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Love Live! Idols Are 1st Anime Character Group to Top Weekly Album Chart Since K-ON!
posted on by Egan Loo
The Love Live! anime's μ's Best Album Best Live Collection II sold 85,000 copies to top Oricon's album sales chart for the May 25-31 week. The franchise's idol group "μ's" is the first in-anime character group to top the weekly album chart since the K-ON! anime's Ho-kago Tea Time did in 2010. It is also the first Love Live! CD to top the weekly album or singles chart.
Since Oricon began publishing album ranking charts in January 1970, only the K-ON! franchise's in-story band Ho-kago Tea Time had previously ranked #1 on the weekly chart. Ho-kago Tea Time first accomplished the feat in July 2009 with their self-titled album, and then again with Ho-kago Tea Time II in October 2010. It has been four years and seven months until μ's matched Ho-kago Tea Time's accomplishment.
Among the Love Live! CDs, the January 2014 CD single "Takaramonozu" did rank #1 on the daily singles chart, but it then ranked #4 on the weekly chart. Until now, the highest weekly ranking that a μ's CD attained was #8 for the Love Live! Solo Live! collection Memorial Box II album in April 2014, and #2 for the "Donna Toki mo Zutto" single in May 2014.
As the group's second best-of album, μ's Best Album Best Live Collection II features 38 released tracks from the first season's opening theme "Bokura wa Ima no Naka de" (January 2013) to Bibi's "Fuyu ga Kureta Yokan" (December 2014). The May 27 release also has eight bonus remix tracks produced for the Love Live! School idol paradise PS Vita game — for a total of 46 tracks on three discs running about three and a half hours long.
The "super-deluxe limited edition" added a "μ's Itsumo Anata no Soba ni…" (μ's Always By Your Side…) set with a "female alpaca pass case," an extra-large earphone jack accessory, a micro-fiber memorial jacket bath towel, and a box to hold everything. Various stores also offered the super-deluxe limited edition with bonus holders illustrated with a different character.
Love Live! The School Idol Movie will open in Japan on June 13, and then it play in theaters throughout the world starting in August. NIS America will release the two television anime seasons with an English dub in North America.
In 2010, the anime studio Sunrise, Lantis, and ASCII Media Works' Dengeki G Magazine launched Love Live! as a self-described "ultimate user-participation project" which lets its fans vote on the future of the fictional idols. A series of music CDs and animated music videos then followed. The members of the project announced in 2012 that an full anime series has been green-lit for the following year. Crunchyroll streamed the second season as it aired in Japan last year.
Sources: animate.tv, listenmusic
Update: The album's exact tally from Oricon is 85,086.
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