YMMV / Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live

• Adaption Displacement: A lot of people don't know that the anime was a tie-in to promote the arcade game of the same name.
• Adorkable: Otoha's tendency to daydream about fairytales is shown as a very endearing trait of hers.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Hiro is extremely popular in Japan due to his Fanservice Prism Jumps (see Starlight Kiss), his Character Development, his Large Ham reactions, and his arrogant Prince Charming persona. However, in Western fanbases, he's quite more contentious due to his Jerkass behavior up until the last 10 episodes of the series, with people vastly preferring the kinder Koji and Kazuki over him.
• Broken Base:
  • The English dub produced by Animax got mixed responses from fans. The script is very true to the original (aside from some awkward Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable and some voices being mismatched), but a lot of the acting comes off as forced and Dull Surprise. And that's not even getting to DJ Coo's Elvis Impersonator voice.
  • The ending, or more specifically the Over the Rainbow Session, is polarizing due to subverting tropes. Bell ends up winning the Prism Queen Cup, which is contentious in that lots of people expected Naru to win, especially when she was the one who awakened the Seven Sparkles and saved the Prism Sparkle during her Prism Show. Instead, Naru got the lowest score because the rinks weren't working due to the Seven Sparkles disappearing. People felt that this was pretty unfair that she wasn't allowed to retry, not to mention she only did one Prism Jump throughout the entire routine when she's probably capable enough to pull off seven. Long story short, people expected Protagonist Power-Up Privileges, but in the end, it didn't happen.
• Covered Up: To celebrate TRF's 20th anniversary, Avex had Prizmmy cover three of their most popular songs as the opening themes. This later carried on over to King of Prism Shiny Seven Stars, where the ending theme of the TV version were all covers of TRF's songs.
  • "Boy Meets Girl" was first re-released as the ending theme to UFO Baby. After Prizmmy released a cover, Over the Rainbow later covered it for their character song album.
  • "EZ Do Dance" was used as the second opening theme of Rainbow Live, but many of its audience members hardly remember it for the original. Even more so that it gets covered again with the boys in King of Prism twice, with an accompanying and memorable performance solidifying its status as a KOP song.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: You can't get any bigger than Over the Rainbow. Being genuine rivals to the main girls and not losing that slant even when there's some Ship Tease between the characters helped a lot. Over the Rainbow eventually became Breakout Characters in their own right and received their own series, King of Prism.
• Even Better Sequel: A lot of fans consider Rainbow Live to be better than Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream and Pretty Rhythm: Dear My Future due to exploring the lore of the Prism World, having better animation, and the fan service of the male characters, who actually had animated 3D models for the first time in the series.
• Fridge Brilliance: Some lines in the full version of "Pride" strangely used "boku", when Hiro uses "ore." Since Koji wrote "Pride" with the mindset that they would perform as a duo, before their falling out, the lines that use "boku" were most likely Koji's lines, and Hiro just glazed over them while practicing.
• Fridge Logic: June is a playable character in All Star Selection despite losing her abilities to perform in Prism shows at the end of the series. However, she was probably included for the sake of gameplay purposes and marketability, not for plot.
• Gotta Ship 'Em All: The anime has lots of interactions between different characters, making the fandom ship a lot of them. Some of them are Ito/Koji, Bell/Hiro, Kazuki/Ann, Kazuki/Wakana, Naru/Hiro, Ann/Wakana, Ito/Otoha.
• Ho Yay: Hiro is so fixated on Koji that it sometimes comes off as a Yandere obsession. He admires Koji so much that he has a Villainous Breakdown every time he finds out that Koji has written a song for someone other than him. Hiro's voice actor, Tomoaki Maeno, even mentions in an interview that the general feeling in his interactions that the directors wanted was "his heart wants Koji but his body wants Bell." King of Prism shows that Hiro and Koji's relationship has improved immensely since debuting together, but Hiro still has a rather unhealthy dependency on him. Notably, despite that Koji and Ito are an Official Couple, more people in the fandom ship Koji/Hiro, making them the Fan-Preferred Couple.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Koji, Kazuki, and Hiro debuting as Over the Rainbow in the series finale was originally a surprise. However, due to King of Prism, it's almost impossible to not know this.
  • Similarly, due to the Late-Arrival Spoiler from King of Prism, it's almost impossible to not know that Rei Kurokawa is DJ Coo.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Fans often ship Naru with Hiro, Koji, Rinne, and even Jin.
• Les Yay:
  • Bell/Otoha is quite popular due to Otoha admiring Bell unconditionally and blushing every time Bell gives her positive attention. On the other hand, Ito being a huge part of Otoha's Grew a Spine Character Development, as well as playing her prince on several occasions, makes some fans wish that she hadn't ended up with Koji.
  • Naru/Rinne also has a following especially since their relationship has a lot of focus on the series. Rinne begins living with Naru after episode 13 and Naru was especially torn up about Rinne ending their relationship during the Winter White Session. Also, the promotional art for a talk event depicts Naru and Rinne staring at each other while blushing.
• Memetic Mutation: "The one who can sing Koji's songs best is me, Hiro Hayami!"
• More Popular Spin Off: The King of Prism movies became much more popular than Rainbow Live in Japan, especially with how over the top the films can get.
• Nightmare Fuel: Bell's tantrum in Episode 24
• Periphery Demographic: The show was marketed to young girls, but Hiroko Nishi mentioned that the fanbase was 50% male and 50% female.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: A lot of fans shipped Naru/Koji before Ito/Koji became canon. Some of them still do, and bash on Ito/Koji.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Prism Shows look great thanks to the perspectives, the gorgeous 3D models and effects. Sevendays Love, Sevendays Friend is a great example of this.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Hiro's mother is heavily implied to be a prostitute, given her revealing clothing and the way she asks Hiro to leave the apartment at night after a client calls her.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The reason for Bell's extremely competitive nature early on in the series is in part due to Edel Rose's environment and because of her Education Mama, who expects the impossible from her. Bell's mom actually comes off quite abusive due to yelling at her for getting a 98 instead of 100 from childhood, pressuring her to perform Prism Lives, and forcing her to move to France to focus on violin when it turned out she couldn't do it. It even gets to the point where Bell questions if her mother really loves her during the Winter White Session. Later, apparently, Bell understands that her mother really loves her because of Naru's mom's "no mother hates her kid" philosophy. That, and it's later revealed that her mom only wants the best for her because it was the only way she could show Bell's father that Bell was growing up well. However, it's difficult for viewers to make sense of trying to justify her rather abusive behavior, and she never really gets a comeuppance for what she put Bell through.
  • Wakana's father is emotionally distant, strict, and forces his family to follow his expectations, but then it turns out that he's actually a silly Bumbling Dad who became too into the role of playing the role of a traditional salaryman — this after Wakana's mother, a Former Teen Rebel, had praised him for being hardworking. The Ass Pull revelation doesn't do away how cold and selfish he seemed in the beginning to some viewers.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Jin threatening to reveal Hiro's Dark and Troubled Past is a big deal in Japan. In Japan, image and reputation is a big deal, and if the public knew about Hiro being poor, they wouldn't look at him the same way. Not only that, but assuming that Hiro's mother being a sex worker is true, it would ruin his career and any future prospects in the entertainment industry altogether because it's seen as extremely shameful. Not only Idol Singer culture sticks closely to Contractual Purity, but any hint of Hiro having anything other than a "perfectly normal" life would cause fans to be distressed and ultimately go against what idols are supposed to personify. This is why Hiro decides he has no choice but to retire after he exposes his personal background to his fans, and it's seen as a Heroic Sacrifice for Happy RAIN, Bell Rose, and their friends. In Western culture, people don't hold celebrities up to that standard and it's common for some of them to come from rough backgrounds, so they might not understand why Hiro revealing the information himself was a way of showing kindness and setting up a huge Heel–Face Turn moment in the series.
  • To some Western viewers, 14-year-old Bell specializing in sexy-style is Squicky. Fortunately, her outfits aren't risqué, but using that term to address a 14-year-old in any context is inappropriate. In Japanese, the word "sexy" is used more loosely and carries a different social response; however, that's only if you're using the English word; the Japanese equivalent, "ero", carries different connotations.

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