Love Live’s Original Group Announces New Single

The Love Live! franchise is one of the most popular idol series among anime fans, and although the series has moved on to its next group with Aqours in Love Live! Sunshine!! the series’ original group, u’s will be getting together again for a special celebration of the franchise’s ninth anniversary. The official Twitter account for the series announced that the group will be reuniting for their first new single since 2016, and it will event get a special anime music video!

Unfortunately, there aren’t many other details beyond the announcement — such as when fans will be able to check out the new single for themselves — but this will be great news for fans who have missed the original idol group before they wrapped their run a couple of years ago.

The last single for u’s, MOMENT RING, released as part of Love Live! The School Idol Movie in 2016. Selling more than 100,000 copies in just a little over two weeks after its initial release in Japan, so it’s safe to say that this new single will be highly anticipated. u’s will actually be reuniting in Japan for the special Love Live! Fes event next January. This will mark the first festival for the franchise, and will also include special appearances from other groups featured throughout the franchise such as Aquors, Saint Snow, and Nijigasaki Academy’s Idol Appreciation Club.

Love Live! School Idol Project is a joint project between ASCII Media Works’ Dengeki G‘s magazine, music label Lantis, and animation Studio Sunrise. The story follows Honoka Kosaka, a girl who is attending a school that is about to be closed down due to a lack of new applicants. Discovering that school idol groups are very popular, Honoka decides to start a group with friends from school. Soon they enter in the cross-country idol competition, Love Live.

The series first launched in Dengeki G in 2010, and has subsequently released many music CDs, animated music videos, manga, video games, and two seasons of an anime series. The first season ran for 13 episodes in 2013, and the second season aired in 2014 for the same episode count. The series has been licensed for an English language release by NIS America, with a sequel series following a new set of school idols, Love Live! Sunshine!! launching in 2015.

The franchise recently made its way back into the news cycle for a pretty surprising reason as pop star Billie Eillish was accused of allegedly selling merch featuring stolen art a fan had crafted to celebrate the Love Live! franchise.