Upon being captivated by a song she heard while crossing the Shibuya intersection, Country Mouse Nanami Haruka dreams to become a composer so she can someday write a song for the idol who touched her heart, Hayato.
Despite her poor health, she enters Saotome Academy, a prestigious performing arts school, where she enrolls in the composer course. If she's able to graduate, she'll be able to join the Shining Agency as a composer after graduation. However, it isn't an easy task. The gorgeous yet eccentric school is filled with celebrities and potential celebrities; her homeroom teacher is a popular idol and the headmaster was a record-breaking singer.
On her journey to become a successful composer, she meets six men and forges bonds with them, one of which is the younger brother of Hayato. To graduate from the academy, two students are to be teamed up by choice: one from the idol course, one from the producer course, and these two students will perform a song that was composed, written, and sung by them. A successful pair will take the spot as the new Shining Agency debut artists. In addition, romance is strictly prohibited at their school. Just who will Haruka pick?
Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji LOVE is the anime adaptation of the game Uta no Prince-sama, produced by A-1 Pictures. The list goes as follows:
- Maji LOVE 1000% (Summer 2011): The beginning, roughly covering the content of the first game season.
- Maji LOVE 2000% (Spring 2013) A partial adaptation of Debut, introducing the upperclassmen that form the originally anime exclusive idol formation QUARTET NIGHT. It also primarily covers Haruka and her harem entering the professional idol world and establishes a rival in the anime-original group HE☆VENS. An additional OVA for the second season was released in December 2013.
- Maji LOVE Revolutions (Spring 2015): Mostly a fluff season, but still sees the return of HE☆VENS at the very end.
- Maji LOVE Legend Star (Fall 2016): Focusing on ST☆RISH and HE☆VENS members working together in pairs.
Moving away from television and plot, the anime franchise began to put out concert movies. The first of these featuring all three major idol groups, Maji LOVE Kingdom, was announced shortly after the fourth season aired and was released in 2019. 2022 saw to a follow up film, Maji LOVE ST☆RISH Tours, this time only focusing on a ST☆RISH concert. A one hour special taking place just before Tours aired in the interim.
It should be noted that despite many similarities with the original visual novel continuity, the Maji LOVE anime is a very different beast; while there are still some magical elements, the story as a whole is more grounded and yet very over the top in execution. It's overall more lighthearted as well.
The page for the character sheet is here. The tropes exclusive to the games are here, while the tropes found in the whole franchise are here. Tropes related to Shining Live can be found here.
Uta no Prince-sama provides examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: The first season greatly condenses elements from Tokiya, Otoya, Masato and Natsuki's routes, while ignoring Sho, Ren and Cecil's routes altogether, introducing new conflicts for them instead of the ones shown in-game. The second season's only relationships with Debut is the introduction of the senpais and Cecil to the main cast, as well as giving a few nods to All Star (Ranmaru's Dark and Troubled Past and Ai's progressive development of feelings). Revolutions's relationship with All Star goes no further than giving the senpais central episodes and slight references to their in-game routes.
- Adapted Out: Several side characters from the boys' routes: Kaoru, Syo's twin brother (only mentioned and shown in a flashback); Mai and Jii, Masato's younger sister and butler; the list goes on...
- As of the fourth season, Jii has gotten a couple cameos.
- Amazing Freaking Grace: Tokiya and the children at the hospital sing this.
- Battle of the Bands: In order to earn the UtaPri Award in Season 2, HEAVENS and STARISH both compete with each other on the same stage for the title.
- The Cameo: The seniors in the last episode of the first season.
- The Silk Queen from Camus' route gets a cameo as a statue in the fourth season.
- Christmas Songs: From the OVA, "Shining Star Xmas".
- Fanservice: The second season's opening concert has the boys stroking each others' chests, shaking their derrieres at the camera, and pelvic-thrusting.
- Friend to All Children: As seen in episode 3, Haruka. Also Tokiya, as seen in episode 8; and Otoya in the second season episode 5.
- Reiji also deals well with kids when he's visiting a daycare with his underclassmen in Revolutions's episode 2.
- Fun with Acronyms: The insert songs for Legend Star spell out "Maji Love Legend":
- Mighty Aura (Tokiya and Eiji)
- Justice Impulse (Syo and Yamato)
- Lasting Oneness (Masato and Kira)
- Visible Elf (Cecil and Shion)
- Lovely Eyes (Ren and Van)
- Grown Empathy (Natsuki and Nagi)
- Next Door (Otoya and Eiichi)
- Healthy Country Air: Nanami has this in her backstory. She had an unspecified Soap Opera Disease, and moved to the country to be with her grandmother for the sake of her health. As a result, she's very sheltered and doesn't know a lot about the idol industry.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode is named after the insert song featured in it after the word Op. Exceptions are episodes 9 and 10 in the first season and episode 9 of the second.
- Insert Song: Once every episode, if not more. More often than not, performing said song is the climax of the episode.
- MST: The first season of the anime was simulcasted on the English version of Nico Nico Douga, which displays the video's comments while it is playing. Guess what most of the viewers decided to do.
- Limited Wardrobe: The HE★VENS members are seen with only one outfit through the 2nd season, and they didn't change clothes for their performance either. Thankfully this issue is solved during the 4th season.
- Moment Killer: In the anime's second season 11th episode, the rest of STARISH suddenly appear during Tokiya and Haruka's date, effectively killing the mood.
- Mundane Made Awesome: 2000% episode 7 has the STARISH team work together, including making complicated maneuvers, just to put Natsuki's glasses back on his face. That being said, Natsuki as Satsuki is a wild child and more than enough for six people to handle.
- Mundane Object Amazement: In Revolutions's episode 2, while they take a stroll through town, Ren and Masato taste takoyaki (octopus dumplings, a popular and simple dish in Japan) for the first time, being shocked by its good taste. To Ranmaru's surprise, they didn't even know it existed.
- "Not So Different" Remark: In the anime, Haruka compares her Performance Anxiety with playing the piano to Tokiya's inability to sing from the heart. Tokiya begs to differ.
- Raised by Grandparents: In the anime, Haruka states she was raised by her grandmother.
- Sequel Hook: The third season ends with the return of HEAVENS, now featuring four new members, and the phrase "SEE YOU NEXT SEASON☆" in the last eyecatch.
- Soap Opera Disease: In the anime, Haruka claims to have had this when she was a child. Symptoms include fainting spells when stressed.
- Title Drop:
- As a general rule, every episode's title is the name of the song the featured boy will sing.
- In the first episode of the first season, Tomochika makes a remark on how the hot boys she and Haruka are surrounded in can be considered "princes of song".
- In the second season of the anime, ST☆RISH has to fight for... the Utapri award.
- In the third season, Cecil claims once they "all are princes of song".
- In the fourth season, Shining Saotome affirms that ST☆RISH, QUARTET★NIGHT and HE☆VENS are all Legend Stars.
