Happy (belated) birthday, Ren Hazuki!

I’m sure your mother would be proud of the way you’ve carried on her legacy!

I made it a personal goal to finish Superstar!! in its entirety before writing your birthday post. (I wrote Kanon and Chisato’s posts before the anime started airing, Keke’s birthday happened around the time it first began airing, but I missed out sobs, and the anime wasn’t fully completed when I wrote Sumire’s post.) I wanted to learn more about you since you were the Liella! cast member that initially caught my attention the most. I managed to finish the anime and learned more about you. Here’s what I learned:

In that typical student council president manner seen time and time again in the Love Live! series, you were standoffish towards the budding school idol group in the beginning. You became disliked by many students at Yuigaoka High because they felt that you were being unfair regarding extracurricular activities, and they rallied for the school idol group to confront you and compete against you for role of student council president.

Unbeknownst to everyone, your personal life influenced many of your decisions that they were against. Your mother’s past actions and the results they garnered had a huge impact on you, and they were always at the forefront of your mind whenever you made crucial decisions. You did it all for the sake of keeping the school running, as you didn’t want to do any activity halfheartedly and run the risk of having the school go under. Eventually, you warmed up to the idea of becoming a school idol to garner attention from prospective students and put your all into making sure that Liella! shone like stars in the night sky.

I love that once you became a school idol, you retained your no-nonsense, hard-working nature and your air of refinement, but you allowed more of your dorky side to show through. It was fun seeing you trying to figure out the inner workings of technology and trying to rap (read: spouting out haiku). It’s always fun seeing more composed characters embracing the wackiness of the world around them.

I’m glad that I learned more about you, but it still feels like there’s a ton about you that I don’t know yet. Despite you having a backstory that tugs at the heartstrings, you seem to be the least developed member of Liella! for the time being. I’m hoping that the second season will give you some more focus so I can find more things about your character to enjoy. Looking forward to what the future holds!