Yu Takasaki

If you're looking for her featureless video game counterpart, refer to Player (LLAS)

Yu Takasaki  is one of the main characters of Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club and the anime adaptation's representation of the player character in Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS. She is a second year at Nijigasaki High School, and the club's manager and song composer. Her image color is black.

Background
Yu is the budding school idol enthusiast of Nijigasaki High School, and is often seen with her characteristic thigh-high socks and twin-tails dyed in green. She is Ayumu Uehara's inseparable childhood friend, having grown up as neighbors in the same apartment building in Odaiba. Eventually, the two of them ended up at Nijigasaki together and are now classmates. Yu's love for school idols blossomed after seeing a performance of the legendary school idol, Setsuna Yuki. Along with Ayumu, Yu's very first experience of school idols that day would lead her to seek Nijigasaki's School Idol Club.

Personality
Yu adopted a lot of the player character's personality prior to the anime. She is described as insightful, reliable, quick to take action, and very caring of the Nijigasaki idols. She is shown to have a deep passion for idols, which inspires her goals and actions in the game.

Her game counterpart is very perceptive about the girls' feelings and works very hard to be a good leader for them. She is initially shown to have the tendency of self-isolating when working on new songs, pulling all-nighters so she can achieve perfection.

General

 * Prior to the reveal of her name, the character was nicknamed "Anata (あなた)". It literally means "You".
 * This also results in a recurring joke of the fans designating Yu as the fictionalized version of themselves, commonly referring to her as "We/Our/Us". This also applies to her voice actress.
 * The meaning of her name (高咲 侑) was given by a fan, who chose the 高 kanji because of Kousaka (高坂) and Takami (高海). 咲 is because she comes from Nijigasaki. 侑 is because as it is written, "Anata" means "You". It sounds like "Yu", which could also mean "To help" which fits Yu's personality and role as the club's manager.
 * Even though she is the anime equivalent of the Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS player, there is a debate about whether she is the true POV protagonist of the game, though her unique personality may clash with the player's featureless characteristic.
 * It has been speculated that Yu, as well as Ayumu, comes from a fairly wealthy family, given that their home in the game seems to be inside a luxury high rise apartment.

Anime-specific

 * Yu is enrolled in the general curriculum while the player character is from the music course. Yu is also missing the electronic keyboard in her room where the player character had placed it. So it has yet to be determined if Yu will be adopted as the club's song composer.
 * Prior to the reveal of the second visual and her voiced appearance, some fans speculated whether Yu's energetic personality is merely an informed attribute since she is shown to have an emotionless expression on her design, even though she is said to be enthusiastic as written in the description.
 * There's speculation regarding Yu's image color: As black is the absence of color and cannot be used as a lightstick color. This was likely meant to represent her role as a supporter rather than being a School Idol.
 * There is also a minor theory that her secondary/true image color is green, judging by some visuals (such as the second straw in Ayumu's drink the first Blu Ray cover) and Hinaki's appearance in the Niconama with her wearing a green sweater underneath her Winter Uniform outfit. Whether this was meant to be a nod to Yu's green gradient on her hair, or this was a possible foreshadowing of her being a potential 10th member in the future is unknown for now.

Gallery

 * Please refer to this character's Image Gallery.