Some things in life happen purely by chance. Watching Love Live the Movie turned out to be one of those things. Madman licensed the movie's distribution rights in New Zealand a while ago, and had planned a one-time showing of the movie on the morning of September 11. It also turns out that I got hold of this information on the early, early morning of September 11. So clearly the timing ended up being pretty tight. Getting up early to watch some anime is pretty ridiculous, but I convinced myself to do this, somehow.

So I got there fairly early. The location was an underground, art-house cinema - the kind of place where you'd least expect something like Love Live. When I arrived, a crowd was already forming. The crowd looked very similar since they were mostly bespectacled Asians around my age, who were almost constantly playing on their phones. Really goes to show who Love Live usually attracts - single, unattractive, nerdy males. To my surprise, there was also a sizeable number of girls there, most of whom looked equally as nerdy as the guys. There were quite a few cosplayers though, with one particularly good Kotori cosplayer who also brought along his boyfriend. Finally, there was an old couple who must've bought tickets without knowing what they were getting into. "It's anime," one of my peers replied.

I took my seat and waited as the crowd began filling the theatre. There were a total of three white men, two of whom were horribly obese, one of whom was staring obsessively at a Love Live artbook he brought to this occasion. Next to me sat a whole role of cosplayers. The movie starts. Everyone in the theatre applauds. Maki appeared. Everyone cheers. Nico did the "Nico-nico Nii". Everyone did the same thing, followed by a rattle of high-pitched laughter. Hanayo and Rin shares a tender moment together. Everyone 'Awws'. Umi does something stupid. The crowd laughs.

So clearly everyone was enjoying the movie. I was, too, up to the ending of the New York arc. The aspect of Love Live that appealed most to me had always been the slice-of-life. The idol stuff was the icing on the cake, really. But then, the drama kicked in, and things became far less enjoyable. Not that I dislike drama (I love it, in fact), but rather because most of the drama was sorted out in season 2 and there was no reason to repeat it here. The movie, as a whole, was passable in the first half but became excruciatingly boring in the second. Hardly the kind of emotional finale you'd expect from the end of μ's.

Everyone who bought a ticket was entitled to a random shikishi, a poster and a Love Live game code. Judging from the crowd reactions, Eli and Maki were clearly the most popular of all. But I didn't expect just how crazy people got when they opened the shikishi they wanted. The girls, in particular, were screaming at the top of their lungs - cries 'Eli Eli Eli!!' and 'Maki-chan!!!' everyone in the lobby. One Japanese girl screamed 'Watashi no Eli-chika!!' when she opened her shikishi. All of this made me very, very uncomfortable. I've heard of the obsessiveness of the Love Live fanbase before, but watching it first hand was another thing entirely.

In all, it had been a pretty interesting, if not somewhat uncomfortable experience. Although the movie itself was really mediocre, observing the Love Live fanbase ended up being rather entertaining. If anything, it goes to prove that Love Live has become the equivalent of opium among those people. It's pretty dangerous, really, and very scary to think that Love Live is basically making money off people who think that the more they spend, the more real those girls will become. It's hard for me to sympathize with those people. Really hard.