A good start. From what it seems, they're going to try and shorten the amount of time it takes to gather all 9.
We get a good intro to You and Chika, an amazing, short-and-sweet intro to the first years (my personal favorite scene in the episode), and a taste of some of the third years. Dia hopefully won't retread Eli all that much: the grumpy president who eventually mellows out after joining the group. I hope Dia, after deciding to join, keeps her grump. But it's the good kind of grumpy, from what the drama CDs say.
Sadly, Mari only has one line in the entire thing, which makes me sad since she's one of my favorites. Kanan doesn't get too much, but we see a bit of her personality / relationship with Chika, as well as a little hint of something interesting to come. Riko gets good focus, but nothing about her is revealed too much, besides where she comes from. Hopefully Riko, Mari, and Kanan get more personality next episode (as well as the others, of course)
The music is pretty good too. I love the OP, and Hand in Hand is nice too. I wasn't really feeling it until the chorus hit, and it caught me, haha. Have yet to hear the ED but I hope it's great.
I do have a few complaints. Mainly, I felt that not too much happened. But that's to be expected from episode 1, where they're focusing on setting things up. Also, the animation. While it's definitely improved a bit from OG LL, there are still times where the CG looks funky, and the 2d parts of the dances look choppy (there's a part in Hand in Hand with You that I think of in particular.
So overall, I liked the episode. I'm afraid of it retreading OG LL too much. My hope is that they get the group formed in a short time (maybe in like 2 or 3 more episodes) and get on with the unique 9-member antics, as well as some good episodes focusing on developing a certain character. For those who haven't listened to the drama CDs, they already give us a good taste of how funny and charming their character interactions will be.
