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The story
Following the announcement of a Monster Strike x Love Live! collaboration, the thread filled with complaints that “it’s always μ’s and Aqours—the newer sub-series never get a collab.” The discussion expanded into comparisons of Nijigasaki and School Idol Festival ALL STARS’ collab track records, plus popularity comparisons with other franchises like Gakuen Idolmaster, eventually spiraling into a full-blown inter-franchise flame war.
What people said
It's not that they're obsessed with a fantasy—it's that outside the fandom, Love Live! just stopped at Sunshine!!
Seriously, as far as anyone outside is concerned, nothing after Sunshine!! exists
Thank god they still made the spin-offs—Nijigasaki, Hasunosora, and 'Ikizulive' (a snide pun on 生きづらい, 'hard to live,' aimed at one of the newer sub-series)
That's actually where the shift toward real-life ('3D') idol fandom started
And what happened to the later series that hated the laid-out track and swerved off onto side roads?
But the current active sub-series are only half of Aqours on top of that
If the lineup hadn't grown past the original members, doing something for a 9th anniversary would make sense—but now it's 12, or 13 if you count Yuu, right?
Do you have any idea how many fans dropped out between μ's and 'dirty water' Aqours?
And the agency takes its cut out of that, of course
The fact that guest-starring in other people's collabs works better is proof of that
Have some shame
The barely-anyone-shows-up-to-the-live storyline, then Chika's sister going 'Baka-Chika! You've got the time wrong!' followed by a slow trickle of cars finally showing up—that killed it for me
Years later I finally became a proper Love Live fan thanks to Nijigasaki's first season
μ's was amazing, but let's be honest: 'dirty water' [Aqours] took that legacy and burned through mainstream goodwill with a lousy anime
Though I'll give it credit—the tie-in with Numazu as a pilgrimage site did surpass the original series
And with a smaller cast, they actually pulled it off well
Maybe the people going on about Nijigasaki should've taken a hard look at their own game first
Back then KLab and Bushiroad still held the rights, so jumping to other companies' games was forbidden—only Aqours (plus μ's) may have been free to move
When it comes to mobile games, seriously, only μ's and Aqours have ever landed a collab
Though if you count arcade games, there are a few outside those two
Gakuen Idolmaster's regional resale prices are crashing everywhere too
That 'popularity' is looking pretty shaky
Oh wait, you don't even have an app? 😂
So, can it actually beat Gakuen Idolmaster? 😇
'The ones without an app are Love Live fans' 🤭
Can Gakuen Idolmaster even fill the Tokyo Dome?
Even adding up the whole series, I'd say it's still got better odds than Love Live! did at Vantelin Dome
Maybe say that after you've put out a song as widely recognized by the general public as 'Ice Cream,' at least
The song just went viral—it didn't actually do much for the franchise itself
Background and Key Points
Love Live! is Bandai Namco/Sunrise’s mixed-media idol project, built as a succession of voice-actor units rather than one continuous group: μ’s (2010–2016, the franchise that made Love Live! a mainstream hit), Aqours from the sequel anime Sunshine!! (2016–2020), and then two newer branches, Nijigasaki High School Idol Club and Hasunosora Girls’ High School (2020 onward), each with its own anime and mobile game. Monster Strike is mixi’s long-running mobile hit, famous for running large collaboration events with anime and game franchises as a marketing tool. Idolmaster, name-checked repeatedly in the thread, is a rival multimedia idol franchise whose newest branch, Gakuen Idolmaster, is the comparison point posters reach for.
The thread doesn’t really argue about the Monster Strike collab itself — everyone agrees only μ’s and Aqours got picked. What splits posters is why: some blame Nijigasaki and Hasunosora’s weaker mainstream visibility and Sunshine!!’s anime being seen as a letdown that “ended” the franchise’s broad appeal; others point to a more mundane, structural cause — post 28 notes that KLab and Bushiroad, the companies holding the newer sub-series’ game rights at the time, contractually barred them from appearing in outside companies’ games, so only μ’s and Aqours were ever free to cross over. That’s a licensing explanation, not a popularity one, and it gets buried under the pile-on. The thread then drifts entirely into an unrelated Love Live vs. Idolmaster flame war over app rankings and venue capacity.
What’s easy to miss: none of this is one continuous fandom losing steam — it’s separate casts and separate licensing deals, so a collab drought for the newer units says more about who owns the game rights than about how popular they are.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Love Live!) thread ‘Love Live and Monster Strike are collaborating!’.
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