YMMV / Aikatsu Friends!

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Mio really trying to be friends with Aine? Or is she glad she's found a top idol in the making and is manipulating Aine's goal of making one million friends, by offering shallow substitutes of cards and fans, for her own goals?
  • Or, alternatively, was Mio really a loner with no friends her entire life; causing her to cling to the first person who seemed to care about her on a personal level as opposed to admiration of her being a top idol?
• Anvilicious: This show isn't subtle about its theme of friendship, which's unsurprising considering the show’s title and the fact that it's a children's series, although it still can come off as preachy and on the nose for some people.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Penne the Penguin has already become a big hit with the fans.
  • Fans fell in love with Coco as not only she's an entertaining character, she's is voiced by Sumire Morohoshi who voiced the iconic Ichigo Hoshimiya all the way back to the original series. Fans have been wanting a performance for her in the series, which has yet to happen.
• Epileptic Trees: There has been a persistent rumor going around since the series beginning that Friends is only expected to run up to October 2019 for a total of 75 episodes. While the source of this of the rumor was questionable at best, it did prove ultimately true, if off by one episode.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: People who weren't fans of Ichigo's singing voice may be pleased to find that Coco, whose speaking and singing voices are provided by Sumire Morohoshi, gets a song in this series. Since Coco's voice is close to Ichigo's, this effectively allows the audience to experience Ichigo's singing over 4 years after the original series ended.
• Les Yay:
  • It wouldn't be Aikatsu! without at least a little of this, and in the eyes of a certain subsection of fans, Mirai & Karen basically invoke this, and the lyrics to "Believe It" only solidify this as well as this scene◊
  • Mio displays a lot of interest in Aine, and Episode 11 takes it further by having her figure out how to "confess to Aine dramatically" to form a friends unit with her. It gets worse in future episodes, where the two share a nighttime stroll together, complete with interlocked fingers and sharing matching half-heart necklaces.
• Self-Fanservice: In the actual show, Aine is as flat-chested as any other girl in her age, but for some reason, there are plenty of fanarts that make her bustier and curvier than she actually is.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Fans have been seething because Coco has been passed over for a performance not once, but twice in the series. Not helped that the arcade game does have a song for her that was taken by Pure Palette twice in the show really don't help.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Aine is a minor case of this. While she does get some Character Development, it's been Mio that has gotten the most development out of the cast despite the latter being designed as the more-experienced deuteragonist. This is not helped that viewers see Aine's goal of making 1 million friends as kind of lacking compared to previous protagonists in the franchise, leading to the joke "Mio is the real star of the show!" in the early going.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: From the dressing room sequence to the CGI performances, there's no doubt that Bandai Namco is putting forth their best effort to make everything look as gorgeous as possible.