Love Live!

Love Live! is a Japanese multimedia franchise about teenage girls who form school idol groups, performing and recording original songs as an extracurricular activity. It was created by Hajime Yatate, the collective pseudonym of the Sunrise staff, and Sakurako Kimino, and is co-produced by Kadokawa through ASCII Media Works, by the music label Lantis, and by the animation studio Sunrise. The project was announced in the July 2010 issue of Dengeki G's Magazine and began in earnest that August, with Sakurako Kimino writing the original story plan and Yuhei Murota drawing the original character designs. Readers helped steer it from the start: online popularity contests ranked the characters, and fans chose the name of the first group. Over time the franchise grew from magazine features and music singles into anime television series, anime films, light novels, manga, concerts, stage productions and video games, including the rhythm game series Love Live! School Idol Festival. Later groups were added in successive spin-offs, among them Aqours, the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club and Liella!, and a live-action television drama followed in 2024. The franchise remains active, with a further project, Bluebird, announced in February 2025.