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Just in case you're among the 1% not kowing the franchise — Love Live is an innocent, if perhaps a bit kitsch anime in 2 subseries running 2 seasons each. Each run deals with a group of nine school girls somewhere around 16 wanting to save their respective schools by creating a popular dance group, something the Japanese call School Idols (for all practical purposes an all-girls pop band). All school idol groups perform in a fictional nation-wide school idol competition named the Love Live.

More for fun on the Europe Day: You can read this show as a handbook for community building. Looking at the first run (the story arch of the second is similar) the plot starts out with one enthusiastic girl, Honoka, wanting to save her school from closing by convincing more girls to apply for the following year (good, measurable cause). She hopes to achieve this by creating a successful school idol group that will make potential newcomers aware of the school. To get this idea off the ground, she more or less bullies two of her childhood friends to join to form a first nucleus of the group (first followers).

Honoka is driven and vocal, but she knows little about music and dance and is also not very organised. Her two childhood friends add some structure and knowledge, e.g. on the design for the costumes, but they aren’t really experts, either. However, in spite of this they dash ahead. The band slowly grows by progressively convincing other girls to join — often girls with quite different personalities and social backgrounds, some initially hostile. This way they win over one girl who's good at piano and composition, one who’s interested in literature and poetry, one who’s a classically trained ballet dancer etc. One of the new girls — the biggest expert in all things school idol — even takes on the role of the “inside outsider” and critic by pointing out the many things where the group still falls short. After some struggles, the group also decides to be strictly egalitarian, regardless of school year, social background, skill level, etc (a decision that's probably quite revolutionary in the context of a society like the Japanese one where aspects like seniority still play a role).

Beyond the core team the ultimately nine girls assemble a fan club that helps them along, cheers them on during concerts etc. to boost them. Finally, this being the 21^st century, they launch almost from day one what we’d call a social media campaign by posting videos of their songs and choreographies, aiming for followers, likes and comments and in turn orienting some of their activities based on the feedback they get.

The interest of the anime actually lies in the personal dynamics and the growing sense of friendship that develop in this slowly enlarging group of very different characters. But looking at this more from our angle: only the combination of a clear and measurable goal, the original enthusiasm, the will to compromise and their combined know-how allows the girls to advance.

To answer the rhetorical question in my heading — yes, I think you can read Love Live as a handbook in community building. The authors have carefully studied the internal logic of building new, thriving communities and show our heroes finding their way.

Love Live — a handbook for community building?