Lost in the shuffle of planning Dragon Con and my upcoming Japan trip is a milestone that completely snuck up on me.
A special anniversary. No, not a relationship anniversary…well, not in the traditional sense anyway.
This year marks 15 years since I started cosplaying regularly, which is honestly wild to think about. Somehow a decade and a half has gone by since I decided to jump headfirst into one of the most fun, chaotic, and occasionally wallet-destroying hobbies out there.
There are some anime you fall in love with immediately, and some you just can’t get behind no matter how many times you try.
And then there are the ones you almost drop completely…only for them to come back later and completely take over your life.
The Love Live franchise was definitely the third one, because when I first watched Love Live! School Idol Project, I just didn’t get it.
A few episodes in, I was sitting there wondering what the big deal was and dropped it. Honestly, if it wasn’t for a good friend telling me to give it a second chance, there is a very real chance this entire part of my anime fandom just doesn’t exist. Which is kind of insane to think about now considering just how big of a part of my anime fandom this franchise is. At some point as I watched the first season of School Idol Project, something flipped.
Maybe it was the music finally clicking, getting attached to the group dynamic, or maybe I just needed to give it another chance. But suddenly I wasn’t just watching it, I was invested.
And once Love Live gets you, it doesn’t let go. It doesn’t just stop at the anime, because Love Live is one of those franchises where you don’t just watch it, you fall into it. It becomes the songs, picking favorite characters, watching performances and following new groups.
Then there’s the mobile games…ah yes, the mobile games that I spent way too much time playing.
Did I whale? No, but did I spend more than I should have? That’s irrelevant and we don’t need to discuss it. But at some point, it stopped being something I just watched, it became something I did.
Conventions and meeting other fans who were just as deep into it as I was.
The delayed viewings of live shows in packed movie theaters or getting to see Aqours perform live in person twice at AX.
Cosplay.
Honestly, if you were to look at my cosplay roster, you’d see that it’s probably 80% Love Live, which tells you everything you need to know about how deep I go down this rabbit hole. Maybe that’s where Love Live hits differently, it doesn’t just build a story, it builds a community.
Fifteen years is a long time for any franchise.And somehow Love Live is still here—and still evolving:
μ’s, Aqours, Nijigasaki, Liella, Hasunosora, Ikizuraibu and School Idol Musical.
Different eras, styles and vibes, but the core idea hasn’t changed: chasing something you care about, even when it feels out of reach and even now, it still works. I’ve watched a lot of anime in my time. Some I loved and some I forgot about a week later.
Love Live is one of those franchises I can’t easily explain: it just stuck, and it hits differently.
Perhaps it’s the way the fandom has been so welcoming, or maybe it’s the energy I get from the cosplay gatherings I attend.
Maybe it was how the franchise was a bright spot that got me through a rough time during the pandemic and seeing my dad slowly dying from cancer in the hospital.
Whatever the case, it’s an anime that has always been there to put a smile on my face no matter how many times I’ve watched or how bad of a day I’ve had and I guess that’s the big difference.
Now, years later, I’m planning a Japan trip where Love Live is a major part of the experience, not even just for the concert, though that would be a dream if the lottery gods decided to favor me. Being able to visit places tied to something that’s been part of my life for this long? That already feels like a full-circle moment.
Something that started as: ‘I might drop this’ turned into: ‘I’m building part of a trip around this.’ It’s funny, a series I almost dropped after a few episodes ended up becoming one of the biggest parts of my fandom experience and 15 years later, it’s still here.
Still evolving.
Still connecting people.
Still pulling in new fans the same way it eventually pulled me in. I’m really glad I gave it that second chance.
Some fandoms you enjoy for a while, but this one stuck and somehow became part of how I experience everything else.
Or, if you want to sound more professional about it:
Book a tour and let someone else plan everything…Or become a full-time project manager of your own vacation.
Naturally, I chose chaos. Not reckless chaos, but the kind where you’ve got multiple tabs open, a running notes app, and just enough structure to convince yourself everything is under control.But I didn’t start there.
The land of the rising sun, ancient temples, neon-lit cities, and the birthplace of anime. For a lot of us otaku, it’s less of a vacation and more of a pilgrimage — the kind you spend years saying you’ll take someday.
And after more than 20 years of saying “someday,” it finally looks like that someday might actually be happening this year, which means, naturally, I’ve decided to plan the entire trip myself.
In my last post, I casually mentioned that I’m finally going to check off a bucket list item with my first trip to Japan. You know, the one that could potentially end with me attending a once in a lifetime concert if the lottery gods work in my favor? Yeah, that one.
Well, what if I told you that about a month and a half before I even board that flight to Tokyo, I’m crossing another item off my list?
Not a “that would be nice someday” item. A core memory loading item.
