The year is 2020 and Love Live! as a multimedia franchise is going strong.

With School Idol Festival All-Stars (better known as SIFAS) entering its second story season, hopes are high for what sort of story arc the intrepid phone game is going to tell next. Before the Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club anime premiered, the only way for fans to see the characters had been exclusively via theSIFAS mobile game. So what does SIFAS Season 2’s story have to offer to its well-established player base, then?

Enter Lanzhu Zhong...

Perfect, stunning, powerful, but most importantly; the central antagonist of SIFAS Season 2.

With her introduction, things changed. What was once meant to be a premise involving a group of high school girls enjoying their youths together in a School Idol Club had taken a turn towards an almost civil war-like story arc. Lanzhu was simply the equilibrium to start it all.

Lanzhu wanted things done her way and her way only. She believed she was the perfect school idol, and she wanted to make everyone else just like her. To accomplish that, she...

• banned the girls from their club,
• made her own rival group (better known as The School Idol Association),
• hired school monitors to ban school idol activities unless the girls joined her group,
• then finally began deadhunting some of the already established cast into joining her cause.

Of course, a character as brutish as Lanzhu was surely going to be met with mixed reception. Love Live Staff tried to get around this by having her put up a sincere, jovial personality when talking to the other School Idol girls. Sure, she was our story's antagonist, yet Lanzhu was also our heroes' biggest fan. What she lacked in modesty was meant to be made up for in childlike wonder. That should have been the case, and yet it backfired horribly.

Initial fan reception towards Season 2’s story were polarised, with a vast majority of people disliking the narrative straying from the usual Love Live! formulae. Not only had people found the new story difficult to get used to, but fans also didn't enjoy seeing former cast members betraying each other for admittedly poorly-written reasons.

Funnily enough, although the game was shut down, you can still go online to find forum posts complaining about Lanzhu’s character in SIFAS’ story.

In retrospect, it was a given that a series entirely dedicated to marketing their characters to be as appealing as possible in order to boost sales wasn't going to perform well if their entire cast were at odds with one another for seemingly trivial reasons. Hindsight is 2020, though. While some would choose to call Season 2’s narrative a fumble in Love Love!'s history, I've always personally had a personal soft spot for it.

Season 2’s story, to me, conveys a theme of "Professionalism Vs. Passion". Lanzhu opens her Association, promising the girls a lavish set of upgrades including personal trainers, spas, and specialised utilities. However, the cost comes at the girls’ music and performances being curated to only what she deems is “perfect” for them. The girls no longer have the freedom to do what they want. After all, if there's a way to theoretically better the quality of your art, wouldn't that also make it the "right way" to pursue it as a result? This is the prime question I personally believe SIFAS Season 2's story was trying to ask its player base.

Of course, it's a given that the few girls in the story who were put off by this deal chose to stay in their now forbidden club. What came next, though, was an intense rivalry spanning an entire season and multiple chapters of bitter feelings and broken friendships.

Eventually, when things reach a boiling point, Lanzhu realises her time as the antagonist is over. She gives up trying to win the girls over and disbands the Association. After performing one last performance, she decides to leave her failures behind her and return to Hong Kong.

It's revealed after this that Lanzhu was a misunderstood villain. She was a girl who lost out the opportunity to make friends as a result of people losing respect for her unrivalled talent. Her esteem was at a low point until she discovered the girls of Nijigasaki High School. In her excitement to help bolster their passions, she tried to enforce her own “correct” method of doing things without properly hearing their side of the argument. While it was wrong of her do what she did, at the end of the day, she just wanted to meet people she could rightfully call her friends.

The finale of Season 2 resolves amicably, with the girls chasing Lanzhu down and making up with her after finding out her story. From here, an entire chapter is dedicated to her apologising for the trouble she caused the girls, and with the Association finally hoisting a white flag of surrender, Lanzhu disbands her efforts and finally joins the School Idol Club.

For a lot of people, this in-universe apology wasn't enough to save Lanzhu's character. Even if everything reverted back to how it used to be, it would seem that Love Live! Staff had a lot to consider when returning to the drawing board to “fix” Lanzhu.

So what happened next?

Season 3 onwards of SIFAS noticeably toned down Lanzhu's bitterness as much as it could. There was a noticeable lack of character-driven motivations on Lanzhu's part, as a lot of her interactions with the cast resolved to her teasingly admiring her friends. While that definitely sounds different to how she was in Season 2, parts of her jovial nature from before were still kept intact. Over time, Lanzhu was becoming someone that the fanbase was beginning to forgive.

Eventually, Lanzhu's villainous image would be forever buried through the termination of SIFAS’ global servers. The Nijigasaki cast had their final in-game chapter to say goodbye, and it was with heavy hearts that the fanbase said their farewell to what used to be a thriving mobile game.

That said, Love Live! is not just a game series. It being a multimedia franchise means there are more avenues to expand its characters. Thus, the old SIFAS fanbase cautiously began awaiting Lanzhu's return in the Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club anime.

Beginning things anew: Adapting game to anime!

Nijigasaki's anime is admittedly a black sheep in the franchise. Not only does the story not involve the narrative tool of the Love Live! competition in its story, but the anime's first season took many creative liberties when adapting SIFAS’ story to a watchable format.

During the first season, episodes were focused entirely on each of the beginning nine members. The antagonistic presence of Shioriko from SIFAS' Season 1 story was also cut out entirely. Overall, it was a lesser-stakes story than it's videogame counterpart. However, despite being so differently told, Season 1’s anime was met with overwhelming positive reception from fans - largely through the excellent writing in each of its centrally-focused character episodes.

With success, comes an extension, and with that extension comes the opportunity for a rewrite. Lanzhu’s first appearance in the anime would not only be another chance for her old critics to reaffirm their stance on her, but also an attempt in completely replacing her initial interpretation for an anime-only audience.

So how did Nijigasaki’s anime reinterpret Lanzhu's characterisation?

For starters, Lanzhu opposes the Nijigasaki group differently to how she did SIFAS. This is through her largely independent presence in the anime. Unlike SIFAS, Lanzhu meets the girls under amicable terms, acknowledging her admiration for them, while also juxtaposing it with her opposing the girls’ methodology in being school idols. Just like her prior iteration, there’s a clashing mindset at-play here. This is because Lanzhu’s perception of how things should be done are written differently to her older counterpart.

Put simply, Lanzhu believes that an idol’s duty is to inspire their audience to take action; not the other way round. The idea of an audience supporting their performers isn’t something she agrees with, directly contrasting Nijigasaki'’s personal experiences from the anime’s first season.

This in-turn leads to Lanzhu following her own path during a majority of the anime’s second season runtime. Instead of directly clashing with the School Idol Club like she used to in SIFAS, select members of the club take it upon themselves to change Lanzhu’s perception without directly interfering, through putting on a performance of their very own to inspire her.

Whereas I claimed before in this article of SIFAS Lanzhu’s telling a story of “Professionalism Vs. Passion”, the anime instead focuses on the question of "why people pursue the creative arts to begin with". Just like before, Lanzhu serves as an antagonistic presence to the girls, however this time her actions are done without direct interference of their efforts. This in turn leads to the anime making her a much more respectable rival presence than before.

After being proven wrong, the anime now finally takes cues from SIFAS' story, through having the girls attempting to prevent Lanzhu from returning home, instead convincing her to join the School Idol Club with them.

Moving on from the source interpretation!

This is where Lanzhu’s characterisation begins to gradually grow and move away from her initial SIFAS personality, as it takes time to precariously expand upon Lanzhu’s insecurities moving forward.

Rather than following SIFAS' plot through the girls suddenly wanting to befriend her after realising their mistakes, Lanzhu’s anime iteration dedicates an entire episode to her slowly coming to grips with having friends in the first place. In the episode, she struggles approaching them out of fear in becoming an outcast. Through consulting some of the newer girls from the club, though, eventually she's able to accept her friends, resulting in a fun outing for everyone as a result.

For a while, fans of the series had accepted this iteration of Lanzhu’s characterisation. Not only did Love Live! Staff reinterpret her SIFAS counterpart to a likeable standard, but she showed a side of herself which used to only be mentioned offscreen. However, it seemed there were more plans for the idealistic diva moving forward, and this new extension came in the form of the Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Final Chapter trilogy films.

Lanzhu's character in the Final Chapter Trilogy!

At of the time of me writing this article, only the first of the Final Chapter film trilogy has come out. Even so, the film brought a new story for Lanzhu to venture towards, bringing out an entirely new side of the once lonely misunderstood diva.

In the film’s narrative, Lanzhu faces her mother, who takes the mantle of a misunderstood antagonist wanting her daughter to achieve victory in the School Idol Grand Prix by any means possible. In letting her agitated nature get the best of her, Lanzhu interprets her mother to be soliciting for her victory through unlawful means, due to her role as the competition’s sponsor.

To prevent her friends from competing against her with a handicap, Lanzhu volunteers to withdraw from the Grand Prix entirely, however her friends are quick to stop her. It’s through fellow schoolmate, Kasumi’s interference, that Lanzhu and her mother are able to reconcile. In doing so, Lanzhu comes to realise that she misunderstood her mother’s actions to begin with. Indeed, she did desire for her daughter to win, however she already knew Lanzhu was capable enough to achieve victory through her own merits. Mother Zhong was simply struggling to help her daughter feel accommodated as a result of not talking to her often.

While this narrative expansion is fairly rudimentary, all things considered, I’ve personally interpreted it to mean something much deeper when weighed alongside the context of who Lanzhu was before joining the School Idol Club.

Before all this, Lanzhu was someone unable to understand others to the point where her principles led to her clashing against everyone. Even still, she eventually found people whom she could call her friends, in-turn giving her a new outlook on the concept of competition and rivalry. Lanzhu’s initial haphazard decision to withdraw from the competition may seem light at first, but it goes a long way in showing the newfound respect she has for her friends since Season 2. She wants to win the Grand Prix, just like everyone else, but she wants to do so under her own merit.

Nijigasaki, of all the Love Live! instalments, is a series promoting a theme of “Friendship in Rivalry”. It’s through Lanzhu’s characterisation over these years that I feel this message is most recently prominently emphasised. Lanzhu Zhong started out as someone unwilling to listen to others, who wanted to compete on her own terms; regardless of what was asked of her - and yet in the end, she gradually transitioned to being someone eccentric, considerate, but equally as lovable.