol Project and Sunshine as a result of Breaking Old Trends.
• Officially Shortened Title: "NijiGaku" from Nijigasaki Gakuen Sukūru Aidoru Dōkōkai (Nijigasaki High School Idol Club)
• Putting the Band Back Together: Both the anime and ALL STARS began with the premise that the School Idol Club initially had five members (Setsuna, Kasumi, Shizuku, Emma, and Kanata), but disbanded due to conflicting views on the sort of school idol each member wanted to be, and their inability to work as a group. Part of the initial plot involves restarting the club, which includes persuading the five original members to rejoin.
• Technician Versus Performer: In Season 2 of ALL STARS, the remaining school idols who have not defected to Lanzhu's School Idol Association become the performer to her technician. To wit, they continue to perform as school idols because they genuinely wish to bring happiness to their audience, and have songs that are tailored to the individual characteristics of their members. They also refuse to accept Lanzhu's offers of expensive amenities and backing, believing those things to dilute the appeal of being a school idol. Unlike Lanzhu, who believes that only the best member can be a center, they continue to share the spotlight as solo idols, regardless of the skill level of individual members.
• Undying Loyalty: Though it is most pronounced in Ayumu and Kasumi, the school idols that did not defect to Lanzhu's School Idol Association hold this towards the protagonist. To wit, they express disgust towards the way Lanzhu has treated their president and it is a major reason why none of them (with the exception of Shizuku for a brief stint) are willing to even consider her overtures towards them.

Ayumu's Childhood Friend

The protagonist of ALL STARS and the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club anime. She is a childhood friend of Ayumu's and is a big fan of school idols after personally witnessing and being blown away by their inspiring performance.

Though Yu is based off of the protagonist of ALL STARS, she and the protagonist are considered distinct from one another as of the release of the anime continuity-based Rainbow Days Photo Essay series and the ALL STARS continuity-based comic tapestry series.

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Tropes Shared By Both

• Affectionate Nickname: In both mediums, Mia refers to them as "Baby-chan", signifying their status as amateur composers compared to her. Though in the Protagonist's case, it didn't start out that way as the nickname was originally Mia's way of looking down on her. It's not until Chapter 23 of ALL STARS that it becomes genuinely affectionate.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Their primary talent as fitting for their role as the Nijigasaki School Idol Club's reliable supporter and manager:
  • The protagonist of ALL STARS has the uncanny ability to recognize everyone's strengths and weaknesses and helping them improve from there, a useful skill that's helped the school idols time and again as their leader.
  • Yu has a similar skill in that she can envision a school idol's full potential just by taking a good look at their performance herself and uses it to help them achieve just that. Another skill Yu has is that she manages to pick up the piano at an almost inhuman speed, going from having no experience whatsoever in Episode 3 to being able to play a complete piano arrangement of "CHASE!" in Episode 10, all in the span of a single school term despite not having the same musical experience and background her game counterpart has.
• Audience Surrogate: They can be seen as a stand-in for all the fans of the Love Live franchise, being a huge fan of school idols while not actually being one themselves. While the protagonist in the game is more fleshed out than the typical Featureless Protagonist, she still doesn't have much of a background beyond "Ayumu's childhood friend who loves school idols".
• Breaking Old Trends: They are the only main character in the franchise to:
  • Not be associated with the color orange in any way, nor have orange hair.
  • Not be a performing school idol.
  • Have a unique image color not shared by any other character (black).
• Canon Name: Zigzagged. The name "Yu Takasaki" won the official online fan poll to determine the name of the ALL STARS's protagonist's counterpart in the anime, and is the one used for merchandise and material related to the anime version of the character. However, the protagonist of ALL STARS remains unnamed in official material and works related to the game, as the comic tapestry short manga series as well as the animated drama shorts avoid referring to her directly by any name nor is she referred to as "Yu Takasaki" either.
• Childhood Friends: The core element of their character that they share together in both mediums is that they've both known Ayumu since they were little, growing up in the same apartment building as neighbors near Odaiba.
• Cute Sports Club Manager: In practice, this is what their actual role within the club is since they're not a school idol themselves.
• Fangirl: For school idols in general. In the game, the protagonist is an especially big one for both µ's and Aqours after she saw their joint live together in Chapter 1. When she gets to meet them personally on separate occasions, she's more than ecstatic to finally do so. In the anime, Yu becomes a big Setsuna fangirl after she watches her outdoor live in the first episode and this leads her to be a fangirl for all school idols.
• The Gadfly: It's subtle, but some of the protagonist's dialogue options in some stories show that she's fond of teasing her friends every now and then. This is carried over with Yu in the anime.
• Genki Girl: Downplayed compared to previous protagonists. They burst into excitable energy whenever school idols come into the topic and are, by default, cheerful girls, but they're comparatively more levelheaded and somewhat reserved otherwise compared to fellow protagonists, Honoka and Chika, before them.
• The Heart: They fill in this role as the person who brought the members together. With them joining, Setsuna hopes in both the game and the anime that the club won't disband like last time.
• The Hyena: They both easily laugh at any and all of Ai's puns. According to Ayumu, they've always had an infantily-childish sense of humor since kindergarten.
• Morality Pet: While Kasumi can be a little mischievous around her fellow school idols, she's nothing but sincerely and openly affectionate towards the protagonist and Yu.
• Nice Girl: Comes with the territory of being the club's main supporter and manager. The protagonist and Yu are kind and encouraging towards their friends and they do everything in their ability to make sure their well-being is accommodated for. Though, the game counterpart has some Jerkass Ball moments that are avoided by Yu in the anime.
• The Reliable One: The Nijigasaki School Idol Club members acknowledge them as a very dependable person and so know that they can always count on them no matter what in both the game and anime.
• Supporting Protagonist: While they're part of the game and anime's story, the focus is on the other club members.

ALL STARS Protagonist

Grade: Second Year

A second year from Nijigasaki High School who serves as The Protagonist and Player Character in Love Live! School idol Festival ALL STARS. Upon seeing the magic of school idols for herself, she becomes an instant fan whose love for school idols is practically boundless. Despite this, she prefers to stay on the sidelines, acting as the club's songwriter, lyricist, and manager to help realize the dreams of the club's members. Her analytical skills and logical reasoning abilities are second to none, making her the perfect person to discover the strengths and weaknesses of her friends and use them to create songs and dances that are truly unique to each member.

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• Affectionate Nickname: Mari calls the player "Rainbow Student" in Gratuitous English, playing off the word "niji" in "Nijigasaki".
• All of the Other Reindeer: School idols who are unfamiliar with the protagonist and her role in the Nijigasaki School Idol Club tend to look down on her for being part of a school idol club despite not being a school idol herself. Nico initially didn't allow her to participate in the friendly competition between the Nijigasaki School Idol Club and µ's in Chapter 6 because she wasn't a school idol, some of the volunteer school idols from the forum Ayumu looked at in Chapter 16 didn't have any confidence in her managing the School Idol Festival for the same reason, and Lanzhu's dislike of her is also rooted under the same basis that she wasn't one of them with the addition of the protagonist being supposedly unremarkably ordinary in her eyes.
• Character Focus: Chapter 29 has her questioning if simply being a supporter of school idols is truly the best way to express her love for school idols rather than becoming a performer herself. However, she (and Lanzhu) learns from Ayumu that her status as a supporter has been an integral part of helping not only her, but everyone in the Club become the school idols that they are today, resulting in the protagonist realizing that just being with her friends and being at their side every step of the way is enough proof that she loves school idols, so she decides not to perform and settles for confessing what she loves about every Club member on-stage.
• Chick Magnet: Her kindness and supportive nature earns her the affection of all the school idols.
• Commonality Connection: She forms a close bond with Maki and Riko for being the composer of their respective group and with Kotori for being the supporter of their group.
  • In Chapter 8, she invites Honoka and Chika for a sleepover in her house and they get along really well with each other since they have a lot in common as the leader of their respective group.
• Determinator: The protagonist is willing to do whatever it takes to help her friends succeed and achieve their dreams no matter what. Unlike with Honoka and Chika though, she's almost too good at this; she has a tendency to shoulder the burden if she blames herself for a setback and double down on her efforts, which at one point results in her alienating the other club members because she wouldn't allow them to help her.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Simply referred to by everyone in the game (except the Nijigasaki first years) as "[Ayumu's] childhood friend", "Manager", "Pres", or "Chief". The first years call her "Senpai".
• Featureless Protagonist: Zigzagged as most of the story is experienced from the protagonist's view, and as such she has no defined physical appearance, but she is established as her own unique character with her own skills and ideals (but no real backstory). Her anime counterpart averts this as she has both a canon appearance and name.
• Flanderization: The protagonist suffers from this in Season 2, where her love of school idols is massively played up to the point where it completely overrides other personality traits. Most egregious in Chapter 29, where Lanzhu outright admits that she treated the protagonist like trash and apologizes profusely for it, but the protagonist barely cares and almost immediately switches the topic to gushing about school idols.
• The Ghost: Unlike Yu, the protagonist is neither named in-story, nor does she physically show up in any way in any ALL STARS-related material like the official comic tapestries and voiced dramas, only indirectly referred to whenever she's brought up. Ayumu's comic tapestry story is the only time she ever gets to speak directly^note Though she also gets to speak in a brief flashback in Rina's comic tapestry. but still doesn't physically appear at all otherwise.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You name the protagonist at the start of the game, mostly for the purposes of putting a name in the text box for the protagonist's dialogue. Her anime counterpart has the Canon Name "Yu Takasaki".
• Heroic BSoD:
  • The protagonist gets hit with a bad case of this during her piano battle with Maki in ALL STARS Chapter 6, to the point that she couldn't bring herself to play the piece she spent most of her time practicing on for most of the chapter. Her subsequent loss and inability to find the same radiance she saw in Maki's performance with the song she wrote puts her in a depressive slump for a couple of days, worrying her friends greatly.
  • The protagonist once again hits another depressive slump during Chapter 15, when she essentially runs herself ragged trying to contact every single volunteer who didn't show up during the sign-ups, all while blaming herself for the screw up and attempting to take responsibility for it all by rejecting her friends' attempts to help her out. The amount of stress from this negatively impacts her psyche greatly, and it culminates in her lashing out at Ayumu by the end of the chapter after repeatedly brushing her away coldly previously, resulting in Ayumu quitting the club.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: The protagonist has a tendency of belittling herself around others as she doesn't see herself as anything special compared to everyone around her despite the tremendous amount of support she's given to her friends and her own accomplishments to go with it. Thanks to this, she's also prone to quickly beat herself up for any perceived failure on her part as shown in Chapters 6, 15, and 20.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Non-romantic example. In Season 2 of ALL STARS, the protagonist states that she has no issues with any school idols in the School Idol Club leaving to join Lanzhu's School Idol Association, if they personally think that it will improve their abilities as idols. Ultimately, she cares about their personal success and wants them to achieve it through the means they best deem fit, even if it is not under her leadership.
• It's All My Fault: There are shades of this behavior during Chapter 15, when the Club fails to attract even 10% of the required number of volunteers for the School Idol Festival, the protagonist becomes desperate to gain additional volunteers and starts running herself to the brink of exhaustion trying to contact every single person who didn't show. When Ayumu asks about it, she insists that she has to take care of it herself and refuses to let anyone else help her.
• Jerkass Realization: After she takes the time to calm down and talk to the other club members about her feelings, the protagonist realizes how badly she treated Ayumu during their fight the other day and rushes back to school (while Ayumu is livestreaming, no less) to apologize to her.
• The Leader: As the president of the Nijigasaki School Idol Club.
• Player Character: For ALL STARS.
• Put on a Bus: She ended up studying abroad for 2 months after Chapter 17. Because of this, she's unavailable from chapter 18 to 19.
• Supporting Leader: While she is the leader of Nijigasaki School Idol, she's not a school idol by choice. Preferring to be their number one fan and supporter.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: During the events of Chapter 15, the volunteer signups not going to plan takes a heavy toll on the protagonist's psyche, and her increasing desire to see the School Idol Festival succeed causes her to blame herself for the screw-up. As she attempts to win over volunteers, she becomes increasingly cold and distant to Ayumu, and in a confrontation at the end of the chapter her selfishness causes Ayumu to break down and quit. She doesn't really stop to realize what she's done until Shioriko points it out for her.
• Weak, but Skilled: A variation, as while she claims to lack the ability to become a school idol herself, she happens to excel in multiple other fields that, incidentally, make her a great leader to other school idols, including songwriting, choreography, analytics, logic and reasoning, and charisma.
• Worthy Opponent: Mia eventually begins seeing the protagonist as such starting from around Chapters 22-23 of ALL STARS, even admitting to Rina that she's excited for the school idol tournament because that means she gets to compete with the protagonist as fellow songwriters.

Yu Takasaki

Image Color: Black

Grade: Second Year

Height: 156cm

Symbol: Bridge

Voiced by: Hinaki Yano (Japanese), Madeline Dorroh (English) (Anime)

The main character of the anime Nijigasaki High School Idol Club. After witnessing Setsuna Yuki's passionate performance of "CHASE!" one fateful morning with her childhood friend Ayumu Uehara at Nijigasaki's school grounds, Yu Takasaki is instantly taken in by the world of school idols, inspiring her to become their #1 supporter in an attempt for her to find out what her own dreams are by helping them realize theirs.

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• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: While Yu has her own occasional moments of self-doubt in the anime, she doesn't wallow in her failures as much as her game counterpart did, choosing, with some encouragement from her friends, to keep moving forward in life with confident assertiveness. Though it does help that Yu never quite went through what the protagonist did in the game to cause her to be that way in the first place.
• Adaptation Deviation: Unlike her game counterpart, Yu is not the Nijigasaki School Idol Club's official president in the anime, though she still works as their manager all the same.
• Adaptation Personality Change: A couple of things set Yu apart from her game counterpart:
  • Subdued compared to the rest of the cast, but Yu is more obviously a Genki Girl than her game counterpart, being more excitable by default and prone to surges of emotion. She is able to keep her cool when the situation calls for it, but she handles it a little differently from the Protagonist, who prefers to stop and think when a problem arises.
  • Yu is also a lot more resolute, and ironically, more level-headed than her game counterpart in situations where she's put in conflict with different people for a variety of reasons. The protagonist, by contrast, has a tendency to let her emotions and bad self-esteem do the talking for her in certain dramatic situations. This difference is best seen in both of their first official confrontations with Lanzhu respectively: the Protagonist was initially more sheepish and took Lanzhu's insulting words about her to heart before Shioriko assures her otherwise. Yu on the other hand, not only doesn't shrink back from Lanzhu's challenge towards her ideals, she unhesitantly takes it on with a confident smile on her face, showing Lanzhu that she will not back down from what she believes school idols and their fans should be.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: Yu being part of the general curriculum course and not the music course like her game counterpart in the anime means she doesn't have the same musical background and experience the protagonist of ALL STARS has, though she's a fast learner when it comes to playing the piano by herself. This changes when she makes the decision to switch to the music course in the middle of the semester in the season 1 finale after finally realizing what her dream is.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed as Yu's game counterpart is normally as nice and kindhearted as you'd expect her to be, but she has a couple of faults in the game that Yu has avoided so far in the anime:
  • In the game, the protagonist has a bad tendency of shouldering all the burden and blame by herself whenever something goes wrong for the club during certain points in the story, believing it to be a failure on her part alone as the school idol club's president. This unfortunately causes her to unwittingly act more coldly and selfishly towards her friends and absolutely refuses to allow them to help her whatsoever, alienating them from her as a result. This doesn't happen in the anime as Yu doesn't experience going through the same factors that caused the protagonist to act that way in the first place, so she remains better off emotionally than her game counterpart while avoiding the same pitfalls that the protagonist fell in in her worst lows. As she also lacks her game counterpart's tendency to shoulder the burden by herself, Yu is more open to receiving help from her friends whenever she needs it too.
  • As a result of the above reason in the game, the protagonist winds up coldly neglecting and alienating Ayumu for most of Chapter 15, to the point of harshly lashing out at her out of stress. This culminates in Ayumu quitting the club as a response by the end of the chapter. The protagonist doesn't realize how badly she hurt Ayumu or understand how she felt in the first place until midway into Chapter 16. By contrast, Yu spends most of her time with Ayumu in the anime, looks out for her frequently, is always ever-supportive towards her childhood friend, and is more emotionally mindful of Ayumu's feelings as much as she can without neglecting her at least once. While they still come into conflict later, the circumstances and context behind it are much different from the game's and is not something Yu necessarily sparked between them.
  • Yu's conflict with Ayumu doesn't outright devolve into a fight unlike the game. When she and Ayumu come at an emotional impasse during Episodes 11-12, Yu actually tries to initiate dialogue with Ayumu to try to clear up any issues between them after what happened the night before. This only fails because Ayumu was too distressed to listen to her, and Yu immediately backs off and stops forcing the issue when she quickly realizes this.
• Affectionate Nickname: Ai calls her "Yuyu".
• Ambiguous Situation: The anime never clarifies or confirms if Yu is the president of the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club just like her game counterpart. On one hand, the girls don't address her as the club president like they do for the protagonist of ALL STARS yet her role as their manager and supporter remains mostly the same in the anime. The club presidency is brought up a a total of once in the series when Ai asks about it but is dropped off just as quickly without giving a single concrete answer to the question in hand at all. Finally answered in Season 2, which confirms that Yu isn't the club president in the anime continuity but Kasumi.
• Book Dumb: Downplayed. In Season 1, due to her huge focus on her passion for idols and caring for others, it turns out she has neglected schoolwork, and her grades are very average, though given that she does fine otherwise, it's not much of an issue. Played straight in Season 2 after shifting to the music course where she visibly has problems catching up with her new curriculum. In this case, it's understandable: switching to a new academic discipline that she has no prior experience on can be tough for newcomers.
• Character Catchphrase: Yu has a tendency to say "Tokimeki" in the anime, which is translated as either "thrilling", "heart-pounding", or "exciting", whenever something, usually school idols, sparks a special kind of excitement in her heart.
• Coat Cape: Amusingly, Yu sometimes wears her school jersey like a cape in some of the anime's episodes.
• Curtains Match the Window: A strange example. While her hair is predominantly black, its green tips match her green eyes completely.
• Cuteness Proximity: Ayumu doing the "Ayu-bun" gesture from their childhood never fails to make Yu all giddy towards her. She also finds Kasumi adorable in Episode 2 of the anime.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Her reason for why she wants to give the school idols all the support they can get from her in the anime.
  Yu: I mean, I don't have any dreams of my own yet, but...if I could support someone chasing their dreams...something would finally start for me too.
• Ditzy Genius: Yu is an intelligent, intuitive and talented musician and composer, yet she's also pretty goofy and can be forgetful.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Before the anime aired, Yu's first official appearance was in the "Muteki-kyuu*Believer" MV as a doll Ayumu is holding at the beginning of the song. She also shows up as herself in the "Mirai Harmony" MV, but only for a few seconds and with her eyes hidden from the audience.
  • Yu makes her first Nijiyon debut in a special 4koma for a stamp rally held in Odaiba to promote the anime, though she doesn't really appear in-person in the comic itself.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Initial releases of Yu's character design for the anime depicted Yu as somewhat stoic or deadpan, which is a far cry from her game counterpart's cheerful personality in ALL STARS and a hilarious contrast to her official character profile in the anime where she excitedly states that she's passionate about school idols. It's not until later releases of promotional images for the anime, shown a few weeks before its airing, that Yu's character artwork becomes better reflective of her canonical personality in-story.
• Establishing Character Moment: Yu has several of these in the first episode of the anime:
  • One of her first scenes in the anime has her encouraging Ayumu to wear a cute pink frilly dress they found at a store window, telling her that it would look great on her and then follows it up by sincerely saying that Ayumu looks super cute in anything she wears with a completely straight face, with the latter embarrassingly remarking on how Yu has a penchant for saying stuff like that. Later on, when Yu sees the small bunny hoodie right next to the dress, Yu looks back on how Ayumu used to wear something like that while cutely saying "Ayu-bun" when they were kids, fondly says she was cute back then, and then half-jokingly tells her to do the "Ayu-bun" gesture she used to do for old times' sake. This firmly establishes Yu's sincere and encouraging nature, her subtle tendency of lightly teasing her friends with honest words, her intimate friendship with Ayumu, as well as her fondness for adorable people and things.
  • Yu's visualization of Setsuna's performance of "CHASE!" during the live that sparked Yu's love for school idols, her enthusiastic fangirling over Setsuna and sudden excitability that quickly follows after Setsuna's performance, and how she stayed up all night just to research all that she could about school idols establish Yu's talent of realizing and being able to recognize a school idol's full individual potential and ideal self when she sees how they perform and present themselves, as well as how big of a fangirl she is when it comes to school idols.
  • Her earlier denial when Ayumu tells her that her "Yu-bun" sounds cuter than Ayumu's "Ayu-bun" combined with her speech to Ayumu above where she confesses to the latter her desire of wanting to support others so something could start for herself too, her promise to always be by Ayumu's side when Ayumu declares that she'll pursue being a school idol in front of her, and how she gently smiles and holds Ayumu's hand with both of her own to reassure her before making said promise showcase Yu's kind, gentle, and supportive nature while leaving small hints of some self-deprecation towards herself with her goal of trying to find her own dreams through her support of others.
• Girlish Pigtails: With green tips.
• The Glomp: Yu has a habit of doing this whenever she gets enchanted by the school idols' performances or if she finds them cute in some way.
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: Yu's endearingly bold tendency to be honest when it comes to complimenting the school idols and her charming way of how she says them such as telling Ayumu that she (Yu) was the one "who thought she was cute right from the start", causes many of her friends, Ayumu especially, to get flustered out of a mix of embarrassment and sincere flattery. She even manages to make Lanzhu, who at the time of Episode 5 of the second season is still opposed to Yu's presence in the School Idol Club (albeit for sympathetic reasons), blush like a little girl when Yu sincerely thanks her for looking out for her despite Lanzhu's well-intentioned antagonism against her. If Nijiyon is anything, Yu seems to be rather oblivious over the effect she has on her friends.
• Little "No": Her answer to a clearly upset Ayumu asking her if "Setsuna-chan is more important (than me) for you". It helps very little, though, given that Ayumu's insecurities are far more complex than simple jealousy.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Yu is Ayumu's kind, ever supportive, and very reliable childhood friend who Ayumu loves and has been very attached to since their childhood. It's primarily the reason Ayumu becomes uncomfortable whenever she has to share Yu with the other school idols and why just the notion of being parted from her distresses her so much.
• Meaningful Name: Each kanji of her full name (高咲　侑) denotes her role in the story.
  • The 高 character is taken from Kosaka (高坂) and Takami (高海), the surnames of Honoka and Chika respectively. All 3 girls are The Leaders of their respective group.
  • The 咲 character comes from Nijigasaki (虹ヶ咲), the school she attends.
  • The 侑 character means "to help" which describes her role in supporting everyone in the club.
  • Her first name "Yu" is a Punny Name that denotes that she's supposed to be you, the player.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Played With, because while Ayumu and Yu are not dating, (maybe?), episode 10 has a scene where Setsuna stumbles by accident and falls upon Yu's chest, Ayumu is shocked upon noticing this, and it is played up with said angle for all its worth, becoming a key component in the setup for Episode's 11 Drama Bomb.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She doesn't wear a vest with her summer uniform, and she's also the only one of the group who doesn't wear her shirt tucked in.
• No Sense of Personal Space: In the anime. Yu continuously gets uncomfortably close to girls that she has barely met (to the point of glomping them), if they are involved in any way with school idols, which gets her chided by Ayumu and Kasumi (ironically, an example of this when they first met).
• The Promise: She makes one with Ayumu in the anime, promising the latter that she'll always be by her side to support her after Ayumu declares her intent of becoming a school idol and wanting Yu to watch over her all the while at the end of episode 1.
• Punny Name: "Yu" is a pun on the English pronoun, "you". In ALL STARS, she's supposed to be you, the player.
• Self-Deprecation: She unfavorably compares herself to her friends by saying that she's not as unique as they all are. She is legitimately surprised when the girls assure her that she's plenty extraordinary by herself and that she has unique traits of her own.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: She suddenly pops out of nowhere next to Kasumi without warning while the latter was troubled by her thoughts in Episode 2.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Yu's fashion sense and wardrobe choices are noticeably more tomboyish and less feminine than her friends, even as a kid. Nevertheless, her mannerisms, hobbies, and bubbly personality still make her girliness stand out more in spite of it.
• Tsurime Eyes: Yu has them in the anime, which serves to highlight her cheerful, perky and energetic personality and to contrast her with her more demure and quiet best friend Ayumu's Tareme Eyes.
• Wingding Eyes: Yu gets small hearts in her eyes whenever she gets overly excited from fangirling in the anime.

A•ZU•NA

A•ZU•NA's first single, "Dream Land! Dream World!"

The "Smile" subunit, a trio of Ayumu Uehara, Shizuku Osaka, and Setsuna Yuki. Much like Printemps and CYaRon! before them, they primarily focus on upbeat, cheery pop music. Their unique blend of soft and strong vocals creates a juxtaposition that gives the subunit a signature sound.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the game, A•ZU•NA was formed by Ayumu after she got jealous with how the player character was praising DiverDiva and wanted to prove to the player that she can challenge herself. In the anime, the unit was formed by Shizuku as part of a collaboration preshow project between the School Idol Club and the Drama Club due to Shizuku's desire to perform a song and act a drama play together with Ayumu and Setsuna.
• Genki Girl: They are the resident "Smile" unit whose songs are very cheerful and upbeat, following Printemps and CYaRon!. Ironically, none of the group's members really have this personality themselves, with Shizuku and Ayumu particularly being more on the softspoken side. Setsuna/Nana is an odd case, as she genuinely is energetic and geeky, but while working as the Student Council President, she must act like a serious and professional Proper Lady, and besides her group, no one knows the president Nana and the widely beloved idol Setsuna are the same person.
• Genre Shift: "Maze Town" diverges heavily from the normal cutesy pop music in favor of a goth rock track that wouldn't sound out of place for Guilty Kiss or Saint Snow, featuring gratuitous electric guitar and pipe organ.
• Motif: While they are associated with typical "genki" songs, they are specifically themed around a "theme park" aesthetic, justified in-universe as the members wanting to come up with a way to represent a variety of musical styles without sacrificing their integrity as a subunit. Many of their songs are based on various things you would see in a theme park, such as "Happy Nyan! Days" (a cat cafe) and "Maze Town" (a haunted house).
• Pair the Spares: In-Universe, the subunit is this, given that Ayumu could only group up with Shizuku and Setsuna, as they were the only remaining members of the Club who were not already part of a subunit. Compared to QU4RTZ or DiverDiva, the haphazard way in which A•ZU•NA is formed causes some initial issues for its members, as they have the most trouble deciding on a common Motif that could reconcile their otherwise disparate musical styles.
• Portmanteau: The subunit name is a composite of all three members' first names, each of which has three syllables: Ayumu, Shizuku, and Setsuna.

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Ayumu Uehara

The Hard-working School Idol

Image Color: Light Pink

Grade: Second Year

Birthday: March 1 (Pisces)

Blood Type: A

Height: 159cm

Three Sizes: B82/W58/H84

Symbol: Bow

Voiced by: Aguri Onishi (Japanese), Suzie Yeung (English)

An ordinary girl with no exceptional talents, Ayumu is seemingly content with just living a normal high school life. But when she and her childhood friend stumbled upon a school idol performance for the first time, a new path would suddenly appear in Ayumu's world. Despite not being able to sing or dance, Ayumu would nevertheless venture on to become a school idol herself.

Ayumu's solo style tends towards a "traditional idol" aesthetic, with generally upbeat, pop music-style tones and lyrics emphasizing her struggles and hard work she puts into being an idol.

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• Achilles in His Tent: In chapter 15, Ayumu quits the club due to a disagreement with her childhood friend. In chapter 16, Ayumu recognizes the hard work that they already did and not wanting to let it all go to waste, decided to become a school idol again.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: The tint of Ayumu's hair color depends on the media she's in. In ALL STARS, her hair passes for reddish-brown, while her hair color in the anime leans toward a brownish-red. In School idol festival 2 the differences are noticeable since both shades are present.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Zigzagged on both ends.
  • ALL STARS Ayumu originally only agreed to be a school idol in order to impress the protagonist. She's a lot more overt in showing her emotions without regard, particularly being jealous of any other girl that interacts with her childhood friend. This jealousy of hers is Played for Laughs, and the conflict in Chapter 15-16 has little to do with this, but is instead born after the protagonist neglects her when she becomes obsessed with the School Idol Festival's success, leading to Ayumu quitting the club. Ayumu's development through this is based around learning that she actually enjoys being a school idol, and that she can also rely on others besides her childhood friend (i.e., Shioriko).
  • Anime Ayumu at first appears to be more comprehensive and supportive of Yu, going as far as yelling that she loves school idols and that she wants to be one. Her jealousy is also far more subtle. However, as the reality of the dream that she choose to chase besides Yu becomes more overt, Ayumu starts to show more cracks and the issues underneath become more apparent as a combination of jealousy, emotional abandonment, and fear of the future makes her emotional outburst arguably worse than in the game, putting her claims in Episode 1 in a different light as it's now clear that she initially became a school idol so she could perform exclusively for Yu. While she doesn't quit the club, it takes the support from Yu, Setsuna and her fans to get her to learn that as a school idol she doesn't stand alone, that she can share her love and emotions with others without detracting from her relationship with Yu, and that, no matter what, Yu's feelings for her are unwavering.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • ALL STARS Chapter 15-16 serves as one for her, as it further explores her reason for joining the School Idol Club and bestows her with some Character Development regarding her own dreams and the fight with the protagonist in the previous chapter.
  • Episodes 10-12 from the anime give her a lot of development, regarding her insecurities, her jealousy and her fear of a future where she drifts away from Yu. It culminates with Ayumu getting a second insert song, "Awakening Promise".
• Affectionate Nickname: To her recurring embarrassment, Ai nicknames her as "Ayu-bun/Ayu-pyon" in the anime.
• Animal Motifs: Rabbits. Her character specifically seems to be modeled on the popular Japanese idiom "Rabbits die when lonely", hence her overt emotional attachment to the protagonist/Yu and overt jelousy over them receiving attention from the other girls.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: She gives one of these to Yu at the end of Episode 11, after being led to believe that her friendship with the latter is in jeopardy due to Yu ostensibly spending more time with the other members of the club and thinking that she was Locked Out of the Loop regarding Yu leaning to play the piano, which Setsuna is privy to.
• Bunnies for Cuteness: She has an affinity for bunnies and her "Excited Animal" outfit in the game has her wear bunny ears for it. In the anime, Yu recalls that when Ayumu was a kid, she used to wear a cute little bunny costume while saying "Ayu-bun/Ayu-pyon" complete with bunny ear gestures, which Yu still finds as adorable in the present day. Kasumi seems to have the same idea which is why she has Ayumu do her "Ayu-bun" thing as part of her school idol intro, much to Ayumu's embarrassment and Yu's delight.
• Can't Stay Normal: After the fight between her and the protagonist in Chapter 15, Ayumu loses her drive to be a school idol and skips school for a day. When Shioriko checks on her and subsequently takes her shopping, Ayumu insists that she doesn't need school idols anymore and tries to get back into her old hobbies. However, after realizing that her hobbies aren't keeping her fulfilled anymore and discovering that the School Idol Festival is in danger, she realizes that she truly loves being a school idol and returns to the club to help save the Festival.
• Character Catchphrase: "Ayumu da pyon!"^note "Pyon" being an onomatopoeia for jumping, like a bunny hop. Originally she didn't have one, but the anime gave this to her via Bunnies for Cuteness, which was eventually applied to her character as a whole.
• Characterization Marches On: Possibly the most extreme case in the franchise. The early Famitsu yonkoma (an extremely comedic affair) portrayed her as a borderline jerk lacking much of a moral filter that would assault others at the most minor provocation, until it was revealed that much of this was the result of demonic possession. This is, of course, a heavy contrast with her overall Nice Girl personality.
• Childhood Friends: With the player character/Yu Takasaki in ALL STARS and in the Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club anime.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • In ALL STARS, she does not act on it but she does get visibly jealous when someone else is getting the full attention of her childhood friend. Then there's her Bond Story, where she stalks the protagonist after she starts skipping their usual meet-ups.
  • This voiced drama also has Ayumu become troubled by how close the other members of the club have gotten to her childhood friend, as well as some of them resolving to get even closer to her.
  • Unlike the other cast members whose usages of Adaptation Personality Change in the anime is more obvious, Ayumu underwent this effect more subtly by significantly exacerbating her clinginess and co-dependency towards Yu. The show makes a Running Gag out of Ayumu reacting with surprise or disapproval when Yu gets close to other school idols, but towards the end of the season Played for Drama is in effect as the target of her jealousy turns towards Setsuna when she feels that her friendship with Yu is becoming increasingly strained, which culminates in a sudden Love Confession in a desperate attempt to prevent Yu from leaving her. Over the course of various episodes in the anime, she visibly reacts to Yu fawning over other girls:
    • In Season 1 Episode 1, she seems surprised/upset when Yu names Setsuna with the honorific "-chan", using a more formal "-san" herself.
    • In Episode 2, she is somewhat perturbed when Yu calls Kasumi "cute" and fawns over her.
    • A lot more subtle in episode 3, but when Yu throws herself at Setsuna, Ayumu holds Yu tightly by the hand through the rest of the shot after helping her to get up.
    • In Episode 5, she visibly reacts twice in different degrees to Yu's declaration of wanting to support all of the school idols in the club.
    • In Episode 7, in a blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment, Ayumu's expression subtly, but visibly, changes from a smile to a small surprised frown when Yu starts fawning over Haruka during the latter's visit to Nijigasaki.
    • Episode 10 has a more dramatic spin than in previous episodes, with Ayumu becoming noticeably more uncomfortable throughout the episode the more she realizes that Yu's dream extends to all the other girls in the club and not just her, which was her main reason for joining the club. It doesn't help matters that while walking down a hallway with Yu, Setsuna trips, causing the former to catch the latter to keep her from falling. Whilst looking for Yu, Ayumu winds up seeing what appears to be Setsuna embracing Yu from the floor below, and is incredibly stunned as a result.
    • Episode 11 ultimately turns this into the centerpoint of the Drama Bomb, as her jealousy of Setsuna and her desire to stay Yu's best friend ultimately causes her to snap at the end of the episode and profess her feelings to Yu out of sheer desperation.
    • Continuing in Season 2 Episode 1, after Lanzhu reveals she'd watched the club's videos, Ayumu leans over with a surprised frown as Yu happily welcomes Lanzhu to the club.
• Cover Version: Covers Shizuku's "Anata no Risou no Heroine" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Often fails at idol activities and beats herself up for those failures.
• Demonic Possession: In the Famitsu Yonkoma. It's revealed that her bitter attitude and generally Jerkass behavior towards Rina is the result of being possessed by an evil spirit. She is instantly exorcised by Nozomi (referred to as "a passing shrine maiden") and returns to normal.
• Depending on the Writer: Her place as the leading character in most media where Takasaki Yu is absent, means that her characterization shifts around as it is required for the plot.
  • The early yonkoma portrayed her as self-centered, spiteful and a subdued Jerk with a Heart of Gold who treated Rina as a Butt-Monkey and physically assaulted others, though this was all in the service of comedy. It's later revealed that she was possessed by a demon, and after being exorcised, she becomes kinder and gentler.
  • ALL STARS portrays Ayumu (as described in her own seiyuu's words), as a "takane no hana"^note Translation: "flower on a high peak", which is a figurative expression used to describe a girl that is out of most men's leagues thanks to her beauty, her highly feminine energy, and how she fits most of the "ideal" personality traits valued on a Japanese woman in the current day. She also engages on more interactions with the rest of the Nijigasaki girls, particularly Shioriko.
  • By contrast, the anime depicts Ayumu as more down-to-earth, and with a larger range of emotions. Whereas "ALL STARS" Ayumu would merely get sad and cry when faced with frustration, anime Ayumu is shown to get angry and raise her voice on similar situations. She's also shown many times to be dumbfounded by the kind of situations she finds herself into, and most of her attention is centered around Yu.
  • The radio dramas take the Chick Magnet aspect of Yu, crank it up to eleven and give it to Ayumu, who also becomes some sort of dense harem master with the rest of the Nijigasaki girls.
• Determinator: She is determined to accomplish her dream to become a school idol, one step at a time. Her character pitch specifically highlights this trait, and in Chapter 1 of ALL STARS, the reason why she was recruited was because she's a hard worker.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Ayu-bun/Ayu-pyon serves as this for her, though Ai intended for it to be an Affectionate Nickname instead.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: She's not as good as Kanata, but she's good enough to prepare a bento for herself.
• Girl Next Door: Ayumu is a cute, modest, hardworking Nice Girl who also happens to live literally next door to her Childhood Friend.
• Girly Girl: Played With. One part of Ayumu's development in the anime, is to accept that she is this, even though she's not particularly tomboyish or masculine - she just got to an age where she started to think being like this was childish and embarrassing.
• Go-Getter Girl: She's very hardworking, but always seeks approval from others.
• Green-Eyed Monster: While she occasionally gets jealous of the other school idols every now and then, it's Setsuna that she harbors the most envy towards for her growing relationship with Yu starting from Episode 10. Her feelings reach boiling point in Episode 11 when she mistakenly believes that Yu told Setsuna about her piano playing first before her, not knowing that Setsuna accidentally walked in on Yu playing it both times and that Ayumu was supposed to be the one she was going to surprise about it first.
• I Just Want to Be Special: A core aspect of her motivation to become a school idol, although unlike Honoka and Chika there's a big twist in relation to it. In both the game and the anime, it turns out that her actual reason for becoming an idol is strongly tied to her attachment to the player character/Yu, wherein the degree of "special" is being special to them rather than being seen as special by anyone else. She does ultimately outgrow this mindset in the game/anime and embraces being a school idol as she learns to express her emotions and appreciate the attention from both Yu, and her newfound fans.
• Implied Love Interest: To the player character/Yu Takasaki due to their close intimate relationship as childhood friends that also has a lot of romantic subtext.
• Kubrick Stare: She has one of these in Episode 11 when Yu tries to tell her about her dream, sparking her jealousy as she became a school idol solely to gain Yu's attention and for no other reason.
• The Leader: Played With. The Nijigasaki School Idol Club's official leader in-story is actually her childhood friend, the Player Character/Yu Takasaki, and they all defer to her as such. However, Ayumu usually takes the lead in promotional material, she is lumped with Honoka and Chika in ALL STARS material as the Nijigasaki representative, has the most centers through Nijigasaki's discography, and is also the only Nijigasaki member to get two new songs through the anime's 1st season. The 1st Anniversary app icon for ALL STARS is Ayumu, following the tradition stablished by the previous leaders/protagonists for School Idol Festival.
• Madness Mantra: She repeatedly utters "cute is scary" several times after being forced by Kasumi to adopt a "cute image" for her idol introductory video.
• Morality Pet: Shioriko has a soft spot for Ayumu, being closer to her than anyone else in the club. Part of it is because she sees the value of Ayumu's hard work in being a school idol despite not being suited for it.
• Motif: Pink bows and pink flowers (cherry blossoms, roses and sunrays) are prominent elements through all the media she appears in. This plays up into a prominent analogy through the game/anime, with Ayumu slowly "blossoming" from a shy, clingy and insecure girl, into a more mature and confident person that can inspire others. The lyrics of "Kaika Sengen/Blossoming Declaration" and "Awakening Promise" are more overt with the symbolism.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In both the game and the anime:
  • She genuinely feels terrible for quitting the club after getting into a fight with her childhood friend in the heat of the moment in Chapter 15 of ALL STARS and wants to apologize to both the club members and the protagonist for what happened, though it takes her until the end of Chapter 16 to do so due to a combination of being afraid to face them and her questioning why she became a school idol in the first place.
  • In the anime, she feels embarrassed over having forced her feelings towards Yu in Episode 11, but tries to sidestep the issue whenever Yu brings it up until Yu confronts her about in Episode 12, resulting in Ayumu lashing out at Yu in an emotional outburst when her anxieties got the better of her. The following day, Ayumu is immediately regretful for the things she said, and like the game, is too ashamed to face Yu to properly apologize to her despite wanting to until Setsuna gives her the encouragement she needs to do so.
• Nice Girl: A genuinely sweet, modest girl, though true to the realistic weaknesses of the trope often present, she's also very dependent and insecure. Sometimes, for this reason indeed, she gets pretty jealous and possessive, but she manages to overcome this thanks to Character Development and understanding that physically distancing herself from Yu doesn't mean at all they won't be friends anymore.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Dressing up as a rabbit and pretending to be one was something she used to do regularly as a child, but she now regards it as an In-Universe Old Shame. However, Yu finds it adorable and frequently pesters her to do it, much to her embarrassment.
• Otaku: In the Famitsu Yonkoma she likes videogames, in particular Pokémon. She also goes into a particularly funny diatribe against a game she was chosen to review.◊ Her gamer side also appears in the Nijiyon anime, as she has the fastest time in the Fall Guys style mobile game that Rina developed in Episode 6.
• Pink Means Feminine: Ayumu is a very feminine girl and she has light pink as her image color, which makes her costumes mostly pink. She even admits to liking cute pink clothes in the anime.
• Prone to Tears: Ayumu is one of the most emotional characters in the franchise. She goes into an emotional outburst in Chapter 15 of ALL STARS when faced with the protagonist taking a level in jerkass, and also gets teary-eyed when confessing to Yu in episode 1 of the anime. Yu even half-jokingly mentions that she finds this emotional side of Ayumu's to be one of her biggest, and cutest, charm points, much to Ayumu's protests.
• Punny Name: The name of her first solo, "Yume e no Ippo", doubles as Alternate Character Reading trickery with the kanji in Ayumu's name.
• Satellite Character: The anime first builds up, then deconstructs this notion with respect to Ayumu being this to Yu. To wit, Ayumu initially structured her dream of being a school idol around gaining Yu's attention, and is also shown to be emotionally dependent on gaining Yu's approval. As the season progresses, Ayumu is shown to grow increasingly despondent as Yu's time and attention is spent on the other members of the club. This eventually culminates in her delivering a desperate Anguished Declaration of Love to Yu at the end of Episode 11, when she thinks that she might lose Yu as a friend. She ultimately grows out of this in Episode 12, upon discovering that she has schoolmates who are fans of hers, and that she could be an idol that appeals to them, in addition to Yu.
• Second Year Protagonist: The closest to a standard protagonist in the game, and in the anime alongside Yu. She gets a lot of focus, with the storyline showcasing her friendship with Yu, and her Character Development from a low self-esteem, clingy girl, into a proper school idol with a dream of her own and that doesn't rely on others to shine. She also currently has the most centers through Nijigaku's group songs. The anime makes her stand on the background while the rest of the girls develop, but this hits back on full force by the end of Season 1, with Ayumu getting the bulk of attention through a 3-episode mini-arc, and culminates her development by getting a new song.
• Secretly Selfish: She primarily became a school idol just to impress and get the attention of the protagonist/Yu in both the game and the anime, not out of genuine interest in becoming one, at least initially, especially in ALL STARS.
• Self-Deprecation: Considers her looks "ordinary", thinks she can't dance or sing as well as other school idols, and is oblivious to her own talents.
• Shrinking Violet: Downplayed; she's nowhere near as shy as Rina since she's pretty sociable towards the other girls, though she's more softspoken and docile when compared to previous main focal Love Live! characters like Honoka and Chika.
• Stepford Smiler: Throughout Episode 11, it's clear that Ayumu is burying her distress underneath her typical positive attitude, but none of the other girls really notice that anything's wrong. It's not until she confronts Yu at the end of the episode that she is no longer able to hide her feelings anymore and takes drastic measures.
• Tareme Eyes: Indicative of her quiet, soft and kind personality, contrasting with the more upbeat Yu's Tsurime Eyes.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Knitting is one of her hobbies, and she's one of the girliest girls in the series.
• Unknown Rival: Setsuna is completely oblivious to Ayumu's envy of her and her growing closeness to Yu in the anime, with Ayumu fearing that Setsuna may one day replace her as the person that's most important to Yu.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People: In early Yonkomas, Ayumu had a pet snake named Sasuke.

Shizuku Osaka

The Junior School Idol

Image Color: Light Blue

Grade: First Year

Birthday: April 3 (Aries)

Blood Type: A

Height: 157cm

Three Sizes: B80/W58/H83

Hobby: Going to the theater

Symbol: Raindrops

Voiced by: Kaori Maeda (Japanese), Jill Harris (English)

One of the five original members of the School Idol Club. Originally from Seiran High, Shizuku transferred to Nijigasaki to participate in the school's School Idol Club. She is a level-headed honor student and considered a traditional Japanese beauty. Due to her responsible nature, Shizuku is also inclined to taking on too much responsibility for herself.

Shizuku, being an actress, wields a versatile solo style; she predominantly has ballads with lyrics that tell a story, although she is capable of diverging into other genres like rock.

Apart from her membership in the School Idol Club, she is also part of the Theater Club.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: No mention is made of her being a transfer student from Seiran in the anime.
• Adaptation Expansion: While the game does talk about her Be Yourself message as part of her Bond Story, it's explored with very little depth and it doesn't really tie into her character at all, as it's not part of the main story and thus it has no effect on her development or actions. The anime's interpretation of her reworks this element of her character to be her main source of angst and ties her backstory into it, in the process giving her significantly more depth.
• Affectionate Nickname: Kasumi calls her "Shizuko".
• All of the Other Reindeer: A downplayed example. In episode 8 of the anime, Shizuku tells Kasumi that as a child, she liked old movies and novels, but would occasionally get weird looks from her classmates because of it. This, combined with a deep-seated fear of anyone seeing her as some weird girl and hating her, causes her to go into acting, so she can pretend to be anyone who's not her true self so everyone can like her. She's never actually shown being shunned in any way, but she's afraid this will happen if people see that she's not their so-called "ideal heroine."
• Ascended Extra: Shizuku was originally an "N" card girl from the mobile game, before being selected to become a full-fledged character in the franchise.
• Ambiguously Gay: Heavily implied to be this in the anime, Nijiyon, and the games. Shizuku's interactions with Kasumi, calling her the "cutest" in All Stars, blushing when she's around Ai in Nijiyon, and her romantic fanfic of Setsuna and Ayumu in the anime imply that Shizuku may be gay.
• Big Fancy House: Lives in a large, Western-style villa as revealed in the anime.
• Be Yourself: A big part of her character development in her focus episode in Episode 8 of the anime has her learn to accept herself as she is instead of always putting up a mask of being "everyone's ideal heroine".
• Character Development: Notable for having a significantly different course of character growth depending on if you're playing the game or watching the show, although they do touch on similar topics.
  • In the game, her Bond Story focuses on her love of acting and her desire to portray the kind of school idol that people would like to see. Later episodes have her embracing her passion while allowing herself to open up and not be afraid of showing a bit of her true self to her fans to create a unique style of multi-faceted school idol.
  • In the anime, her episode explores her love of acting as a way to be seen as the type of girl that people would like and lock away her true self because she feared being disliked by others. Her development thus has her realizing that no matter what people think of her, being yourself is a good thing and she shouldn't bury her feelings and desires because of her own insecurities.
• Closet Geek: She has had an affinity for old movies and books since she was young. However, as the only one who was interested in such a thing, she was afraid that people would hate her for being strange, which compelled her to take up acting so that she could appear as the kind of girl that people would like.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Downplayed. Shizuku is one of the most intelligent and levelheaded girls among the main cast, no doubt about it. However, she shows some shades of this as she can be easily distracted by dogs, old movies and books; the latter, which represent her Closet Geek hobbies, make her a bit self-conscious, and afraid of being perceived as weird.
• Cover Version: Covers Rina's "Doki Pipo ☆ Emotion" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Deadpan Snarker: Turns into one when dealing with Kasumi, which makes sense considering they're close friends and Kasumi sometimes veers into Attention Whore territory. An example is when Shizuku jokes on Kasumi's self-proclaimed status as the School Idol Club President.
• Duality Motif: The outfit Shizuku wears for "Solitude Rain" is part white, part black, and part gray, representing her decision to reject neither her true self nor her "mask" and combine the best elements of both to become someone who is truly "herself".
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Shizuku has the distinction of being the very first card in SIF, and it definitely shows, with her first N card having an art style more in line with mid-2000's anime. Later N cards gave her progressively rounder and fuller features and more detailed shading, and by the time she got her Perfect Dream Project card her design was actually quite close to the official Love Live! artwork.
• Fake Defector: At the end of Chapter 20 of ALL STARS, she decides to leave the School Idol Club and join Lanzhu's School Idol Association, in order to discern for herself what the differences in the approaches between the two clubs are. However, she privately promises the protagonist that she would return to the Club after she discovers this difference and gets stronger. The fact that she kept this promise in the following chapter makes her actions more in line with this trope, as opposed to being a full-fledged Face–Heel Turn.
• Genre Shift: Most of her songs play off the graceful aspect of her character, but her anime solo, "Solitude Rain", plays the pop rock card with a faster tempo and prominent electric guitar.
• Gentlewoman Snarker: She sometimes delivers sarcastic comments at Kasumi, but always in a gentle manner, true to her kind, gentlewomanly Yamato Nadeshiko and Nice Girl nature.
• Graceful Loser: Congratulates You and Hanamaru for winning the water athletics race during the "Great Battle on the High Seas" event.
• Heroes Love Dogs: She's a kind-hearted girl who's fond of dogs, and has a pet dog named "Ophelia".
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Fitting, considering that Shizuku is a kind and sweet girl and looks very innocent and adorable on most◊ of◊ her◊ cards◊.
• Ironic Echo: The anime has her quoting the title of her first solo, "Anata no Risou no Heroine" (meaning "your ideal heroine"), although the context of the line is much different and more dramatic than in the original song, as while the song's lyrics talk about Shizuku hoping to become "your ideal heroine", her Character Development focuses on her trying to break out of this role and discovering it's okay to Be Yourself.
• Lipstick Lesbian: If you believe she's actually gay, she definitely qualifies, being a graceful, ladylike and sweet Yamato Nadeshiko.
• Nice Girl: Sweet, gentle, happy to support and doesn't want to burden others with her issues, though she sometimes takes on more responsibility than she can handle.
• Ojou: Very much a Proper Lady, and it's shown she's wealthy when she invites all her friends at home.
• Out of Focus: In a franchise where most characters shine, either through gimmicks, or simply heavy story focus, Shizuku stands out by doing practically nothing of note in the ALL STARS storyline. Compare the length of this folder with the rest of the main cast. Save for Kasumi and Rina, Shizuku is also barely acknowledged directly by the other characters in the anime. Finally averted in the anime's second season, where she gets more focus and interactions with the other club members other than her fellow first years, particularly with Yu, Ayumu, and Setsuna.
• Proper Lady: Hands down one of the most feminine group members, despite likely being homosexual. And yes, she's also a genuinely kind and selfless girl without a mean bone in her body, loyal as well (despite a temporary facade in the game) and also intelligent and strong-willed.
• Spoiled Sweet: She's fairly wealthy, but she's an unconditional sweetheart nonetheless. She has a loving family and is selfless and generous as well, offering her house to the group during the trip.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Her mother, as seen in the anime, looks exactly like her but older.
• Tareme Eyes: Highliting her gentle and softspoken personality.
• Welcome Back, Traitor: At the end of Chapter 20 of ALL STARS, she defects to Lanzhu's School Idol Association to explore the differences between it and the Club. This lasts until she returns to the Club at the end of the following chapter. The rest of the Club reacts this way to her return, except for Kasumi, who is mildly irked that she changed sides to begin with.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Her pitch describes her as a "traditional Japanese beauty", which fits with her long, dark hair. Personality-wise she's a gentle, soft-spoken Nice Girl, but she's also very level-headed and responsible.
• Yuri Fan: Season 2 Episode 5 heavily implies her to be one, as she secretly writes what is essentially romantic fanfiction featuring Ayumu and Setsuna as the main characters of her stories.

Setsuna Yuki

The ???? School Idol

Image Color: Scarlet

Grade: Second Year

Birthday: August 8 (Leo)

Blood Type: O

Height: 154cm

Three Sizes: B83/W56/H81

Symbol: Microphone

Voiced by: Tomori Kusunoki (Japanese, 2018-2023), Coco Hayashi (Japanese, 2023-Present), Laura Stahl (English)

One of the five original members of the School Idol Club. A school idol with a powerful and distinctive stage presence, Setsuna Yuki is sometimes described as a "legendary" school idol, whose activities are rumored to stretch as far as having the experience of a real Idol Singer. Her knowledge of and obsession with school idol culture is unparalleled, although despite her fame and status, her personal identity is shrouded in mystery. She's also a massive otaku, who loves anime, manga and light novels. Prior to the disbandment of the School Idol Club pre-series, she was its president.

Setsuna's solo style stands out among the cast for being predominantly based on J-rock, with hard-hitting electric music and forward, no-holds-barred lyrics that express the fire in her personality.

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• The Ace: Described as a legendary idol, she leads the Nijigasaki Academy girls thanks to her experience in dancing, singing and everything idol-like. She is also frequently stated to have skills on par with that of a professional Idol Singer.
• Actually, I Am Him: Near the end of Chapter 1 of ALL STARS, Nana introduces herself as the missing Setsuna Yuki to the reformed school idol club.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: Because she was never forcibly supplanted nor had her beliefs broken down by Shioriko in the anime continuity, Setsuna doesn't undergo the Heroic BSoD her game counterpart suffered through as a result of the Student Council Reelection arc in Chapter 10 of the game. She even gets to have the best of both her worlds in the anime, as she fully reveals her identity as both Nana and Setsuna to everyone during Episode 7 of the anime's second season, which is embraced by not only everyone from the student body, but also by her (supposedly) strict mother.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Heavily downplayed as she's still a genuinely friendly person, but while working as the president she does have her harsher moments in the anime.
  • As Student Council President Nana, she's much colder in the anime than how she was in the original game, where she wasn't as strict or icy even with the facade she deliberately put up before revealing her identity to everyone. She even gains Scary Shiny Glasses for most of episode 2 for it.
  • Unlike in the game, she, as Nana, outright disbands the original Nijigasaki School Idol Club in the anime without input from the other members after conflict erupted between them and shuts the club down herself. In ALL STARS, she only threatened to do this, and she gave Kasumi and the protagonist a chance to save it by having them gather ten members for the club, which turned out to be a Secret Test of Character of sorts from Setsuna herself. Though it's eventually subverted later on when she tells Yu that she is not against the School Idol Club being reformed, so long as the five member requirement is reached. That said, Setsuna emphasized that she would not be a part of it.
  • While the situation that caused the original group to very nearly disband in the game is almost the same in the anime barring a few different details and is still something Setsuna holds herself responsible for in both versions, the conflict itself was never shown onscreen in ALL STARS. The anime shows exactly what happened in a flashback: Setsuna got too pushy with the other members when it came to her standards as a school idol and it resulted in Kasumi blowing up at her for being too forceful at them for it.
• Alliterative Name: Her real name, Nana Nakagawa.
• Artifact Alias: Despite the whole club becoming aware of her identity quite early, they keep calling her Setsuna even when they're by themselves. This persists even after she reveals her true identity publicly in the anime.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Episode 10 shows what can happen if she is sufficiently annoyed, with her lecturing the first and third years for goofing off during their training camp, and later tossing a pillow in her sleep to knock out Kasumi when the latter attempts to scare some of the other girls.
• Calling Your Attacks: During her call and response.
  Setsuna: Setsuna Scarlet Storm!
• Character Name Alias: According to Nana, the name "Setsuna Yuki" comes from two characters in her favorite light novel series.
• Character Shilling: Characters will often comment on Setsuna being the best school idol in Nijigasaki High. Some students still hold this opinion even after Lanzhu arrived.
• Clark Kenting: As Nana Nakagawa, she wears glasses and has her hair in braids. However, the Rainbow Days Photo Essay short story series eventually confirms that she wears contacts whenever she acts as Setsuna, which means she really does need the glasses for her eyesight rather than just being a disguise.
• Closet Geek: She is extremely passionate about idols, anime, LN and manga, and has to hide her otaku hobbies from her parents, which is the reason why she uses an alias when performing.
• Cover Version: Covers Shioriko's "Ketsui no Hikari" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Because Setsuna is The Ace of the club, some characters are motivated to one day catch up and be at her level.
• Elemental Motifs: Setsuna is strongly associated with crimson fire to compliment her "burning" passion for school idols, and many of her performances accordingly involve pyrotechnics. Her catchphrase is even "Setsuna Scarlet Storm", a Calling Your Attacks variant. Her one performance that isn't completely on fire is her anime solo "DIVE!", which employs heavy use of ocean blues as a form of Duality Motif.
• Famed In-Story: Uniquely among idols in the Love Live! franchise, she already has this reputation prior to the start of her series, being known as a "legendary" school idol, at least in part due to her elusive nature. It also helps that she is legitmately The Ace in her own right and has skills on par with that of a professional Idol Singer.
• Fangirl: Her love for all things anime, manga, and light novels knows no bounds. The stage name "Setsuna Yuki" itself comes from one of her favorite series, she manages to convince Karin and Shizuku to binge watch said series in her Bond Story, and in the anime she immediately launches into a hyperactive tangent the moment she discovers that Rina watches the same anime that she does.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Setsuna has a blue and red tie and wears one blue and one red stocking.
• Foil: To Dia and Eli, highlighting how difficult it is being the Student Council President and a school idol.
• Formal Characters Use Keigo: Even when she's at her most energetic, her Japanese speech patterns are always polite, consistently using formal verbs. This reflects that, despite her cheerful and geeky personality, she's still an Ojou from a strict household.
• Genki Girl: Zig-Zagged. While she is normally a standard Proper Lady type, she gets very excitable whenever something she is passionate about becomes the topic of discussion. Justified as she has to be serious while she works as the Student Council President, but her actual personality is geeky, energetic and passionate.
• Girlish Pigtails: As Nana, she ties her hair into a pair of low-hanging braids.
• Graceful Loser: On later chapters, she feels that her loss to Shioriko might be good overall as Shioriko is doing a much better job as Student Council President. It also frees up more time for her to devote to her idol activities.
• Innocently Insensitive: She casually lets slip that Yu had been playing piano for a while and that she knew about it all this time to Ayumu in Episode 11, who didn't know anything about it beforehand, unwittingly feeding into Ayumu's already growing insecurities towards her relationship with Yu while further fanning the flames of Ayumu's jealousy of her and her budding closeness with Yu.
• Japanese Politeness: While more hyperactive and geeky than most examples, how she speaks in Japanese is always consistently polite and formal in tone regardless of who she speaks with (outside of her household) and she always addresses everyone, even her closest friends, with the "-san" honorific without exception.
• Large Ham: While Setsuna is capable of being serious and professional, she's also very emotional and passionate by nature; talking about idols and otaku culture makes her feel extremely excited and transforms her into a Motor Mouth.
• The Leader: She was the president of Nijigasaki's School Idol Club in its original incarnation. After the club's reformation, she cedes this position to the protagonist, both so she could devote more time to being a school idol and having deemed her own leadership insufficient, as the club originally disbanded under her watch.
• Lethal Chef: She enjoys cooking, but nobody has ever told her how her food tastes. She has been told, though, that her food arrangement is "a bit too original"... Between her creations, there's a strange purple cake, a strange purple soup, and a poor attempt at chinese cooking. Reactions to their taste range from dubious concern (in the anime) to outright food poisoning (when Lanzhu tasted her "chinese" food).
• Limited Wardrobe: Unlike most characters in the franchise, who at least have a school uniform, Setsuna is almost permanently in an idol outfit. This plays into the in-universe rumor that she might not actually be a student, though it turns out she does wear a uniform as her true identity, Nana Nakagawa. This is ironically flipped in the anime, where she's very rarely seen in her default iconic yellow idol outfit throughout the show and is instead seen wearing Nijigasaki's school uniform more along with other outfits.
• Living a Double Life: As the disciplined student council president, Nana Nakagawa, and as the mysterious school idol and Closet Geek, Setsuna Yuki.
• Motor Mouth: Bringing up anime or light novels is a very easy way to set her off, and once she gets going it's very difficult to stop her as she delivers a text wall in speech form.
• Mundane Wish: A ''Nijiyon'' comic reveals that for her birthday, her wish is simply to watch her fellow club members perform live, with her in the front row cheering for them. This has led Tomori Kusunoki, Setsuna's first voice actress, to consider it her favorite Nijiyon comic, as it highlighted that Setsuna loves everything about school idols rather than just enjoying being one.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In the anime, her attempts to impose a singular identity on the school idol club's members led to the original club's disbandment due to pushback from Kasumi, who resented her approach. This realization caused her to contemplate quitting being a school idol altogether.
• My Greatest Failure: Setsuna is initially reluctant to rejoin the School Idol Club because she holds herself responsible for driving the other members away. However, the player and her friends quickly convince her that they won't repeat the same mistakes.
• Mysterious Past: Before joining Nijigasaki Academy School Idol Club, she's been doing idol stuff alone because of certain circumstances.
• Nice Girl: A positive, kind and friendly girl, Setsuna is also very open-hearted and happy to support.
• Oblivious to Hints: Setsuna is apparently quite ignorant about her friends' not-so-subtle suggestions about her being unable to cook properly.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat:
  • She wants the school idol club closed down despite the club having the required 5 members. In this case, it turns out to be subverted as she is already in the club as Setsuna Yuki, and she did this in order to test their resolve.
  • Played with in the anime, as while she personally disbands the club without the consent of the other members, she does so out of fear that her passion was hurting her friends, and she later tells Yu that she won't stop them from reestablishing the club without her (until Yu convinces her to rejoin, at least).
• Offhand Backhand: When Kasumi woke up in the night to prank the others in episode 10, Setsuna immediately sits up and hurls a pillow at Kasumi's face with enough force to knock Kasumi out and send her sprawling... while asleep!
  Ai: Whoa, she did that in her sleep...
• Ojou: Nana is a standard Proper Lady type. As Setsuna, it's revealed she's still polite and graceful, but more energetic and also a massive geek.
• Otaku: Likes video games, anime and of course, her most powerful obsession is idols.
• Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: During a meeting between the student council and school idol club in Episode 11, the student council vice president confesses to researching school idols and quickly becoming a fan of Setsuna, all while Nana is in the room presiding over the meeting. While trying to keep a straight face over this revelation, Nana is seen visibly sweating.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Nana has the exact same eye color, face, hair color, and voice as Setsuna...
• Passing the Torch: In the anime, she plans on stepping down from her position as Student Council President once her term is over, entrusting it to Shioriko when the latter tells her that she intends to run for president come the next election.
• Pet the Dog: Despite trying to catch and remove Hanpen from the school's grounds, she changes her mind after learning that neither Rina nor Ai can take the cat home as a pet. As such, she exploits a loophole to appoint Hanpen as the student council's official trekking officer, allowing the cat to stay at the school.
• Red Armband of Leadership: Nana wears one as the Student Council President.
• Repetitive Name: Her real name, Nana Nakagawa, is one.
• The Runaway: In her Bond Story, Setsuna becomes afraid of confronting her parents after she loses the student council president position to Shioriko, and stops going home for a few days. She starts bunking with a few of the other members as a result, but they quickly realize that she's not the best roommate, so the cast convinces her to confront her parents and hope they understand.
• Secret Identity: When in school, she's Clark Kenting and goes by her real name, Nana Nakagawa. Setsuna Yuki is her stage name hence her ambiguous background.
• Seven Is Nana: Her real name is Nana Nakagawa. Fittingly, Setsuna is typically listed seventh among the members of the group.
• The Spook: Unlike any of the other characters in the franchise, Setsuna's information is relatively secret; in her character pitch, her idol type is explicitly never revealed, and in-universe, there's a rumor going around saying that no one has actually seen her attend school. This is because she's actually the alias of Student Council President Nana Nakagawa.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: While each of the girls get their time in the spotlight, Setsuna stands out as getting a fair bit more attention in the main story compared to the other characters, as her Secret Identity and struggle to balance her Student Council President obligations and her life's passion is given focus in a few chapters.
• Stage Names: "Setsuna Yuki" is her stage name. After The Reveal, she is almost exclusively referred to as such by the club members as opposed to using her real name.
• Student Council President: In both ALL STARS and the anime, she starts out as this for Nijigasaki High. In the former, she loses the position to Shioriko in an election in Chapter 9, and Shioriko takes over from her at the end of the second season in the latter, after her term comes to an end.
• That Man Is Dead: She states this of her Setsuna identity at the start of Episode 3, after deciding to quit being an idol. Fortunately, it doesn't last.
• Tsurime Eyes: Zig zagged.
  • Played straight when acting as the Student Council President as it highlights her serious no-nonsense personality.
  • Downplayed as Setsuna due to her rather dorky, geeky and energetic true personality, though they are understandably less round compared to Ayumu and Shizuku who are quieter and a little shy compared to her. However, they sometimes do switch to tareme.
• Two Aliases, One Character: Nana Nakagawa and Setsuna Yuki are the same person.
• The Unmasking: In the anime continuity, Nana revealed her identity as Setsuna prior to A•ZU•NA's first live concert as a group in the sixth episode of the second season.
• Vocal Dissonance: Despite her Genki Girl appearance and attitude, as well as being quite on the short side (she's actually the same height as Nico), Setsuna has a distinctly dark and powerful singing voice not unlike Yoshiko's.
• Walking Spoiler: Talking about Setsuna is incredibly hard without revealing the fact that she's actually Nana Nakagawa. Hell, the merchandise doesn't even bother with hiding the fact for anime-only viewers.
• Worf Had the Flu: Her loss to Lanzhu in Chapter 24 of ALL STARS was suggested to be due to the pressure of the competition getting to her and inhibiting her ability to sing.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: She's an outgoing Proper Lady type as Nana especially, and though she's more of a geeky Genki Girl compared to the standard, she's nonetheless very polite and speaks in Keigo at all times.

QU4RTZ

QU4RTZ's first single, "Sing & Smile!!"

The "Pure" subunit, a quartet comprising Kasumi Nakasu, Emma Verde, Rina Tennouji, and Kanata Konoe. Their "pure" songs combine elements of both traditional and modern musical styles to help them stand out from lily white and AZALEA. The four-vocal ensemble gives them a wide range and harmony unique from other subunits.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the game, QU4RTZ is one of four subunits created for Kaoruko's School Idol Exhibition, with Emma bringing the members together with the goal of demonstrating school idols that flourish with unity and harmony. In the anime, the unit forms ahead of the Club's joint live with Y.G. International as part of Emma's attempt to prove to Lanzhu that school idols need to form a connection with their fans to improve as performers and people.
• Breaking Old Trends: They're the first "Pure" subunit in the franchise whose name isn't related to flowers in some way.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: A subunit of four members who fit the four temperaments. Laid-back sleepyhead Kanata is phlegmatic; brash, passionate and mischievous Kasumi is somewhat choleric; shy, emotionally stunted and introverted Rina is melancholic, and cheerful, friendly and kind Emma is sanguine.
• Letters 2 Numbers: The letter "A" in "quartz" is replaced with a "4". Given that Rina is a member of this subunit, some Leet Lingo is hardly surprising.
• Pair the Spares: The subunit's composition is largely the result of most fans voting for whoever they wanted to be in the duo and trio subunits, with the quartet mostly being the end result of whoever didn't get into said duo and trio. That said, fans agree that the quartet's members play off each other well.

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Kasumi Nakasu

The Black-hearted School Idol

Image Color: Pastel Yellow

Grade: First Year

Birthday: January 23 (Aquarius)

Blood Type: B

Height: 155cm

Three Sizes: B76/W55/H79

Symbol: Crown

Voiced by: Mayu Sagara (Japanese), Kayli Mills (English)

One of the five original members of the School Idol Club. It has always been her dream to become a school idol, so her love for school idols is unrivaled. With the goal to dominate and become number one, she's a pretty sore loser when she comes anything other than first place, even to the point of sabotage or cheating.

Kasumi's solo style tends towards cheery music with a bit of variety between upbeat and slow depending on what kind of angle she wants to express; many of her songs also attempt to evoke a connection between her and her audience.

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• A-Cup Angst: She is envious of Karin's bust when they met for the first time in Chapter 1 of ALL STARS.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the game, Kasumi tries to act like The Fake Cutie due to thinking that's how school idols are "supposed" to be, but is otherwise a kind-hearted girl whose attempts at "belittling" the others amounts to harmless acts of Poke the Poodle. This is completely absent in the anime, where instead she genuinely is a bit of a bratty and slightly self-absorbed Jerk with a Heart of Gold, who is motivated heavily by resentment towards the original club being dissolved. Notably, her Establishing Character Moment in the anime is her breaking into the student council room to steal the plaque for the School Idol Club, something her game counterpart would've never done (least of all because the breakup was never shown to be as bad as it was in the anime).
• Attention Whore: She constantly wants to be seen as the cutest school idol and the protagonist's attention, although she ends up being embarrassed when the protagonist actually pays attention to her. Amusingly, most of the cast are fully aware that she is incredibly easy to manipulate by feeding into her ego; the easiest way to get on her good side is to simply call her adorable or cute and she'll immediately soften up.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The protagonist's/Yu's kind and supportive nature and the amount of help and genuine encouragement she gives Kasumi all the time has made Kasumi very fond of her as well as extremely loyal to her.
• Book Dumb:
  • ALL STARS Chapter 10 reveals that she has poor grades. At the end of the chapter, she and Nico are the ones who have gotten the lowest scores in their final tests among the 3 groups, both getting crowned "Queen Dunce" by Ai at the end.
  • In the anime's Season 1 Episode 10, she gets 22 points out of 100 on her 1st term exams.
  • In Season 2 Episode 11, she and Karin worry about routine exams once Ayumu mentions them.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite being pretty clumsy and naive, the trip she organizes shows her to be quite competent, creative and intelligent.
• Butt-Monkey: Throughout the entire franchise. The various Yonkoma have multiple pranks initiated by her eventually backfire, ALL STARS has her crowned as "Queen Dunce" after getting the lowest scores in her final tests, and in the anime she has noticeably funnier and outlandish reactions, particularly when compared to the rest of the main cast.◊
• Character Catchphrase: " Kasumi desu! "^note " It's Kasumi! "(with an optional " 'Kasukasu' janakute/jannai! "^note " not 'Kasukasu'! " at the end), whenever other people call her "Kasukasu".
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She expresses jealousy whenever someone else gets to be affectionate towards the protagonist:
  • She got a little pouty when she first met Ayumu in the game and learned that she was the protagonist's dearest childhood friend.
  • In the anime, she wasn't all too pleased with Yu taking a little too long to cling to Setsuna after the former suddenly hugs her.
• Club Stub: At the start of both the anime and ALL STARS, she was the only remaining active member of the School Idol Club after it was initially disbanded.
• Cover Version: Covers Setsuna's "CHASE!" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite her Butt-Monkey status, according to Ai in Chapter 23 of ALL STARS, she actually ranks among the highest in popularity among the members of the School Idol Club.
• Egocentric Team Naming: In Chapter 26 of ALL STARS, she attempts to propose the names "Fluffy Kasumin Club", "Kasumin Cuties", and "Cutie Kasumies" for the subunit that would ultimately be named QU4RTZ. Unsurprisingly, her suggestions are quickly shot down or ignored by the subunit's other members.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Hates being called "Kasukasu". ^note This nickname comes from the Japanese phrase "kasukasu" (かすかす), used to describe food as bland or tasteless.
• Embarrassing Old Photo: In Season 2 Episode 3, Emma finds a photo of younger Kasumi and shows the other QU4RTZ girls. Everyone except Kasumi finds it cute.
• Expy: Curiously, Kasumi has a very similar character type as Nico, the main difference being that Kasumi is genuinely kinder and has significantly less ego. Doubles as Expy Coexistence in the game, as the two interact occasionally and even competed at one point. Predictably, they aren't particularly fond of each other. Similarly, both characters were the only remaining members of their respective schools' School Idol Clubs prior to said clubs being revitalized.
• The Fake Cutie:
  • What she wants you to think of her, given that she thinks idol rivals are supposed to be mean and cruel with each other.
  • While very downplayed, she has shades of this in the anime, where she's utterly obsessed with cuteness and being the cutest school idol ever despite being a little bit of a jerk sometimes when she isn't putting on an act.
• Fastball Special: In Episode 2 of the anime, in order to get into the Student Council's office to retrieve the School Idol Club's nameplate, Kasumi throws Hanpen at Setsuna's head to distract her.
• Foil: In some ways, Kasumi being an Expy of Nico helps contrast the two in certain ways. They both wound up being the last member of their respective School Idol Clubs due to past grievances, have a deliberately cute facade that they use to win the hearts of the audiences, and have Attention Whore tendencies. However, while Nico uses her cute facade to hide her abrasive Jerk with a Heart of Gold attitude, Kasumi pretends to be a jerk with a cute facade in front of the other girls but is actually sweet and caring.
• Food as Bribe: Uses homemade koppe-pan this way multiple times through the anime, either as a way to convince others to do what she wants, or as encouragement to help her/leave her alone.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Subverted for a gag in Episode 12. Kasumi starts fearing she has become this when friends and fans of the other girls come to the clubroom to call them one by one, leaving her alone. Then a single girl appears calling for her.
• Hammerspace: She somehow produces a koppe-pan out of Shizuku's backside in episode 3.◊^note Notice Shizuku isn't holding a backpack or anything, and Kasumi's hands were empty in the preceding shots.
• Image Song: She has the unique distinction of being the first girl in the franchise to have a solo as an A-side and have an MV, the song "Muteki-kyuu*Believer" (by DECO*27).
• In-Series Nickname: She encourages others to address her as "Kasumin". However, more often than not, they instead refer to her as "Kasukasu", much to her annoyance.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She can be a little bratty and self-centered at times, but at the end of the day she's a kind-hearted girl, caring and affectionate towards the rest of the girls, especially Yu. In the anime, she starts a little bit more pronounced on the "Jerk" side, but gradually becomes a lot more on the "Heart of Gold" side.
• Kawaiiko: Her characterisation revolves around striving to be the cutest school idol of all.
• The Leader: She becomes this in both continuities as the only active member of the School Idol Club after its initial disbandment. While the position is passed to the protagonist in ALL STARS, she remains the club's president in the anime. In practice, however, she plays little to no role in the club's actual governance, to the point that Shioriko thought Setsuna, and then Yu was president.
• Leader Wannabe: In both continuities, she dubs herself as the president of the School Idol Club after its initial disbandment, by virtue of being the only active member at the time. However, this goes unacknowledged by anyone else.
  • In ALL STARS, Setsuna officially passes the mantle of president to the protagonist after the club's reformation, and Kasumi accepts her authority in the role.
  • In the anime, she still officially remains the club's president, but this has such little relevance to its operations that Shioriko was confused over who she should turn her application to join the club to, instead believing at first that Setsuna or Yu was president.
• Motor Mouth: Can keep up with Nico during their rap battle in Chapter 6 of ALL STARS.
• My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad: Together with Ayumu, she gets into a comical argument with both Riko and Umi regarding which of the three groups' leaders was the best, and since Kasumi is very fond of the protagonist, she's quick to declare the Player Character as #1 over both Honoka and Chika.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Kasumi hits upon this realization in Episode 2 after she forces Ayumu to adopt her idea of a "cute" image for the latter's idol introductory video. To wit, Kasumi's behavior reminded her of the way Setsuna imposed her own ideals of what it means to be an idol on her and the other members of the previous school idol club.
• The Nicknamer: Kasumi gives out nicknames to her fellow first-years; "Shizuko" for Shizuku, "Rinako" for Rina, and "Shioko" for Shioriko.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She wears a white sweater underneath her jacket with her winter uniform.
• Poke the Poodle: What her brand of "evil plans" usually amounts to.
• The Prankster: Kasumi really enjoys to play pranks at other members. Too bad all of them end up backfiring. She makes a special exception for the protagonist though, and never once tries to prank her because of how much she likes her.
• Repetitive Name: In Japanese order, her name is Nakasu Kasumi. This is likely why she also has the Embarrassing Nickname of "Kasukasu".
• Still the Leader: In the anime, after Setsuna initially disbands the School Idol Club, Kasumi attempts to keep it going any way that she can, and dubs herself its president. Episode 10 of Season 2 reveals that Kasumi is still officially the president, but this is downplayed in that she does not assert her position or try to get anyone else to defer to her.
• Supreme Chef: Is apparently a very good cook, as she makes her own koppe-pan during her spare time.
• Third-Person Person: Refers to herself as "Kasumin".
• This Is Unforgivable!: She regards defecting from the school idol club to join Lanzhu's club as this, and continues to regard the members who did so with hostility, despite this view not being shared by the other members. Lanzhu's dismissive and rude attitude towards the protagonist also likely plays a role in Kasumi adopting this mentality.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Has a massive love for bread, particularly koppe-pan. Her character pitch reveals she places it inside other idol's shoes as sabotage, the "Muteki-kyuu*Believer" PV has her concocting a new rainbow koppe-pan for a welcome party to new students, and through the anime she uses koppe-pan either as a bribe, or as "encouragement" for people to do what she wants.
• Undying Loyalty: To her favorite senpai, the protagonist/Yu Takasaki. She would always vie for the protagonist's attention and will not take any kind of insult towards the protagonist lying down.
• You Are What You Hate: She comes to this realization in Episode 2 of the anime, after she tries to force Ayumu to adopt a "cute image" for her introductory PV. This winds up reminding her of how the original school idol club disbanded because Setsuna tried to force a "passionate image" on the other members and Kasumi pushed back against her for it.

Kanata Konoe

The Spoiled Big Sister School Idol

Image Color: Violet^note Sumire-iro

Grade: Third Year

Birthday: December 16 (Sagittarius)

Blood Type: O

Height: 158cm

Three Sizes: B85/W60/H86

Hobby: Playing with her little sister

Symbol: Sheep

Voiced by: Akari Kitou (Japanese), Lindsay Seidel (English)

One of the five original members of Nijigasaki's School Idol Club. Originally from Shinonome Academy, she transferred to Nijigasaki to join the Club's activities prior to the original members parting ways. Though she always seems sleepy, Kanata is deeply passionate about looking after her younger sister Haruka and sleeping. She sometimes dozes off when people are talking to her.

Kanata has a generally slow-paced and "sleepy" solo style with much lower tempos and vibes compared to the other girls, combined with lyrics that are typically themed around dreams and sleep.

She's a member of both the Health Committee and the School Idol Club.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: Her sister Haruka's still studying at Shinonome Academy, but the anime omits any mention of Kanata having originally come from there before she transferred to Nijigasaki like in the game.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Arguably the most drastic out of the original "N" card girls. Originally depicted as a Brilliant, but Lazy Sleepyhead who even skipped classes with the excuse to sleep, the anime portrays her as a constantly exhausted hard worker with narcolepsy. Her relationship with her sister is also far more emotionally complicated.
• Affectionate Nickname: Ai calls her "Kana-chan".
• Alliterative Name: Kanata Konoe.
• All Work vs. All Play: The Play to her sister Haruka's Work.
• Ascended Extra: Kanata started out as an "N" card girl in the mobile game, but was selected to become a full-fledged character in the franchise.
• Big Sister Instinct: She works herself to the bone for Haruka's sake. Because their mother's busy work schedule keeps her from coming home to take care of them, Kanata essentially serves as Haruka's second mother at home and always makes sure to attend to her younger sister's needs. This eventually veers into Deconstruction territory, as her perception that she needs to care for Haruka drives her to work herself to death despite Haruka being capable of taking care of herself, and her realization that she doesn't need to protect her younger sister so much anymore plays heavily into her Character Development.
• Brilliant, but Lazy:
  • Her original depiction in School idol festival is the only straight use of this trope for her, as Haruka admits that she can do anything she puts her mind to but rarely does so. Both her ALL STARS and anime appearances subvert it to differing degrees.
  • Her laziness is subverted in the anime, as she's anything but lazy. Having to tirelessly do schoolwork, housework, part-time work, and school idol activities all at once will exhaust anyone to the point of randomly falling asleep like her.
• Cerebus Retcon: In both School Idol Festival and ALL STARS, Kanata's sleepiness is portrayed as a quirk of hers and is always played for laughs, with only her Bond Stories in ALL STARS confirming that it's because she has to pull out all-nighters to keep her scholarship in Nijigasaki, and even then, this information is still mostly inconsequential to her. The anime plays the reasons for her sleepiness more seriously, as it's a consequence of her having to juggle schoolwork, school idol club activities, her part-time job, and taking care of Haruka 24/7 all at once that it's exhausting her to the point of randomly falling asleep without warning, a fact that greatly worries Haruka when she finds out about it firsthand.
• Cool Big Sis: Only in front of her sister. In the anime, however, she's also shown as a wise girl who gives good advice to Ayumu and Yuu facing their insecurities.
• Cover Version: Covers Emma's "Evergreen" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Cuddle Bug: Mostly towards her sister, though she cuddles Kasumi in episode 3 of the anime as well.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Her original 2013-era N Cards in SIF have her look noticeably more mature than her current design (with a tad bit of Off-Model to boot).
• Family Theme Naming: "Haruka kanata" means "faraway". During Kanata's song in episode 7 of the anime, "Butterfly" (which is dedicated to Haruka), she even namedrops the phrase.
• Genre Shift: While most of her songs tend towards slower, downbeat ballad-like themes, her anime insert solo "Butterfly" takes a crack at an electronic pop song.
• Hidden Depths: She studies until late at night to keep her scholarship. It's the reason why she's a Sleepyhead. The anime takes this further, as it's revealed that not only is she sleepy because of schoolwork, but also from having to juggle that with school idol activities, her part-time job, and housework.
• Innocently Insensitive: A confrontation between Kanata and Haruka has the former tell her little sister not to worry about sharing the burden of their personal responsibilities, and that she would work even harder so Haruka doesn't have to be concerned. As Kanata working herself to the bone was the reason for this confrantation in the first place, Haruka snaps at her and storms off.
• Lap Pillow: Emma's thighs are her favorite pillow.
• Lazy Bum: Her original portrayal in School Idol Festival, where she slacks off whenever she can and ditches classes with the excuse that she needs to go help at the nurse's office. Contrary to All-Stars and the anime, where it's shown that her sleepy demeanor is the result of her juggling a lot of responsibilities at once.
• Leitmotif: Of a sort; Kanata is associated with the sounds of a clock, which is incorporated into the background music of all of her songs. Even "Butterfly", which is otherwise drastically different from her other solos, features the winding of a clock as part of the music.
• Nice Girl: She's a caring, kind and peaceful girl who's also quite wise and likes to help her friends with good advice, and unlike in the game, her anime version is a very hard-working older sister.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She wears a red sweater under her jacket, and her ribbon is tied rather sloppily. In the summer, she wears a yellow cardigan instead.
• Promotion to Parent: Downplayed in the anime. Although the Konoe sisters' mother is still present, she is at work extremely often and is rarely ever at home long enough to care for her two daughters. This essentially means that Kanata takes up the role of caring for Haruka most of the time, which she attempts to do by taking on a part-time job and housework on top of her studies and later the School Idol Club. This is a huge workload for a high-school student and the overwork contributes to her constant sleepiness.
• Scholarship Student: The only known member of the club to attend Nijigasaki High with a scholarship.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: In SIF, Kanata is lazy and laidback while Haruka is active and hardworking. Averted in ALL STARS, which justifies it as late-night studying, and even moreso in the anime where Kanata works herself practically to the bone on a regular basis.
• Sleepyhead: She is usually of a sleepy demeanor and speaks with a drowsy, lulling voice. Her Bond Story reveals that she's a bit of a night owl and uses her night hours to study, as she needs to maintain good grades to keep her scholarship. The constant sleep deprivation results in her napping often during the day. In the anime, it's because she has to balance studying and club activities with her part-time job and housework.
• Supreme Chef: Kanata is a very good cook and her dishes are often well-received.
• Team Mom: Is regarded as this in the second season, for being a very good cook and a caring mother figure. The other QU4RTZ members outright call her "a second mom" in the episode where they are at her home.
• Third-Person Person: Refers to herself as "Kanata-chan".
• Tareme Eyes: Matching her nature as a laidback Sleepyhead and as a kind, selfless older sister type.
• Unkempt Beauty: It's implied that she's quite the natural beauty, since despite being sleep deprived almost all the time it doesn't get in the way of her appearance.

Emma Verde

The Pure School Idol

Image Color: Light Green

Grade: Third Year

Birthday: February 5 (Aquarius)

Blood Type: O

Height: 166cm

Three Sizes: B92/W61/H88

Hobby: Quilting

Symbol: Bread

Voiced by: Maria Sashide (Japanese), Lisa Reimold (English)

One of the five original members of the School Idol Club. Switzerland born and raised, she came to Japan as a student of Y.G. International Academy before transferring to Nijigasaki to join the School Idol Club. She used an Italian word "buono" (meaning "good") when introducing herself, which indicates that she is from the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.

Emma's solo style is evocative of European folk music, with many of her solos featuring instruments prominently associated with the region, and her lyrics tend toward sweet and caring. Surprisingly, she was inspired to become a school idol from an oriental-style Japanese school idol song, which she inherits from its previous owner.

Emma is Karin's roommate at the Nijigasaki Academy dorms.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the game, Emma is a transfer student from another school in Japan who came to Nijigasaki due to interest in its school idol club. However, in the anime, Emma immediately enrolled in Nijigasaki as soon as she arrived in Japan, and her only familiarity with Y.G. International is through an online forum.
• The Artifact: Her character symbol is a loaf of bread, which would normally indicate that her Trademark Favorite Food is a major character element for her. In ALL STARS, this is indeed the case, as she can be seen eating bread in various scenes. However, the anime adaptation reduced this trait to little more than a footnote and features no scenes of her eating bread whatsoever, causing her character symbol to feel a little misplaced.
• Ascended Extra: Emma was originally an "N" card girl from the mobile game, but selected to become a full-fledged member of the franchise and given a full name.
• Big Eater: Similar to Kasumi, Emma loves her bread. During an eating competition against Hanayo, she counters Hanayo scarfing down bowls of rice by ordering plates and plates of bread and manages to even the score. In the anime, Emma's seen eating a lot of ice cream compared to Rina and Kanata.
• Cool Big Sis: Her Bond Story focuses on this trait, as the other members repeatedly note that Emma has is very friendly to other people and has a calming aura about her, which she attempts to apply to her school idol technique. It helps that she is an actual big sister to eight siblings back home in Switzerland (the anime revealed that Emma is second to her eldest sister, although she still acts as this to her six younger siblings).
• Cover Version: Covers Ayumu's "Yume e no Ippo" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Depending on the Artist: Emma's freckles are drawn differently depending on the medium; the original had freckles all over on her nose while the other one has simple tridot on her cheeks.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In addition to the drastically different artstyle that the N girls have, Emma's earliest cards played up her massive bust for Fanservice purposes, with some of her cards edging into Off-Model territory to show it off. While she is definitely still busty in Nijigasaki material, she doesn't get used for fanservice nearly as much (thanks to Karin, at least).
• Fiery Redhead: Downplayed Trope. She's not a temperamental type of person, but definitely a cheerful, upbeat and outgoing girl with red hair.
• Friend to All Living Things: She loves animals of all kinds, from the fluffy to the scaly.
• Gorgeous Gaijin: She's one of the three non-Japanese members of Nijigasaki's school idol club, and predictably has the largest bust by quite a bit.
• Gratuitous Italian: Emma uses it similarly to Mari in the English dub of Sunshine!!, although Emma being Switzerland-born implies that she uses a specific dialect of the language known as Swiss Italian.
• Image Song: Played with with her third solo, "Aion no Uta", which is not actually her song, but is the song that made her fall in love with school idols and move to Japan to become one. It turns out that the song has been passed down from the original school idol who sang it to her kouhai, Mai Natsukawa, and in Episode 21 of Emma's Bond Story Mai officially passes it down to Emma during her final concert.
• Lap Pillow: Is fond of giving these.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: She has seven more siblings.
• Nature Lover: As someone who grew up in Switzerland, she has always been fascinated with forests and nature.
• Nice Girl: Pretty much like Shizuku, she's an extremely sweet and cheerful girl through and through who likes to support and avoids to burden others. She's often serving as a Team Mom for most of the group.
• No Full Name Given: Subverted. She was originally known only as Emma before her full name was revealed in September 2017 during the promotional intros for what became the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club.
• No Hero to His Valet: As Karin's roommate, she is privy to details about Karin that are not so flattering and undermine the cool and mature image that Karin tries to project. She also has a tendency of sharing such details with others, as seen in #36 and #38 of Nijiyon's third season, much to Karin's chagrin.
• Only Friend: Initially to Karin in the anime, prior to Karin joining the school idol club herself after some encouragement from Emma.
• Phenotype Stereotype: While the art style helps fit in as best as possible with the other girls, Emma sports numerous physical traits that are typically associated with "Western" body types in anime and thus sticks out a bit when compared to the all-Japanese cast who have more equal figures.
• Satellite Character: Weirdly enough, her episode in the anime revolves more around her relationship with Karin rather than focusing on Emma herself.
• Sibling Team: In a sense. Live performances of Emma's song "Koe Tsunagou yo" have her voice actress, Maria Sashide, be accompanied by six young girls as backup dancers, who are ostensibly meant to represent Emma's many younger siblings.
• Statuesque Stunner: Emma is, next to Karin, the tallest in her group, and while a different kind of beauty, she's still definitely attractive.
• Tareme Eyes: Matching her cheerful, kind and friendly personality.
• Team Mom: For the Nijigasaki Dorm group (Karin, Mia and Lanzhu). She makes sure that their rooms are clean and tidy, and she sometimes cooks for them, especially for Mia who can't cook and often skips meals when composing.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Like Kasumi, Emma considers Karin's betrayal to Lanzhu's Association and her dismissal of their friendship to be unforgivable. She cuts off all contact with Karin ever since she joined the Association.
• Token Minority: She's Swiss, and unlike Eli and Mari she doesn't have any Japanese heritage, being the only non-Japanese member of the original nine.
• Trademark Favorite Food: She loves bread, especially the crusts.
• Tranquil Fury: When she confronts Karin after she defects to Lanzhu's Association, she delivers her Armor-Piercing Question to Karin in a chillingly calm voice that radiates her anger over the betrayal of her best friend.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Emma grew up in a ranch and has a pet goat named "Neve".
• Was It Really Worth It?: She asks this of Karin when she encounters the latter for the first time since Karin's defection to the School Idol Association, questioning if switching sides was worth it, since the move entailed Karin putting herself under Lanzhu's thumb as a backup dancer without any guarantee that she would even be allowed to perform as a center in the future.
• Youthful Freckles: Inverted; she has visible freckles, but she's actually the oldest of the group, being a third-year and having an earlier birthday than Karin and Kanata.

Rina Tennoji

The Face-hiding School Idol

Image Color: Paper White

Grade: First Year

Birthday: November 13 (Scorpio)

Blood Type: B

Height: 149cm

Three Sizes: B71/W52/H75

Symbol: Wi-fi with cat ears

Voiced by: Chiemi Tanaka (Japanese), Hayden Daviau (English)

An eccentric first year that was invited to become a school idol by Ayumu's friend. Rina is a shy girl who has difficulty showing emotions on her face. She hides her face, usually with a notebook she calls her "Rina-chan Board" that she uses to draw her facial expressions on; she switches to a digital pixel mask when performing. She is energetic only when she has the "Rina-chan Board" on, and is antisocial otherwise, which is why she never takes it off.

Rina's solo style is a very poppy style that prominently features electronic instruments and chiptune background to represent the "tech" side of her, while her lyrics commonly share technology themes and center around her ability to express herself to others.

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• Adaptation Personality Change: Rina's personality focus is essentially switched in the anime, likely for the purpose of Pragmatic Adaptation. In the game, she hides her face constantly and is almost always in her Genki Girl persona, not even revealing what she looks like under it until well into her bond story. The anime instead has her mainly using her notebook only when she needs to express herself, she has her face fully exposed otherwise and is mainly depicted as a Shrinking Violet struggling with her inability to display emotions.
• Affectionate Nickname: Ai calls her "Rina-rii" while Kasumi calls her "Rinako".
• The Blank: The early marketable nesoberi version of Rina had the Rina-chan Board and... nothing else beneath it, just a blank face with no eyes or mouth. Fans who dared to check it out were terrified, to say the least.
• Character Catchphrase: "Rina-chan Board: 'X'", where "X" is a descriptor emotion matching the face on her Rina-chan Board.
• Commonality Connection: Rina finding small things that she has in common with Mia is the basis of the bond that they form in Chapter 22 of ALL STARS.
• Cool Mask: The "Auto Emoticonverter Rina-chan Board", named in Rina's bond episode 5, is a digital pixel mask specially made for performances. It uses a lit-up dot matrix display with magenta pixels and was first revealed in artwork on her character page.
• Cover Version: Covers Kanata's "Nemureru Mori ni Ikitai na" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Cute Oversized Sleeves: Rina is by far the smallest and youngest-looking member of the cast, especially in game stories where she's with µ's and/or Aqours. Her default school uniforms each include a blue hoodie with long sleeves reaching over her hands.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She used to be able to show her emotions but since her parents are not there for her most of the time due to work, she tried to be strong and act like nothing was wrong. Eventually, she lost the ability to show her emotions.
• Dramatic Unmask:
  • She finally reveals her face to the protagonist in Episode 12 of her bond story. She's just a normal girl with yellow eyes◊.
  • It also happens for the first time in Nijiyon, namely in Season 3 #60, when she removes her Rina-chan Board to thank her fans by showing them her face.
• Dull Surprise: An invoked case in the anime, as due to being unable to convey emotions visually and vocally, her face is stuck in a permanently non-plussed expression regardless of her actual feelings and her speaking voice inflects very little, almost to the point of being monotone.
• Emotionless Girl: Rina lacks the ability to express emotions well, both through facial expression and voice. That isn't to say that she actually lacks emotions, but she has an easier time expressing them with the use of her Board.
• Expressive Mask:
  • Her digital pixel board somehow manages to change expressions in less than a second, as if reading her actual emotions. The mask's mouth also moves along with hers when she sings.
  • Bizarrely, in the "Mirai Harmony" PV the Rina-chan Board is seen changing on its own when Rina stumbles despite otherwise being a normal notebook.
  • Episode 10 of the anime has her tape a single sheet of paper on her head while trying a Bedsheet Ghost prank. After Ai accidentally trips Rina, who falls to the floor, the drawn expression on the single paper changes twice on its own.
• The Faceless: Always hides her face behind doodles of facial expressions on her notebook or behind a Cool Mask when she's performing. When she isn't holding something in front of her face, she'll be facing away from the camera so the audience won't see what she looks like. Averted in the anime where (more realistically) she just doesn't wear the Rina-chan Board unless needed.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Easily the most tech-savvy character in the franchise. The "Tokimeki RUNNERS" MV has her building and using a drone, the digital version of the Rina-chan Board is of her own design, and in one chapter of ALL STARS she collaborates with Ai to design a website for the School Idol Festival. In the Nijigasaki anime, she's also seen helping Ai to fix her stage during the festival after it ran into a technical hiccup. Rina also made a few smartphone/mobile games for the club to play in the anime and in Nijiyon Animation.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: She claims that she isn't very good at showing emotions on her face. This turns out to be true when the option to remove her mask becomes available in ALL STARS; while she can smile and wink while performing like the other characters, she does it less often and frequently has a blank expression on her face even when singing.
• The Gimmick: Rina fills the role of Nijigasaki's token gimmick character, who hides her face with her signature Rina-chan Board to make up for her inability to express herself. The anime both downplays and inverts the role of her gimmick to a degree, as she doesn't use the Board at all for the first few episodes, and inventing the Board comes at the tail end of her Character Development.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Episode 6 of the anime reveals that she has frequently desired this, but found it difficult to approach others due to her inability to show her emotions.
• Introverted Cat Person: She has a pet robot cat named Aran. She also found a stray cat on the Nijigasaki grounds she named Hanpen. In the anime's sixth episode, her online avatar is a cat.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: She's a shy yet kind girl who is shown to be very fond of cats.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Her real face, which the game spent months hiding before finally revealing in her character story, is shown with zero fanfare as part of the first PV of the anime.
• Nice Girl: Underneath her shy and emotionally stunted personality she really is a kind girl who works hard to support her group.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She wears a blue hoodie with very long sleeves with her winter uniform instead of the Nijigasaki uniform's standard black jacket. Her summer uniform uses a lighter shade of blue with a white inner lining, along with a pair of red sneakers instead of the standard brown loafers.
• Odd Friendship: She has this dynamic with Ai in the anime. While she has difficulty with expressing her emotions and is consequently withdrawn as a result, the latter is exceptionally genki and expressive. Additionally, while she only had the latter as a friend before both of them joined the school idol club, the latter is very popular among the student body in Nijigasaki.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Inverted; while she has pink hair, is kind, and acts like a Genki Girl when using her board ALL STARS, she's actually very shy, withdrawn, introverted and not all that cheery most of the time, due to her inability to show emotion.
• Shout-Out: Her initial UR costume, seen on "I WILL Beat It!"/"Emotive Signals", makes her look like Hatsune Miku.
• Shrinking Violet: She feels too ashamed to show her true face in fear of coming across as antisocial.
• The Stoic: Though not by her choice. It's just that she's incredibly shy and has a very hard time expressing emotions.
• Tareme Eyes: Matching her cuteness as well as her introverted and shy personality.
• Tastes Like Friendship: In Chapter 22, after finding Mia passed out from being overworked, Rina buys her a hamburger. This forms the initial basis for their later friendship.
• Teen Genius: Rina is insanely talented for a high school girl. The digital pixel mask Rina-chan Board was invented by her; it uses a dot-matrix display that instantaneously reacts to her emotions on the fly without having to read her face, and is capable of emulating lip movements accurately. One ALL STARS cutscene also has her casually mention developing an app to kill time, and her "Emotive Signals" UR reveals that she modded a VR headset function into the Rina-chan Board. In the anime and Nijiyon Animation, she made some smartphone/mobile game apps for the club to play.
• Token Mini-Moe: The shortest member of the group (and the shortest of the main girls across the franchise), and also one of the youngest.
• When She Smiles: Despite her usual inability to show emotions, she manages to flash a smile for her fans without her Rina-chan Board in Season 3 #60 of Nijiyon, much to the delight of said fans, both in-universe and out.

DiverDiva

DiverDiva's first single, "SUPER NOVA"

The resident "Cool" subunit, consisting of a duet between third year Karin Asaka and second year Ai Miyashita. Unlike previous "Cool" subunits, DiverDiva has a more focused outlook on EDM music, blending it with a rap style (courtesy of Ai) to carve a unique niche in the Love Live! franchise.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: While their subunit's formation is rooted primarily around their Friendly Rivalry with each other in both mediums, the reason why it was formed in the first place is different in the anime and game. In ALL STARS, DiverDiva came about after Ai and Karin's respective losses against the School Idol Club two chapters ago, and Ai convinces Karin to partner up with her with the goal of improving themselves through their rivalry with each other. In the anime, DiverDiva was formed as a result of Ai being conflicted over her love for Misato and her love for being a school idol, until Karin convinces Ai that she can love both without sacrificing one for the other. This results in Ai wanting to convey this love and passion for both to Misato by forming a unit with Karin, who like her, is competitive and determined to win.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: Though Karin sees some credence to some of Lanzhu's words in the first episode of the anime's second season, neither she nor Ai leave the Club for her as they remain completely loyal to their friends unlike the game. Their feelings of inferiority towards Kasumi, Kanata, and especially Setsuna, which was one of their main reasons for defecting to Lanzhu in the first place, are also absent in the anime.
• Can't Catch Up: Played for Drama.
  • The reason why they joined the Association is to close the gap in skill between them and the more popular members of the club like Setsuna and Kasumi.
  • Despite their massive improvements after joining the Association, Karin loses to Kasumi in the first round while Ai loses to Setsuna in the second round. This causes both of them to enter Heroic BSoD.
• Cosmic Motifs: On their first single. It's also been noted that Karin and Ai have a "sun/moon" juxtaposition, potentially a reference to a scrapped subunit name/concept, "SoLuna".
• Demoted to Extra: An In-Universe example. By joining the School Idol Association, Karin and Ai went from solo idols to backup dancers for Lanzhu with questionable prospects on being able to perform at all. Emma even lampshades this when she asks Karin if switching sides was worth it.
• Electronic Dance Music: Following in the footsteps of BiBi and Guilty Kiss as the resident "Cool" unit, this is DiverDiva's specialty, although they do mix it up a bit by having a rap twist on the usual sexy/suave style.
• Face–Heel Turn: At the start of Season 2 of the storyline in ALL STARS, both Karin and Ai leave the school idol club in favor of the one started by Lanzhu. This puts them in direct conflict with their former clubmates, as Lanzhu is attempting to disband the school idol club.
• Love Triangle: Their first single's B-side, "Love Triangle", is about one.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: Their image colors.
• Punny Name: Given that Pungeon Master Ai is part of this subunit, it was likely to be expected.
  • The Diver part of the name is a pun of Odaiba, the town in which Nijigasaki High is located.
  • "Love Triangle". The word "love" can be written as "ai", and the word "triangle" can be written as "sankakkei" in Japanese. If read together, it can be pronounced as "Ai-san kakkei", meaning "Ai-san is cool".
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ai's energetic red to Karin's cool blue. It's even in their colors. This is also how they come up with their unit concept in Chapter 26, by playing off each others' clashing personalities and styles to become greater than the sum of their parts.
• Took a Level in Badass: Since Karin and Ai joined the School Idol Association, their former clubmates have noticed a marked improvement in their dancing skills.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Chapter 28 of ALL STARS reveals that they are indirectly responible for Lanzhu's actions during Season 2 and the ensuing conflicts, as they were the ones who first met Lanzhu at the School Idol Festival and encouraged her to watch the School Idol Club's performances. Doing so inspired Lanzhu to become a school idol herself, and gave her the idea to create the School Idol Association.

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Karin Asaka

The Sexy Big Sister School Idol

Image Color: Royal Blue

Grade: Third Year

Birthday: June 29 (Cancer)

Blood Type: AB

Height: 167cm

Three Sizes: B88/W57/H89

Symbol: Stiletto

Voiced by: Miyu Kubota (Japanese), Shara Kirby (English)

A third-year from Nijigasaki Academy, Karin wants to become a school idol to boost her self-confidence. Karin is very mature and gives off a rather seductive vibe. She often tries to tease her underclassmen, or teach them how to be sexy and cool like her... although it can backfire when they begin to show her lots of attention or respond purely, and she becomes embarrassed afterwards.

Karin, being the token Ms. Fanservice of the group, is heavily represented with cool and dark/sexy solo songs of various genres; appropriately, accompanying lyrics are commonly themed around love and seduction.

Karin is Emma's roommate at the Nijigasaki Academy dorms.

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• Adaptational Nice Girl: In Chapter 20 of ALL STARS, she joins the School Idol Association created by Lanzhu, and states that she views the friendships she made in the Club as secondary to (and thus of lesser importance to) their rivalry with each other and improving herself as a school idol. In contrast, Episode 9 of the anime depicts her struggling with the notion that friends and rivals need not be mutually exclusive, and she is ultimately able to reconcile the apparently contradictory notion that she can be rivals with her clubmmates and yet still be friendly with them as well. As the anime goes on, despite her rather shy nature and former Ineffectual Loner tendencies, she's also shown to be much more of a kind and supportive individual.
• Adaptational Personality Change: While Karin is still presented as a rather mature and sexy type of girl, the personality differences between her game version and anime version are fairly heavy - as explained above in Adaptational Nice Girl.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Karin and Emma were strangers in ALL STARS before the entire club was gathered in the story. In the anime, she and Emma met shortly after the latter moved to Japan and are close friends right from the beginning, with Karin even helping her out when the original school idol club was suddenly disbanded.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Somewhat present in the anime at first but downplayed. She's tall, beautiful with dark blue hair, and by her own admission, she claims that she doesn't like being around too many people in the anime. That said, she's more reserved than aloof, since she's genuinely kind and affable, and despite her sexy appearance in truth she's rather shy.
  • By S2 of the anime, this has pretty much disappeared, since she's mellowed out and has become more cheerful and friendly.
• Always Second Best: Despite her best efforts, she can't seem to close the gap between her and the popular members of the club like Setsuna and Kasumi. This led her to join the Association.
• Beneath the Mask: There are several indications that she isn't as confident as she lets on, and that the mature and seductive image she likes to portray is largely a front. While she likes to tease other people, she'll get embarrassed when they tease her back or don't respond the way she expects.
• Beware the Nice Ones: In the anime, she carries an intimidating aura to those who don't know her well or if she's sufficiently angered, which is best seen when she confronts Nana for Emma's sake in Episodes 2 and 3.
• Book Dumb:
  • ALL STARS Chapter 10 reveals that she has poor grades.
  • In the anime's Season 2 Episode 11, she and Kasumi worry about routine exams once Ayumu mentions them.
• Break the Haughty: For all her confident bravado during the school idol tournament, she ultimately loses to Kasumi in the first round in Chapter 24 despite all the training she received from the Association, resulting in her locking herself up in her room and crying, unable to understand why she lost.
• Cover Version: Covers Ai's "Meccha Going!!" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Cuteness Proximity: Karin loves pandas and goes into Cuteness Overload around them.
  • In her bond story, she drops her cool facade and starts fawning over the panda at the zoo.
  • In ''Nijiyon'' Season 3 #36, Karin tries to keep her cool to no avail, as the other club members look over the panda photo album that she accidentally left in the club room.
• Cool Big Sis: Karin is the big sister figure of the club. Some members of µ's and Aqours also see her as this.
• Curtains Match the Window: Has dark blue hair and blue eyes.
• Determinator: Subverted. Karin has a strong sense of perseverance but she has her limits. She gets depressed after losing to Kasumi at the first round of the tournament in chapter 24, even after receiving training from the Association.
• Distinguishing Mark: She has three neatly arranged moles near her left collarbone.
• Friendly Rivalry: With Setsuna. Both are attractive, charismatic and well-liked by the audiences, and technically all the idols make individual performances; however, they're nevertheless friends.
• Ineffectual Loner: She's somewhat more aloof in the anime than she was in the game, at least at the beginning, being supposedly resistant to the idea of becoming a school idol herself while simultaneously only initially helping out the club for Emma's sake. Naturally, Emma sees through this and successfully convinces Karin to join with her after finding out how she actually wanted to be a school idol herself in episode 5.
• Ms. Fanservice: Invoked. Karin's pitch introduces her as a "sexy" type idol who wants to enthrall audiences with her body. She has a rather mature design that makes her appear five years older than she actually is, and her idol costume appears to be somewhat more provocative in design than normal. As she is a model, this is probably justified.
• Nice Girl: A bit of a paradox, but the anime version, despite being slightly aloof at first, is this, being genuinely kind, supportive and empathetic, as shown especially in S2. Game version is more outgoing, but also teasing and fairly opportunistic instead.
• No Sense of Direction: She dislikes geography and is not good with maps. As seen in S1 Episode 9 and S2 Episode 10, she easily gets lost.
  • In the "Music Made Together" event, she gets lost with Yoshiko in Tokyo despite having a map to the venue of Riko and Maki's recital. They do eventually make it to the venue by accident.
  • In S1 Episode 9 of the anime, Karin leaves her photo shoot and ends up lost while using a map on her phone; luckily, Setsuna, Ayumu, and Yu find her.
  • After performing a show during the Festival itself in the anime's season 1 finale, Karin ends up getting lost again during the time in between her performance and Emma's, asking Emma where her next stage is.
  • By the time S2 Episode 10 rolls around, it happened often enough that Emma asked Rina to develop an app specifically to track Karin when she inevitably gets lost.
• Not a Morning Person: Has trouble waking up in the morning.
• Performance Anxiety:
  • Emma reveals that Karin suffered from this before going on stage in this voiced drama.
  • In Episode 9 of the anime, right before she's due to hit the stage at DiverFes, Karin suddenly realizes the magnitude of the situation she's in and runs away. The rest of the club manages to find and give her the encouragement she needs to get back on stage in the nick of time.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: She clearly doesn't mind being the Ms. Fanservice of the group, as she loves to tease others and tends to wear more provocative outfits than the other girls when performing. Downplayed in the anime indeed, where she still wears those oufits and is proud of her good looks, but she's also more shy and lacks the shameless attitude.
• Shrinking Violet: In the anime, she's rather shy and awkward, and gets flustered when someone teases her. She also becomes somewhat anxious at the time of her performance.
• Sore Loser: Karin hates losing to anyone, and is willing to go to any lengths to defeat her rivals. Losing in popularity to Kasumi hits her so hard she slumps into a Heroic BSoD for a while, completely unable to understand where she went wrong.
• Spirited Competitor: Karin's most distinguishing personality trait in both the game and anime is her competitive fire that spurs her initial treatment of her clubmates as rivals first and friends second. Harnessing her spirit into passion makes up part of her Bond Story in the game, while consolidating her views on friends and rivals makes up her episode in the anime.
• Statuesque Stunner: The tallest in the group and very attractive. She's a fashion model for a reason, after all.
• Stripperiffic: Her Tokimeki Runners outfit shows off her cleavage (particularly, her Distinguishing Mark), midriff and legs.
• Tareme Eyes: Has them. While they were a bit contrasting with her initial attitude, they fit her indeed as she's indeed a quiet, kind and calm individual, just somewhat reserved.
• The Tease: She really likes to tease her underclassmen. She also wants to give a "veeeery stimulating" show to everyone watching her. However, she gets embarrassed if whoever she's teasing teases her back or doesn't get flustered like she expects them to.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: In Season 1 of the anime, Karin starts off as a bit aloof and standoffish, but upon joining the group, she becomes more outgoing over time.
• Trash of the Titans: Her dorm room is always messy, so Emma usually comes over to help clean it up.
• Tsundere: Downplayed. She has a little bit of this attitude, gives off an air of a cool and aloof older sister figure to mostly everyone around her in the anime and sometimes is quick to deny how much she cares, but neither Emma, who she is genuinely kind to the most, nor Kanata are fooled.
• Used to Be a Tomboy: She used to be a mischievous tomboy when she was younger.
• Vocal Evolution: Miyu Kubota's singing voice for Karin has audibly smoothened out over time compared to her earlier performances. Notable for the fact she otherwise has a naturally higher-pitched voice but sings for a low-pitched character.
• Younger Than They Look: Karin looks and acts more like a college student or a working adult than a high schooler.

Ai Miyashita

The True Gyaru School Idol

Image Color: Super Orange

Grade: Second Year

Birthday: May 30 (Gemini)

Blood Type: A

Height: 163cm

Three Sizes: B84/W53/H86

Symbol: High five

Voiced by: Natsumi Murakami (Japanese), Daisy Guevara (English)

An energetic second year in Nijigasaki Academy. She "stumbled" into school idol scene after a friend asked if she wants to. As a person who's always willing to help, she has a lot of friends. Besides that, Ai likes to make puns. She's actually an honor student, with high grades and is also athletic.

Ai's solo style is reflective of the image she likes to present to others, being high-energy, high-tempo idol pop music with lyrics themed around friendship and happiness.

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• Academic Athlete: She's an honor student, and in Chapter 6 of ALL STARS manages to beat the athletic Rin in a race.
• The Ace: Very pretty, intelligent, academically excellent, great at sports, a fast learner, and very popular in school, Ai is certainly a topnotcher in all the right marks.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Neither Ayumu nor Yu are familiar with her before meeting her in the anime. Compare this in the game where Ayumu was the one who recommended her to the protagonist as a potential school idol in Chapter 1 and the protagonist immediately recognizes who she was talking about once she namedrops her.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: The specific origin of her Pungeon Master habit varies by canon. In the game, she developed it at a younger age as a way to cheer up Misato, but in the anime, Emma says something punny and Ai finds it so hilarious that she just picks up the habit.
• Adaptational Modesty: Ai's main school idol outfit in the anime is less tight-fitting and not as revealing as her default "Tokimeki Runners" outfit from the game.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: Like Karin, in the anime she lacks the opportunistic streak she had in the game version.
• Always Second Best: She feels inferior to Setsuna and Kanata as they both consistently reach top ranking in popularity. She also highlights that Kasumi's popularity far exceeds her own as well. As such, she was spurred to defect to the Association as a way to challenge herself so that she can beat Setsuna some day. Sadly, she lost to Setsuna in the idol tournament in Chapter 24.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: While rather quirky and eccentric, Ai is easily one of the most intelligent individuals in the cast.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Downplayed; she's generally the most eccentric girl in the cast and is somewhat goofy, but despite this she's absolutely competent and capable to be serious.
• Cool Big Sis: Her relationship with Rina in both the game and the anime, serving as the closest thing to a supportive big sister figure for the younger Rina.
• Cover Version: Covers Kasumi's "Diamond" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Similarly to Yu, after getting an interest in school idols and officially joining the school idol club, her focus episode in the anime deals with her trying to find out what kind of direction she wants to take as a solo idol and knowing what to do from there.
• Ditzy Genius: Ai is kind of a goofball and has a rather childish sense of humor; that said, she's very intelligent and gets excellent grades. Furthermore, she's very good at sports and is a clever and quick learner.
• Engrish: Interjects a lot of English phrases in her song and conversations.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Her appearance changes depending on the medium. In her early Famitsu days, Ai kept her hair loose and untied save her bangs, which are braided. Her fashion sense was also gyaru-aligned. In ALL STARS, she keeps the gyaru aesthetic, but has her hair tied in a ponytail this time while wearing a white flower ornament on it. In the anime, she loses the flower ornament and gyaru fashion sense, and looks slightly more unkempt or shaggy due to the anime taking away the gyaru parts of her character while emphasizing her athletic side more.
• Fear of Thunder: Ai was told by her grandmother to hide her bellybutton during thunderstorms or else Raijin will eat it. While this is a commonly heard old wives' tale in Japan, Ai still cowers and hides her bellybutton whenever she hears thunder.
• For Happiness: Her main objective as an idol. She wants everyone to have fun, laugh and be happy with her performance.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: In Chapter 23 of ALL STARS, she tells Misato that this is the reason she defected to Lanzhu's School Idol Association. In particular, she cites her ranking on school idol polls as being eclipsed by that of Setsuna, Kanata, and Kasumi, and thus joined the Association to try and boost her ranking in order to beat Setsuna. However, this comes at the cost of coming in conflict with her former clubmates, due to Lanzhu's actions against them, and alienating at least some of them, especially Kasumi.
• Gyaru Girl: Has the looks and fashion sense of a kogal, and at one point, Ayumu also has a dream where Ai becomes a ganguro. However, she subverts the stereotypical personality of the trope in that she's actually an honor student and has a rather dorky sense of humor.
• Genki Girl: Is very friendly, excitable, and energetic.
• Informed Attribute: The "gyaru" part of her character pitch. Starting out as simply a fashion choice meant to be subverted by her actual dorky personality, this was slowly phased out, until the anime outright ditched that in favor of making her a straight ace student.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • She continues to be friendly with most of her former clubmates after defecting to Lanzhu's Association. While most of said clubmates do not mind this and treat her civilly, Kasumi is distinctly angered by both Ai's defection and her casual interactions with the Club's members, seemingly pretending as if nothing had happened between them.
  • In the anime, she lampshades this after learning how upset Misato actually was underneath when she saw how happy Ai was at becoming a school idol. This makes Ai think that by showing off how fun being a school idol is to Misato in an attempt to cheer her up, she's inadvertently hurting her instead. This gives her an internal crisis of faith until Karin snaps her out of it by appealing to her competitive nature.
• Jack of All Trades: In the anime, she's known as a "hero" around Nijigasaki for having a hand in so many clubs at once, especially sports clubs.
• Large Ham: Very passionate and a bit loud, she's easily the most excitable, bombastic and hammy among the main cast.
• Lovable Jock: One of the more athletic girls in Nijigasaki, having a fondness for sports and regularly assisting the sports clubs, and is an all-around friendly girl.
• Motor Mouth: The rapper of the club. Most prominent in her 3rd solo, "Tanoshii no Tensai".
• Ms. Fanservice: Not to the extent of Karin but being a gyaru, her casual clothes and some costumes show a lot of skin.
• Nice Girl: Like Karin, in the game she's rather opportunistic, despite her friendly Genki Girl attitude, but in the anime she's portrayed as genuinely kind, sweet and helpful.
• The Nicknamer: She tends to give personal nicknames to her friends.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She wears a brown sweater with her winter uniform instead of the Nijigasaki uniform's standard black jacket. She ties the sweater around her waist in her summer uniform.
• Odd Friendship: She has this dynamic with Rina in the anime. While she is very expressive and genki, the latter has difficulty expressing her emotions and is considerably more withdrawn. Additionally, while she is very popular among the student body in Nijigasaki, she was the latter's Only Friend until the two of them joined the school idol club.
• Only Friend: In the anime, prior to the two of them joining the school idol club, she was this to Rina.
• Pungeon Master: Puts a lot of puns into her speech.
• Punny Name: The name of her second solo, "友 & 愛", translates to "Friends and Love", but the former kanji, normally pronounced "tomo", can also be read as "yuu", thus producing the pronunciation "You and I" (or "you and Ai").
• Stripperiffic: Her "Tokimeki Runners" outfit consists of a sleeveless vest that exposes her bra and her midriff, and hotpants with visible underwear straps.
• Third-Person Person: Refers to herself as "Ai-san".
• Trademark Favorite Food: Nukazuke, a Japanese form of pickled vegetables. She particularly likes her grandmother's nukazuke.
• Unknown Rival: Downplayed. She sees Setsuna as an obstacle to overcome in her bid to become the most popular school idol on the polls, to the point that she is willing to join Lanzhu's School Idol Association and alienate her former clubmates to do so. However, Setsuna has not given any indication that she even cares about these polls or perceives any of her clubmates in the same way.

R3BIRTH

R3BIRTH's first single, "MONSTER GIRLS"

A subunit formed by Lanzhu Zhong in Chapter 28 of ALL STARS alongside her Childhood Friend Shioriko Mifune and prodigal songwriter Mia Taylor. They specialize in a hard-hitting power style of music unlike the other Nijigasaki school idols that is further accentuated by the members' commanding stage presence and multi-lingual vocals.

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• Adaptational Nice Girl: All three of them are more polite and easygoing around the other Nijigasaki girls in the anime, a far cry from their rude, cynical and tension-filled early interactions in the game.
  • While Shioriko is still hard working and serious, she's a genuinely kind person who supports school idols and has no antagonistic feelings against them as a whole. In the game, she shows disdain towards the school idol club and wishes for it to be abolished, and her initial interactions with the club make her come off as hostile.
  • Mia's still standoffish, but because she came to Japan of her own volition instead of being forcibly dragged by Lanzhu, it's more toned down and has even given some advice on Yu in regards to music composition.
  • Lanzhu, while not agreeing with the other girls about what being a school idol is all about and still has high confidence in herself, treats Yu with more respect and never forcing herself or her ideas on the School Idol Club. In the game, albeit because of a lack of social skills as opposed to actual malice, she's an Alpha Bitch who tried to shut down the club and gave the protagonist the cold shoulder.
• The Ace: It's a subunit formed by 3 aces; an academically-gifted Student Council President, a Child Prodigy composer and the best school idol in Nijigasaki.
• Bilingual Bonus: Two of the subunit's members, Mia and Lanzhu, are fluent in languages apart from Japanese, namely English and Chinese, respectively. Naturally, they use this to great effect in their solos and subunit songs.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • It is the first subunit in the franchise (barring Saint Snow) to appear in-universe before being announced through official media, as well as the first subunit whose composition wasn't decided by fans.
  • "MONSTER GIRLS" also has the unique distinction of being a subunit single with solo songs on it.
• Foil: To various characters, but all three of them stand as dark counterparts to different aspects of the Player Character in ALL STARS. Lanzhu is The Leader of a school idol club, Shioriko is an authority figure who pushes others around them to be their best selves, and Mia is a songwriter.
• Heel–Face Turn: All of its members started out against the Club for various reasons. After some Character Development, the Club manages to win them over.
• Letters 2 Numbers: A 3 instead of an E.
• Meaningful Name: Like "QU4RTZ", the "3" in the name serves to denote the number of members, in this case three. The name "rebirth" is also indicative of its members sharing a common theme of Heel–Face Turn in ALL STARS, as they were all portrayed as antagonists at some point. The latter meaning is somewhat lost in the anime due to Adaptation Deviation.
• Multinational Team: Shioriko is Japanese, Mia is American and Lanzhu is Chinese-Japanese from Hong Kong. Naturally, they exploit this by making their first single "MONSTER GIRLS" be multilingual with Japanese, Chinese and English lyrics.
• Nice Mean And In Between: At least in the anime adaptation:
  • Shioriko is the Nice: she's unfailingly polite and supportive towards the club even before she joins, and she also lacks her game counterpart's initial antagonistic qualities.
  • Lanzhu is the Mean: she's very arrogant and self-absorbed, and she initially believes that she doesn't need support from others to be successful, though her nastier traits from the game are significantly toned down.
  • Mia is the In-Between: she's not as abrasive as her game counterpart and is much more easygoing towards Yu than in ALL STARS, though she's still rather standoffish and prefers not to get too buddy-buddy with others.

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Shioriko Mifune

The Straightforward School Idol

Image Color: Jade Green

Grade: First Year

Birthday: October 5 (Libra)

Blood Type: AB

Height: 160cm

Three Sizes: B79/W56/H78

Symbol: Bookmark

Voiced by: Moeka Koizumi (Japanese), Caitlin Myers (English)

The current Student Council President of Nijigasaki High, despite being a first year. With a strong desire to help anyone and everyone live their best lives, she wants to improve Nijigasaki High to better prepare its students for their future.

The game and anime versions significantly differ in some backstory and characterization aspects, but at her core, Shioriko is a serious, kind and supportive person, with a fear of failure fostered by experiences involving her sister Kaoruko.

Shioriko's solo style blends together elements of traditional Japanese music and Japanese rock in a natural, harmonious order, representing her multifaceted personality; much like she is to others, her songs are accompanied by lyrics that are loud and commanding, designed to express her deepest emotions to her audience.

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• The Ace: She's described as calm, well-behaved, academically gifted and flawless.
• Adaptational Late Appearance: She was a pivotal character in the game's first season, appearing just before the School Idol Festival arc in ALL STARS. In the anime, she doesn't show up until Season 2, well after the School Idol Festival arc had concluded.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: Very much so. In the anime, Shioriko is a kind girl who is polite, gentle and supportive towards the group even before joining, while originally in the game she was somewhat antagonistic, huaughty and aggressive, though not a bad person by any means.
• Adaptational Personality Change: While she continues to be a rules lawyer and acts as Lanzhu's straight man in the anime, any and all qualms she has with school idols or Nana Nakagawa are absent. Her relationship with her older sister is also less strained than in the game, and she openly has admiration for school idols coming from her even before she joined the club.
• Affectionate Nickname: She gets called "Shiotti" by Ai and "Shioko" by Kasumi later on.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Her technique is quite similar to the protagonist's, being able to quickly tell a person's strengths and weaknesses by simply watching them in action. However, unlike the protagonist, who uses her ability to help improve her friends, Shioriko is quite forceful and stubborn in coercing students to do things that she believes would fit their skills better. While she is right most of the time, said students also tend to not enjoy doing what they excel at and would rather do what they love.
• Bait-and-Switch Tyrant: Shioriko being the student council president is initially presented as being bad, especially for the School Idol Club that she plans to abolish. It isn't until the success of the school campus tour that the student body (including the School Idol Club) accepts her as fit for the role due to Shioriko learning how to negotiate and compromise with the club presidents. Of course this is absent in the anime.
• Birds of a Feather: She notes that she and Lanzhu have similar personalities when they were children and that's how they became friends. Though this is absent in the anime, while she and Lanzhu are still Childhood Friends, Shioriko is much nicer than her game counterpart.
• Break Them by Talking: Twice, to the same person, no less.
  • During the public debate, Shioriko directly asks Nana if she is giving full effort to both her duties and her passions. Unfortunately, Nana's answer lacks conviction, swaying the student body to Shioriko's side.
  • During the election speech, Shioriko counters Nana's pledge by saying that her vision for the school is contradictory to what she is doing now, and for the most part, she only wants the role of Student Council President to protect her passions (the school idol club). Nana was unable to deny the claim and loses the election.
• Childhood Friends: She and Lanzhu apparently go back; due to this, Shioriko has a less negative outlook on Lanzhu's behavior compared to the other girls, and this partly contributes to her decision to leave the group to join the Association, albeit with reluctance.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Shioriko takes this role in Season 3 of ALL STARS towards Lanzhu, as the latter frequently suggests outlandish ideas that are either incredibly impractical or expensive to implement, or both. As such, Shioriko routinely has to veto said ideas and remind Lanzhu why they are beyond the Club's means.
• Cover Version: Covers Karin's "Starlight" during the Nijigasaki Shuffle Festival.
• Cute Little Fangs: Her fangs only serve to make her look cute instead of intimidating.
• The Cynic: Her view on high school life is rather pragmatic and boring, which puts her at odds with the idealistic members of the School Idol Club.
• Day in the Limelight: Unlike the other characters, who got their spotlight episodes in the main anime, Shioriko's focus episode is the NEXT SKY Original Video Animation, which partially focuses on her trying to break out of her shell and discovering for herself what being a school idol means as a major subplot.
• Deadpan Snarker: She defaults to subtle snarking whenever she has to deal with Lanzhu's antics from time to time. She occasionally snarks at Kasumi too, but not as often as she does at Lanzhu.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: A big part of her development in-game. She gradually warms up to the school idol club, first starting to practice with them and understanding why the player character wants to save it in Chapter 13, then talking both with Ayumu and the protagonist in chapter 15/16 in order to help them settle their conflict, and enable the club to come back to "how she likes it", and finally joining the Nijigasaki Idol Club at the climax of chapter 17 at the insistence of Ayumu.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The kanji used for "shiori" means "bookmark", and her character symbol is... a bookmark.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: At the climax of NEXT SKY, after Shioriko finally feels that she knows what kind of school idol she is meant to be, she dramatically removes her hair ribbon and uses it to tie her hair back into a ponytail, signifying her newfound confidence.
• Extreme Doormat: Shioriko is noticeably far less assertive and self-sustaining in ALL STARS Season 2, akin to a Redemption Demotion, and finds herself getting bossed around by Lanzhu early in the story despite her purported attempts to curb the effects of Lanzhu's behavior (which mostly amounts to hiring two school idol fans to run the Monitoring Committee).
• Evil Counterpart: Although she's not evil, she can be considered as an antagonistic counterpart to some characters.
  • To Setsuna/Nana. Both girls come from rich families and are stated to be very competent on what they do. However, Shioriko doesn't particularly care for school idols.
  • To the protagonist. Both girls are competent and responsible due to their Awesomeness by Analysis ability. Shioriko is The Stoic that doesn't like school idols, while the protagonist is a Genki Girl that adores µ's, Aqours and her school idol club.
  • To Dia and Eli, with Shioriko having their worst traits from their time as Obstructive Bureaucrats in their respective anime while having none of their redeeming qualities until her Character Development.
• Family Theme Naming: She and her older sister share the same kanji for "ko".
• First-Name Basis: During Chapter 13, she gets called "Shioriko-san" (with the exception of Ai and Kasumi, who uses nicknames) once she starts hanging out with them.
• Forced into Evil: Shortly after joining the School Idol Club, she leaves it to join Lanzhu's School Idol Association. However, it should be noted that she did this reluctantly, out of a feeling of obligation to Lanzhu on account of their old friendship and to try and mitigate the authoritarian actions Lanzhu attempts to impose on the Club's activities. As such, her actions fall more in line with this trope rather than being a full-fledged Face–Heel Turn.
• Foreshadowing:
  • An announcement for Season 4 of Nijiyon features her symbol, a bookmark, teasing Shioriko's introduction into that series. Her presence is later outright confirmed when the image is updated to formally include her.
  • The final episode of Season 1 of Nijigasaki High School Idol Club has a volunteer-signup notice with her image color on it in the background of one of the last scenes in the episode.
• Friend to All Children:
  • In Chapter 11 of ALL STARS, the other first years accidentally saw her treating a child kindly. It's the first sign that Shioriko has a nicer side.
  • In Season 4 #17 of Nijiyon, she states that in the presence of children, she wants to be a person that spoils them and they can rely on, all while she and Shizuku are patting Rina and Kasumi on the head. Naturally, the recipients of this gesture are not pleased by the implications of Shioriko's comments.
• Full-Name Basis: Kasumi calls her by her full name without any honorific. Justified as Kasumi doesn't like her until Shioriko starts getting closer to the club members.
• Good Is Not Nice: Definitely qualifies in the game: she's genuinely well-meaning and wishes to lead everyone down the right path, though she's very hostile towards the school idol club and is bad at compromising. Averted in the anime thanks to a case of Adapational Nice Girl.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Played with. At the end of Chapter 17 of ALL STARS, she officialy joins the School Idol Club. This lasts for two chapters before she defects to Lanzhu's School Idol Association at the start of ALL STARS Season 2. However, official sources started listing her as a member of the School Idol Club following the release of Chapter 17, and other parts of the franchise (including the lives, CDs, and merchandise) have continued to do so, in spite of the aforementioned plot development in ALL STARS. This suggests that those in charge of the franchise's direction intend for Shioriko's addition to the Club to be a long-term thing that defines the group.
• Heel–Face Turn: Shioriko is outright antagonistic to pretty much all of the club members, and is by far the most directly hostile of the Student Council Presidents in the entire franchise, but just like all the others, she ends up becoming a school idol herself. Averted in the anime, where she's kind and supportive towards the group from the start.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Delivering two public verbal beatdowns to Nana was not the nicest move and both instances are treated as Kick the Dog moments by the club members, but she's not entirely wrong when she claims that Nana only wants to preserve her role as Student Council President in order to protect the school idol club, as Nana is unable to deny this claim. Nana even admits that Shioriko is more suited to the role due to her better charisma and clearer goals.
  • She also gets one in Chapter 14. After Ayumu's success at the school tour, Shioriko promised the Nijigasaki girls they could perform at school events and use the school to hold performances. Despite this, she doesn't permit them to use the high school to host the School Idol Festival, and brings up some valid points. The big issue is that it's a large-scale event that gathers school idols all across the country. She points out that an event as big as that would require the entire school to run the event. However, students in different clubs also use the school for their club activities, so it would be unfair to make all of them to put their activities on hold for the sake of one club. She also points out that such a huge event would require a lot of staff behind the scenes. Just getting some volunteers from within Nijigasaki is not going to be enough to handle the huge number of visitors that will be attending. In fact, Shioriko requires the club to gather one thousand volunteers to sign up if they wish to use the school to host the festival.
• Lack of Empathy: One of her major character flaws is her complete inability to connect with other people on an emotional level due to her obsession with giving students meaningful lives at the expense of their own personal wants, which not only causes friction with the School Idol Club but also nearly everyone else. A big part of her Character Development is teaching her how to see things from a different angle than she's used to.
  • Averted in the anime; despite being serious and professional, she's much more empathetic than in the game.
• Last-Name Basis: She gets called "Mifune-san" by the members of the school idol club with the exception of Kasumi, who uses her full name.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: It didn't take long for official material (within a matter of days, in fact) to spoil that she's officially a school idol after the release of Chapter 17.
• Leader Wannabe: She wants to become the Student Council President as she has her own views of what an ideal high school life should be. She wins the election in Chapter 9.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: Her development involves the protagonist invoking this by having her temporarily join the School Idol Club as a guest. Being surrounded by a colorful cast of girls with distinct and unique flaws and traits while also learning how much hard work and effort they put into realizing their dream causes Shioriko to slowly turn around and soften up.
• My Way or the Highway: Prior to her Character Development, she didn't believe in the word "compromise". Although she acts with the best intentions she dislikes it when anyone deviates from the path she's set for them and due to her Lack of Empathy is incapable of understanding why they would do so when she has seemingly laid out the optimal solution. This made it very difficult for her and the other clubs to see eye to eye, causing her to nearly cancel the upcoming club fair until the protagonist stepped in.
• Nice Girl: The only one who plays it straight of the new trio, at least in the anime. She's polite, kind and supportive towards the group from the start, even before she joins herself.
• Not So Stoic:
  • The first sign that there's more to her story than she lets on is when Shioriko draws a parallel between her sister and the protagonist; when the protagonist questions her about it, she becomes flustered and immediately changes the topic.
  • She gives Ayumu a bit of a ribbing in one exchange in Chapter 15, which surprises Ayumu as she didn't consider Shioriko to be the type to joke around with others.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Surprisingly averts this, albeit only because by the time she's in opposition towards the Club the Club itself has already formed. Although she seeks dismantlement of the Club, she is willing to bargain with its members, and she plays by the rules regarding the process rather than just getting rid of them because she wants it. Once she becomes closer to the Club, she doesn't really get in the Club's way by choice, only because there are rules mandating that the Club has to prepare for the School Idol Festival in an appropriate manner befitting of a large-scale school-wide event that will probably take up space and time away from other students and clubs.
• Ojou: Of the Proper Lady type.
• Pet the Dog:
  • She's seen helping a little boy in the ALL STARS main story to show that she isn't so cold and mean.
  • In Rina's Bond Story, she allows Rina to keep Hanpen in the School Idol Club's club room until the cat finds a proper owner despite the school's strict "no pets" policy.
  • After being instructed by Lanzhu to create a Monitoring Committee to interfere with the School Idol Club's activities, she deliberately chooses people who are fans of the Club and instructs them to time their attempts to stop the Club's guerilla lives such that there is not too much disruption to said lives.
• Red Armband of Leadership: She wears one when she becomes the new Student Council President.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: While her overall goal is noble, she comes across as antagonistic due to her wish to close down the school idol club.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: She has a complicated relationship with her sister.
  • Initially, the story frames it as a Red Oni, Blue Oni type. Before her Character Development, Shioriko is cold and pragmatic while her older sister is warm and supportive.
  • Chapter 27 reveals that it's also a Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling with Shioriko being the responsible and dutiful sister.
• Secret-Keeper: For Setsuna among the SC members, when she accidentally gets to know that her true identity is Nana Nakagawa.
• Sixth Ranger: She officially joins the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club at the end of ALL STARS Season 1.
• Skilled, but Naive: Shioriko is incredibly talented for a first-year but has a My Way or the Highway approach to leadership. Part of her Character Development is to learn how to empathize with other people and use it to make compromises to make the students happy.
• Strong Family Resemblance: In the anime, Shioriko looks almost identical to her older sister when Kaoruko was young, much to Yu's surprise when she stares at the old photo of Mifune sisters.
• Student Council President: In ALL STARS, she is the Student Council President of Nijigasaki High, starting from Chapter 10. In the anime, she assumes the position at the end of the second season.
• The Stoic: She's very calm and collected, and speaks in a professional and monotone manner.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: In the game, Shioriko is a stern and strict person with everyone (even the player character, who usually is charismatic enough to get along with everyone), except with Ayumu. Their interactions eventually develop to the point where Shioriko visibly blushes when complimented by Ayumu, jokes around with her, and also acts protective of her when the Chapter 15 conflict happens. Ayumu is also the one that pushes Shioriko enough to accept that she actually wants to be an idol at the climax of Chapter 17. She also starts to show cracks to Setsuna on her bond stories.
• Token Good Teammate: Among the members of the School Idol Association, she displays the most sympathy towards the plight of the School Idol Club and the protagonist. In fact, she joined the Association at least in part to try and mitigate as much of Lanzhu's interference in the Club's activities as possible. This is in stark contrast to the Association's other members, who joined to fulfill personal goals.
  • In the anime all this doesn't happen, but she plays the trope again as she's hands down the nicest among the trio joining the group.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: She wants students to be more productive with their clubs and believes that schools should prepare its students for the future and not waste their lives away. This vision puts her at odds with the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club as she believes that the club has no purpose.
• Villainy-Free Villain: Shioriko is a genuinely well-meaning and upstanding person. However, her actions and views on school idols put her at odds with the School Idol Club, who is forced to oppose her on multiple occasions due to her intent to dismantle the club with her power. Shioriko is not a bad person by any means, but her aggressive, blunt and pragmatic way of doing things generally make her unlikeable and antagonistic. Again, averted in the anime where she's not antagonistic at all.
• Walking Spoiler: Due to the 3 1/2 month gap of the relevant stories released between the JP and Global servers, discussing Shioriko in terms of the overall project will spoil Global-only players that she officially becomes a school idol herself.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She calls out the protagonist for taking her anger out on Ayumu during their conflict in Chapter 15 of ALL STARS, knowing full well the lengths Ayumu went through just to try to help the protagonist during a very stressful period in the latter's life.
• When She Smiles: Despite her stoic nature and attitude, she lets out one of these near the end of Chapter 13. She even states that she will join the group in their training after getting things done in the Student Council. Even her cute little fang shows.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: She is being raised to be one although she is more assertive compared to the ideal. Played more straight in the anime of course, where she's definitely nicer and not aggressive.

Mia Taylor

The Singing School Idol

Image Color: Platinum Silver

Grade: Third Year

Birthday: December 6 (Sagittarius)

Blood Type: AB

Height: 156cm

Three Sizes: B80/W55/H80

Symbol: Rabbit with a top hat

Voiced by: Shuu Uchida (Japanese), Lindsay Sheppard (English)

A bilingual transfer student from New York and one of Lanzhu's friends. She serves as the composer and lyricist for Lanzhu's School Idol Association, and enrolls as a third year despite her age. Contrasting Lanzhu's gung-ho attitude about joining up with Nijigasaki and starting the School Idol Association, Mia was unwillingly dragged from her home to placate Lanzhu, and initially comes off as comparatively foul-mouthed and asocial.

Mia's solo style is uniquely evocative of early 2000's Western pop music, and she has the unique distinction of singing in predominantly English lyrics. Due to her solo style, Mia's songs and lyrics are surprisingly versatile and can change with each new performance.

She forms an unusual bond with Rina in Chapter 22, and later joins the School Idol Club in Chapter 29.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: In ALL STARS, Lanzhu forcibly pulled her out of college in New York so she could become Lanzhu's personal songwriter. In the anime, Mia's relationship with Lanzhu is strictly business and the two are mainly using each other for exposure, having come from America to earn recognition as a songwriter. Also, while the Taylor family is still renowned in-universe for their musical talents and that Mia is still a prodigy in music, no mention is made of her being a famous songwriter worldwide.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Likely because Lanzhu didn't forcibly drag her with her to Japan like in the game, Mia, while still somewhat aloof and abrasive, is much less grouchy and temperamental in the anime compared to how she was in ALL STARS, where she was regularly in a bad mood before befriending Rina in Chapter 22. She's also much less dismissive of Yu in the anime, as she comes to respect and even admire Yu's skills as a songwriter much earlier than her game counterpart did, who absolutely hated being compared to an amateur like the protagonist initially. She even willingly helps Yu out in her own way or gives her solid advice whenever she's in need of it in some of the episodes.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Ai calls her "Mia-chi".
  • She initially resists Kasumi's attempts to give her a nickname due to being a 3rd-year despite being younger than Kasumi. Kasumi ultimately sticks to calling her "Mia-ko", which she takes a shine to since it matches Rina's nickname "Rina-ko".
• Awesomeness by Analysis: According to Lanzhu, she analyzes popular trends and uses them as inspiration for songwriting.
• Berserk Button: She loathes being compared to the protagonist as a songwriter, especially since she is Famed In-Story and part of a prestigious musical family, while the latter is an amateur in comparison who only writes songs out of passion for her fellow clubmates. She is later convinced to reassess her view of the protagonist after Rina, whom she struck up a friendship with, tells her that their methods are similar.
• Big Applesauce: She originally hails from New York, and in a few daily theatres references the city's night view, Central Park and its squirrels, and the city's nature as a big, melting pot of cultures.
• Character Catchphrase: “Shit.”
• Child Prodigy: Her composition background is quite prolific, with multiple chart-topping hits under her belt that make her a decorated songwriter. She is also a Grade Skipper, enrolling in Nijigasaki as a third year student.
• Commonality Connection: The basis of her bond with Rina. They both like hamburgers, video games, quiet places, and music. After Kasumi spitefully refers to her as "Mia-ko", she instead takes a shine to it as a nickname, since it matches the one that the former gave Rina, "Rina-ko".
• Eagleland: In the game, she's of the "Mixed Flavor" kind. Mia starts out as rude, brash and condescending to the Idol Club, but it's eventually revealed to be an affectionate and sensitive person. She's also obsessed with burgers and baseball, which are common American stereotypes.
• Evil Counterpart: Though not evil, she is a jerkass counterpart to the protagonist, being the Association's lyricist and songwriter who isn't a school idol herself. Unlike the protagonist, who also serves as a leader and role model for the club, Mia is abrasive by nature and plays second fiddle to Lanzhu. Additionally, while both Mia and the protagonist are prompted with the possibility of becoming school idols themselves, the former chooses to do so, while the latter opts to continue supporting her clubmates behind the scenes.
• Famed In-Story: Even before transferring to Nijigasaki and independently of her familial affiliations, Mia was already a famous songwriter, releasing a new song worldwide each month. In particular, Mari and Riko are familiar with her work, and the former expresses surprise that the School Idol Club's members haven't heard of her beforehand. Upon joining the Club, she arguably becomes its most famous member.
• Going Native: Mia is introduced at the start of Season 2 of ALL STARS as being reluctantly dragged to Nijigasaki by Lanzhu to serve as the latter's personal songwriter. As such, she is disdainful of school idols in general, expressing annoyance at their amateurish nature, and viewing herself as a superior songwriter to the protagonist. Following her Character Development during the season, along with befriending Rina, she manages to break out of her shell and find her own voice as a singer. In Chapter 29, she even voluntarily asks the protagonist to let her join the School Idol Club after the Association's disbandment, and flat-out admits to embracing being a school idol.
• Grade Skipper: Back in the United States, Mia was a college student despite being fourteen years old, owing to her being a Child Prodigy. She enrolls in Nijigasaki as a third year student, ostensibly because it was the highest grade she could be placed in. Understandably, Mia considers having to enroll as a high school student to be a massive downgrade.
• Hikikomori: Downplayed. Mia is known to shut herself in her room for long periods to devote herself to songwriting, to the point that some of her clubmates find it mildly surprising when she does emerge from time to time.
• It Runs in the Family: Mia comes from a family of famous singers, although Mia herself is initially a songwriter rather than a singer.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Both versions of her qualify, though to a different extent. In the anime, while she's still rather standoffish, she's much less abrasive towards the club than in the game and admires Yu for her composition skills.
• Last Episode, New Character: She is introduced in Chapter 19, the last installment of the first season of ALL STARS, alongside Lanzhu.
• Lethal Chef: While nowhere near as lethal as Lanzhu, Mia is somehow even more clueless about food. Not only does she have to be told what part of a cherry tomato is the stem, her "attempt" at making instant hot chocolate results in the protagonist informing her that the hot chocolate powder actually needs water or milk to turn into something potable. She is also impressed by Setsuna's cooking, forcing Rina to divert her attention to stop her from making a big mistake.
• New Transfer Student: She transfers into Nijigasaki from a college in New York on Lanzhu's prompting.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She wears a navy and white letterman jacket in place of a blazer over her winter uniform.
• Oddly Visible Eyebrows: Her eyebrow under her bangs is visible in Nijiyon.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: It's possible to hear elements of Shuu Uchida's Australian accent whenever Mia speaks in English, although since her English lines are typically short phrases it doesn't come out very much.
• Performance Anxiety: She used to love singing up until her first public performance wherein she froze up in front of the audience due to the heavy expectations weighing on her mind. She took up music composition instead to avoid dragging her family name through the mud. It is revealed in the anime during their first live concert that Mia still has a stage fright with her left hand visibly shaking when she asked Rina to voluntary take her slot while she takes time to fix her electronic Rina-chan board.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In Chapter 22, Mia pointedly tells Lanzhu to fix her personality if she wants any hope of convincing the school idols who haven't defected to her club to join her. As Lanzhu Can't Take Criticism, she simply insists that there is nothing to fix.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: She's rather foul-mouthed, especially compared to the rest of the cast.
• Skipping School: Her bond episodes reveal that she frequently skips classes that she dislikes, and justifies this behavior by the fact that as an American college student, she isn't learning anything at Nijigasaki that she does not already know.
• Teen Genius: She's only 14 yet she is already known worldwide for her compositions.
• Token Minority: She's a full-blooded American and much like Emma, doesn't have any Japanese heritage on her.
• Tomboy: Particularly when compared to the other girls. She has Boyish Short Hair, uses the “boku” pronoun, likes baseball, wears her uniform in a rather unkempt manner with a letterman jacket to boot, and speaks rather coarsely.
• Took a Level in Kindness: She starts out by being incredibly dismissive of the protagonist like Lanzhu and shows a lot of pride in her work as a professional songwriter, taking any comparison of her work to the protagonist's as an insult. Once she gets Character Development and makes a Best Friend in Rina, she softens up substantially and begins to acknowledge the protagonist's potential. She even gives the protagonist an Affectionate Nickname in "Baby-chan / little baby" in recognition of her efforts as a songwriter.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Burgers, apparently to make sure the viewers know she's definitely American. Rina even invokes Tastes Like Friendship by treating her to burgers at the local fast food hangout spot after she finds her passed out and in desperate need of nourishment.
• Trash of the Titans: Lanzhu's bond episodes reveal that she is as inept at keeping her room tidy as Karin, and frequently lets her garbage pile up.
• Tsurime Eyes: In the anime, highlighting her blunt, somewhat standoffish personality.

Lanzhu Zhong

The Ardent School Idol

Image Color: Pink Gold

Grade: Second Year

Birthday: February 15 (Aquarius)

Blood Type: B

Height: 165cm

Three Sizes: B87/W55/H82

Symbol: Angel wings

Voiced by: Akina Homoto (Japanese), Courtney Lin (English)

A Chinese-Japanese student from Hong Kong and the chairwoman's daughter. She transferred to Nijigasaki High to see her childhood friend, Shioriko Mifune. After being introduced to school idols, she created her own group, the School Idol Association, as she has her own approach on what school idols should strive to be.

Lanzhu's solo style heavily reflects who she is as a person: strong, in-your-face, and powerful, with hard-hitting electronic instruments backed by a combination of Chinese and Japanese (with a dash of English) lyrics and stylistic flair.

She serves as the antagonist of ALL STARS Season 2. She would later disband the Association and all the members (re-)join the Club in Chapter 29.

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• The Ace: Lanzhu is an exceptionally talented and hard-working individual, far more than most people, and her school idol performances are repeatedly stated as being top-class. Chapter 28 reveals that she's actually a Broken Ace.
• Adaptation Deviation: Both her game and anime counterparts refuse to join the School Idol Club initially. In the game, this was because she is The Perfectionist and believed that anything less than top-class facilities and training wouldn't be fit for a school idol, while in the anime she doesn't believe that a school idol needs support from others to be successful and wants to prove that she is capable of surpassing the Club with her own ideals.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: Lanzhu treats Yu way better than she initially did the Protagonist in ALL STARS despite their ideals still being at odds with each other in the anime. For starters, she doesn't look down on Yu like she did when she first met the Protagonist in ALL STARS, so her interactions with her come off as a lot more amicable and friendly compared to how she started out as in the game.
• Alpha Bitch: Lanzhu has several hallmarks of this trope: rich, popular as a school idol, charismatic, incredibly petty and stuck up, and more than willing to abuse her position as the chairwoman’s daughter to get what she wants. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, her worst moments don’t stem from malice and instead stem from her lack of social skills.
• Anime Chinese Girl: While her standard design looks like it could mostly fit in with the rest of the cast, her costume for "Queendom" plays the Chinese card pretty heavy-handedly, with her hairstyle being done up in odango hair and her outfit being a stylized qipao combined with regal-style wear like a Badass Cape and thigh-high boots. She also strikes a stereotypical crane stance at the end of the song.
• Arc Villain: Of ALL STARS Season 2, being the direct cause of the conflict faced by the School Idol Club.
• Ascended Fangirl:
  • She was inspired to become a school idol after watching the performances put on by the School Idol Club for the School Idol Festival, and transferred into Nijigasaki High. She then actively attempts to invoke this trope by creating the School Idol Association and trying to convince the school idols who inspired her to join it. However, she is only partially successful, as only Karin, Ai, and Shioriko (and Shizuku for a brief stint) actually take her up on this offer. She only fully becomes this in Chapter 29, after she disbands the Association and properly joins the Club.
  • In the anime, she transfers to Nijigasaki from Hong Kong after watching videos of the School Idol Festival, intending to join the School Idol Club. However, after hearing about how the School Idol Club relies on the support of their fans and each other to improve, she rebuffs their ideals and decides to strike out as a solo act, intending to become the Club's rival at the 2nd School Idol Festival.
• Badass Longcoat: Her outfit for "Eutopia" is a stunning rose pink and scarlet coat over a sleek, black qipao.
• Broken Ace: Her Character Focus reveals that being so good at everything alienated her from other people and prevented her from forming lasting friendships, causing her to develop an I Just Want to Have Friends complex and communication issues. Shioriko became her only Childhood Friend because Shioriko felt bad for Lanzhu and didn't want her to be lonely.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • In a sense, the School Idol Club is this to her, as she was inspired to become a school idol herself after watching their performances. However, her perfectionist streak led to her deeming the very club that inspired her to be amateurish and inferior, and she now seeks its dismantlement.
  • Played with in the anime; while she doesn't agree with the Club's ideologies, she continues to admire them even after she refuses to join them and sees them as a source of inspiration for her own school idol career.
• But Not Too Foreign: Her profile states that she's actually half-Japanese.
• Can't Take Criticism: In line with her narcissistic personality, she is unable to accept that her approach to being a school idol might be wrong, despite Shioriko and Mia trying to tell her otherwise.
• Character Catchphrase: "冇問題" (pronounced as "Mou man tai"), which is Cantonese for "No problem".
• Childhood Friends: With Shioriko Mifune.
• Character Shilling: The other characters never fail to consistently remind the audience how "perfect" Lanzhu's performance as a school idol is. This even extends to characters who are outright antagonistic towards her, such as Kasumi. Shioriko also sticks up for her and claims that she has no bad intentions, a view that is also later shared by the protagonist. This is despite the fact that the former has to constantly work to mitigate the impact of Lanzhu's behavior.
• Cleavage Window: Both her Queendom outfit and casual outfit has one.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Is prone to suggesting outlandish ideas that are either downright impractical, incredibly costly to implement, or both, demonstrating that she is occasionally out of touch with her much less wealthy clubmates.
• Coat Cape: Her school idol costume has one.
• Custom Uniform: She wears a distinctive uniform unlike those worn by the other students, consisting of a gold-lined red cardigan marked with the Nijigasaki High insignia in place of the standard black blazer, and her winter uniform shirt is black instead of the standard white shirt. In the anime the gold lining and Nijigasaki emblem on her cardigan is absent.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: She proves her ace status when she cleanly wins the tournament in Chapter 24 by defeating both Kasumi and Setsuna.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Her approach to school idols is that they should have professionals backing them up in terms of songwriting, costume design, and choreography, and she views this to be the best way to express herself as a school idol. This perspective directly clashes with the notion previously espoused by the franchise that school idol performances are inherently amateur productions, with said idols doing all of these tasks on their own in-house, which is part of their appeal.
• Evil Counterpart: To Kotori, being the daughter of a high ranking official of her school (in Lanzhu's case, she's the daughter of Nijigasaki High's chairwoman), but unlike Kotori, she flaunts and abuses her status for all its worth.
• Evil Is Petty: When she fails to win over most of the Club in hopes of getting them to join the Association, she ends up going to ridiculous lengths to prevent them from doing club activities. This is actually subverted: she just doesn’t have a better way of communicating herself and therefore tries to use force to get her way.
• Fangirl: Lanzhu became such a big fan of Nijigasaki's School Idol Club that she traveled from Hong Kong to Japan just to join it. In the anime, even after rejecting the Club's offer to team up, she continues to buy their merchandise.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Her self-absorbed attitude tends to rub both her longtime friend Shioriko, and her composer, Mia, the wrong way, with both of them finding her difficult to deal with at times. However, both assist her in her school idol activities because they feel obligated to her, on account of their friendship and their shared drive to win, respectively.
• Foil:
  • Both Lanzhu and the protagonist are the leaders of their respective School Idol Clubs who have a great love of school idols and attract the people around them due to their love. However, the protagonist personally handles most of the hard work herself, writes all of the songs and dances, prefers to stay in the background to allow her friends to shine, and has a high level of charisma and leadership. Lanzhu, conversely, delegates all of the work to others, is enamored with the spotlight above all else (to the point of reducing the other members of her Association to backup dancers) and refuses to admit that anyone is better than her, and lacks any sense of charisma or tact, preferring to entice potential members with her top-of-the-line facilities and production values.
  • As a school idol, she also serves as a contrast to Ayumu in many aspects. While Ayumu is kind and tender to most people and lacks self-esteem, Lanzhu is narcissistic, snobby to people she doesn't like, and has huge amounts of ego and confidence in her own abilities. Ayumu loves her childhood friend, the protagonist, and is obviously close to her, whereas Lanzhu openly dislikes the protagonist and isn't afraid to show it. Ayumu considers herself largely ordinary while Lanzhu considers herself very special. There's also how they first became school idols: while Ayumu also saw the same school idol performance that inspired the protagonist to love school idols and support them, she initially wasn't as interested in school idols and only became one because she wanted to impress her childhood friend and get her attention, though she eventually grew to genuinely love becoming one later on. Lanzhu immediately took an interest in school idols after watching the School Idol Festival and quickly became one herself.
• Food as Bribe: She frequently holds expensive luncheons and readily invites the School Idol Club to them as a quick way to try and sway them to her side. However, given that it is implied that she might genuinely want their friendship, it could also be her way of invoking Tastes Like Friendship as well.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Being the only character in the franchise who wears a black dress shirt as part of her uniform may be emblematic of this.
• Goroawase Number: Her fourth solo, 5201314, uses the Chinese version of this trick. As demonstrated at the end of the song, it's read as "Wǒ ài nǐ yīshēng yīshì" ("I love you forever").
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Her first solo also has the distinction of having English, Mandarin, and Cantonese phrases spliced in, making it the first song in the franchise to use three languages at once, as Mandarin and Cantonese are separate dialects of the Chinese language.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In Lanzhu's apology to the protagonist in Chapter 29 of ALL STARS, she admits that her prior actions were driven by jealousy over how the people she idolized were close friends of the latter, and that she coveted the position that the protagonist had amongst those people.
• Heinousness Retcon: Lanzhu's characterization suddenly got less harsh as ALL STARS Season 2 went on.
  • Flashbacks during Chapter 28 reveal that she's always idolized the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club when she first saw them at the School Idol Festival and dreamed of becoming friends with them, so she set up the Association for them so they could all join together and become even better school idols. This is bizarrely inconsistent with her early ALL STARS Season 2 behavior where she actively sought to ruin the Club to force the girls to join the Association and was downright nasty to the protagonist despite the entire crux of her character being wanting to make friends with others.
  • By the end of ALL STARS Season 2 her personality is watered down to the point where virtually the only elements shared with the start of the season are her huge ego and being The Ace. She is otherwise just as affable as every other member.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: One way she tries to interfere with the School Idol Club is to create a Monitoring Committee to stop their guerilla lives. The Club eventually responds by livestreaming said lives online, which means that any actions made by the Monitoring Committee against them will be seen by their online viewing audience. This ultimately winds up garnering the Club a reputation as an underdog and thus more support, while harming the perception of the Association among school idol fans. Lanzhu is finally forced to disband the Monitoring Committee in Chapter 23 of ALL STARS after this series of events causes more harm to the Association than good.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Lanzhu secretly resents being The Ace to a certain degree, as it has consistently prevented her from leading the social life she's always dreamed of having.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Lanzhu is a deeply lonely individual, having spent much of her life alienated from her peers due to her imposing talent, lack of social skills and aversive personality. Her Running Gag of dubbing people she's barely met "best friends" the moment they show her an ounce of kindness stems from her desire to forge real friendships, but at the same time is incapable of understanding how to treat others with genuine respect or kindness in turn, perpetuating a cycle of being unable to stay close to anyone she's ever met. She has an Only Friend, Shioriko, who is insomuch less a true friend and only stays by Lanzhu's side because she pities her.
• I Work Alone: In the anime, she insists that school idols don't need to rely on support from their fans or fellow idols to improve their craft, leading her to become an independent school idol. This puts her at odds with the School Idol Club, who lean on each other and their fans to push them towards their dreams.
• Invincible Villain: Being both the best school idol in Nijigasaki and the most powerful student in the entire school makes Lanzhu extremely difficult to contend with for the otherwise-average School Idol Club girls. Not once does she take any meaningful losses besides disbanding the Monitoring Committee, and not only do the Association's shows utterly eclipse the Club's in sheer technical prowess and execution, but she manages to outstrip even Setsuna's popularity among the student population, who is otherwise Famed In-Story as having skills on par with professional idols.
• Irony: In ALL STARS, the School Idol Club had to resort to performing in guerilla lives in secret after Lanzhu's game counterpart forcibly shut their club down in a misguided attempt to convince them to join the one she established in its place. In the anime, she's the one performing in guerilla lives around campus instead, both to establish herself as being a separate school idol from the club and as a way to stand out as a performer.
• Jerkass: Lanzhu essentially has all of Shioriko's worst traits pre-Character Development but instead of being an ice-cold Obstructive Bureaucrat she's just an asshole. Shioriko maintains that Lanzhu doesn't really mean harm but doesn't have a better way to express herself to others.
• Jerkass to One: She's egocentric and selfish, but at the very least, she's genuinely friendly towards the school idols even though her actions caused the original club a lot of grief in the game's second season. However, she dislikes the protagonist and is intentionally rude and dismissive towards her especially in their interactions together. It's notable that the protagonist is the only member of the original school idol club that Lanzhu clearly doesn't want to invite over to the new one she formed. A conversation between the protagonist and Mia in Chapter 28 has Mia suggesting that Lanzhu may have acted this way because she was jealous of how the protagonist was essentially the center of attention for the Club.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Especially in the anime, where she's overly proud and haughty, to the point of arrogance, but at the end of the day she's not a bad person and joins the group admitting her own flaws. In the game, it takes far more time and digging down to find the gold hidden underneath her arrogant personality.
• Kick the Dog: Aside from preventing the School Idol Club from reestablishing itself through any means possible and taking away the crowd Kasumi gathered for the guerilla live the Club put up, there's how she treats the protagonist when they actually meet face-to-face for the first time: telling her how uninteresting she is after learning firsthand how she was the original president of the School Idol Club and then having the gall to tell her how she has no use for someone like the protagonist in her School Idol Association thanks to Mia's presence making her unnecessary. Notably, after being told all that, the protagonist's self-esteem takes a bit of a hit until Shioriko reassures and comforts her afterwards.
• Lack of Empathy: Like Shioriko, this is her main flaw. She believes that school idols should have the best environment and staff to become the best that they can be and dismisses any comment that it could be wrong. In Chapter 22, she doesn't even realize that Mia is mentally stressed out. When she goes missing and everyone is worried about her, she just shrugs it off and thinks Mia is just making a song for her.
• Last Episode, New Character: She is introduced in Chapter 19, the last installment of the first season of ALL STARS, alongside Mia.
• The Leader: During the second season of ALL STARS, she is this to the School Idol Association.
• Leader Wannabe: At the end of Chapter 33 of ALL STARS, she dubs herself the "supreme club president" of the School Idol Club, justifying it by saying someone needs to watch over the club while the protagonist is away helping µ's and Aqours. Aside from Kasumi, who expresses bafflement over what a "supreme club president" is even supposed to be, no one else acknowledges or recognizes this.
• Lethal Chef: She claims to be good at basically anything, but the moment Kaoruko forces her to do her own cooking it becomes plainly obvious that she's never set foot in a kitchen a day in her life. Hilariously, Setsuna of all people is impressed by Lanzhu's miserable attempt at cooking, and it ultimately falls upon Supreme Chef Kanata to save their dinner.
• Lonely at the Top: Despite being the most powerful student in Nijigasaki, almost no one in the Association likes her. Shioriko only joins her Association to rein her in (unsuccessfully), Mia makes her displeasure clear for being dragged to Japan just to be her personal songwriter, the Monitoring Committee are secretly on the original Club's side.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Played with; although she is both lonely and a rich kid, her loneliness isn't related to her money. However, she does try to use money to buy friendships, treating potential friends to expensive luncheons and the like.
• Ms. Fanservice: Karin might be the token Ms. Fanservice of the group, but Lanzhu is the queen of this trope in the franchise:
  • Her Queendom costume is a tight fitting sleeveless qipao with a very short hem that barely goes past her thighs and a Cleavage Window.
  • Her training uniform consists of a crop top-sports bra hybrid that shows her navel, cleavage and shoulders.
  • Her casual outfit also has a Cleavage Window.
  • She has the largest bust of all the second years in the franchise, and her proportions rival Ai's.
  • Her performances involve dance steps that focuses on her hips, and the camera work has some prominent Male Gaze on her chest.
  • Her performance of "Eutopia" in the anime features quite a number of shots of her nude, with everything from the shoulders down being hidden by camera angles.
• My Way or the Highway: Lanzhu initially attempts to prevent the School Idol Club from carrying out their activities, wanting her Association to be the only group of school idols in Nijigasaki High. She even forms a Monitoring Committee to try and block their activities. She is eventually forced to give up on this approach in Chapter 23 of ALL STARS after the School Idol Club starts performing individually in different locations and streaming their guerilla lives online. This makes them considerably harder to stop, and starts to harm the Association's reputation after the Monitoring Committee is seen trying to stop their events on the Club's livestreams by the online viewing audience.
• New Transfer Student: She transfers into Nijigasaki from Hong Kong after being inspired to be a school idol from watching performances by its School Idol Club.
• No Social Skills: It is shown throughout ALL STARS Season 2 that Lanzhu has no social skills; she's Brutally Honest, takes almost everything at face value, Innocently Insensitive, doesn't understand social norms, lacks empathy and so on.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Chapter 27, Shioriko, Lanzhu and the protagonist are debating how Shioriko should execute her upcoming live performance, with Lanzhu enthusiastically pushing for a daring high-flying stunt while Shioriko insists on a regular dance routine. Lanzhu's persistence eventually pisses off Shioriko, causing her to snap at Lanzhu, and for the first time in the story Lanzhu is visibly distraught and runs off, being completely absent for the subsequent live show in spite of the effort she put into it.
• The Perfectionist: Lanzhu always tries to make herself perfect and urges others to do so as well.
• Pet the Dog: She's noticeably a lot nicer to the protagonist after Chapter 25. She allows the protagonist to watch her practice in the middle of the night in Chapter 26, and in Chapter 27 she reveals to the protagonist that seeing her keep notes on the Club members inspired her to copy her and create her own notebook analyzing both the Association's and the Club's performances.
• Pride: Her songs share a common theme of boasting about how amazing she is and how she stands at the top even in the school idol world. In ALL STARS, she's fully aware of how proficient she is at anything she sets her mind to and consistently uses it to her advantage.
• Punny Name: Lanzhu's name and the French word "L'ange"^note meaning "the angel" are homonyms in Japanese, hence the reason for the angel wings in her symbol and signature.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Lanzhu comes from an incredibly affluent family and throws money around faster than even Mari can for the most ridiculous things. As a result, she's not really used to how regular people do things and tries to rope them into her way of thinking by spending extravagantly.
• The Rival: Her anime counterpart's stance on school idols is that they should be able to stand on their own two feet without the support or loyalty of others, putting her at odds with the School Idol Club. Yu sees this as a challenge and decides to pit her own ideals against Lanzhu's at the 2nd School Idol Festival, establishing Lanzhu's role as a rival character for the season.
• Royal Brat: Being the chairwoman's daughter means she can get away with her Jerkass behavior.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: She uses her position as the chairwoman's daughter to get her way, while disregarding rules that other students have to follow. To wit, she starts her own school idol club and attempts to dismantle the existing one, while creating a Monitoring Committee to try and prevent its members from practicing idol activities. Lanzhu's connections are such that despite Shioriko's position as Student Council President, the latter is unable to do anything about the former's behavior.
• Skilled, but Naive: Similarly to Shioriko prior to her Character Development, Lanzhu is a newcomer to the field of school idols, but quickly demonstrates that she has indisputable skill. However, Lanzhu has a skewed perception of what being a school idol is about, and is quick to assume that it involves utilizing professional resources and backing personnel, which goes against the inherently amateur nature of the field. She also believes that it is easy to win over people to her side by bribing them with expensive amenities, and demonstrates genuine confusion when this instead winds up driving away those people.
• Sleek High Rise Apartment: In Season 2 Episode 2 of the anime, Lanzhu invites Emma, Rina, Kasumi, and Kanata over to her quarters, which turns out to be a ridiculously lavish multiroom apartment overlooking Odaiba's Rainbow Bridge that could (almost literally) give Mari's house a run for her money, complete with a master bathroom and personal gym. It's visually based on a section of the Hilton Hotel.
• Start My Own: She comes to Nijigasaki High to be a school idol, after being inspired to do so by the performances put on by the school's idol club. However, in ALL STARS, rather than joining said club, she instead opts to create her own club and aims to forcefully disband the existing one.
• Stealing the Credit: Kasumi accuses Lanzhu of taking the credit for the School Idol Festival, which was the work of µ's, Aqours, and the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, after onlookers for Lanzhu's performance witness it and believe that she was responsible. The protagonist, however, takes a more nuanced view and believes that said onlookers were outsiders who were unaware of Lanzhu starting her own club at Nijigasaki, and hence conflated the activities of her School Idol Association with that of the Club. For her part, Lanzhu never actually claimed any sort of credit for the School Idol Festival.
• Strong Family Resemblance: People correctly guessed that the chairwoman is her mother based on their similarities.
• Squee: Towards the members of the Club, except for The Protagonist whom she dislikes. This is likely because, despite her attempts to disband the School Idol Club, its members were still the people who inspired her to become a school idol in the first place.
• Talented, but Trained: Lanzhu is naturally gifted, but to achieve her astronomical standards for perfection she works constantly to polish her skills and learn new crafts. She also attempts to impart this to others by advising them on how they can improve, similarly to Shioriko and the protagonist, but because of her inherent talent she often forgets the fact that many people are not as capable as her.
• Technician Versus Performer: She creates this dynamic with the School Idol Club, being the technician to their performer. She believes that school idols can only thrive if they have the most profession backing, including but not limited to costume design, songwriting, and choreography, while also indulging in expensive ameneties and meals. She also takes a pragmatic approach to school idols, and believes that only the best one can stand on stage as a center, reducing all other members to backup dancers.
• Token Minority: She's half-Chinese, and according to her profile, also half-Japanese.
• Token Rich Student: The school idols of Nijigasaki High aren't exactly poor but similar to Mari, Lanzhu is the only one whose wealth is focused on. Unlike Mari, however, Lanzhu is more willing to spend money even for the smallest of things.
• Took a Level in Kindness: She becomes nicer over the course of the story in ALL STARS, giving the protagonist some Pet the Dog moments, no longer being hostile to the Club and no longer trying to make the girls join the Association by force. It's more downplayed in the anime due to her worst traits being mitigated, though she nevertheless becomes less arrogant once she joins the group.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Meat. It comes up often when she talks about food and it's even stated in her official profile.
• Tsundere: Her second solo song "Ye Mingzhu" is about someone playing hard-to-get with their love interest.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the game, she is the daughter of Nijigasaki's director, but in the anime any relationship she may have with the school's management goes unaddressed.
• Tsurime Eyes: Which highlight her competitive and somewhat arrogant personality.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: According to Shioriko, Lanzhu is this. To wit, Shioriko explains to the protagonist that Lanzhu has no bad intentions, and did what she did because she believed her actions would make others happy. Namely, Lanzhu genuinely thinks that providing school idols with the best amenities and production staff is the best way to make them shine. However, she takes a heavy-handed approach in executing said beliefs, namely by trying to disband the School Idol Club and prohibit its activities to force its members to adopt her approach. That said, her poor ability at conveying her good intentions leads others to dislike her, while her self-absorbed behavior prevents her from realizing that she is repelling the people that she wants to help.

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