The Teen OCs of Love Live! New Melody Project!!

My fan fic series Love Live! New Melody Project!! isn't just canon Love Live characters. There's also quite a few important original characters, including a whole set of teens being school idols alongside the stories of the adult Love Live women. It's easy enough to picture older versions of canon characters, but I've always wished that you could see the OC girls as I imagined them.

Well, now you can, thanks to the incredible work of artist Amber Dill. She reached out to me about bringing the New Melody Project teens to life, and I was very excited to make it happen! I've been keeping this under wraps until it was done, and now, I can share with you her amazing work!

Say hello to the girls of New Melody Project!

Saeko Akiyama is a punk guitarist and - at the start of NMP - a second-year student at Ayamegaoka Girls' High School, after her family moved from Kyoto to Tokyo. After finding the light music club all full, Saeko gets placed in the school idol club, where she meets Hikari and Miyuki and ends up forming the group Power☆Panic with them. Saeko's initial gruff loner attitude gives way to her inner kindness and her punk rock sense of justice and camaraderie, and she becomes the center of the group and true friends with her fellow outcast idols.

Narumi Katou is severely inflicted with a serious case of chunibyo. She speaks like a Bloodborne character crossed with a Klingon general and believes herself to be in a fantasy warrior universe of grand battles in service of "The Crimson Queen." A second-year student at rival Harugaoka Girls' High School at the start of NMP, Narumi leads a trio of masked idols called Storm Maiden. Initially presenting herself as a rival to Power☆Panic, the truth is that she may have something very different than rivalry on her mind when it comes to Saeko. After one accepts her eccentricities, Narumi proves herself to be a true diehard friend to the Power☆Panic girls, and she and Saeko grow closer than either expected...

Hikari Tomori is a first-year student at Ayamegaoka at the start of the story. She's an electronics nerd and synthesizer enthusiast who speaks in a rambling monotone with no punctuation, dresses in all black, and keeps a soldering iron on herself at all times, just in case. Hikari is a proud oddity in the halls of Ayamegaoka. She refers to herself as a "biological construct" with internal circuitry and processors, and is always ready to dive into outlandish ideas or hacker mischief in service of the group's goals. She's also the only one of the girls who knows what Tumblr is. Hikari never paid much attention to idols, but joined the club because of her best friend Miyuki, who she also harbors a secret crush on. After meeting Saeko and encountering the women who were once µ's, though, Hikari is fully on-board with the idol world now, in her own particular way.

Miyuki Shimada is a first-year student at Ayamegaoka at the start of the story. She is shy and timid at first, but once she opens up, she's one of the sweetest and most kind people you could ever hope to know. An idol lover and cosplayer, she is pursuing her school idol dreams in the face of other girls who pick on her for her size. She and Hikari join Ayamegaoka's school idol club but remain on the sidelines as more popular girls form their own group...until Saeko arrives and brings the outcasts together as Power☆Panic. Much to the popular girls' surprise, Miyuki is actually the most talented dancer in the school idol club, thanks to her determination and the extra lessons she receives as a student at the small, prestigious dance school Ayase Performance Academy under the instruction of former idol Eli Ayase.

A huge thanks to Amber for the amazing work! I'm so happy I get to show you all my girls at last!