Yu Takasaki

Yu Takasaki  is the main protagonist 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 tips dyed green. She is Ayumu Uehara's inseparable childhood friend, having grown up as neighbors in the same apartment building near 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 out 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.

Trivia

 * 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, generally referring to her as "We/Our/Us".
 * 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, as many English-speaking players commonly inferred the player as her, though her unique personality may clash with the player's featureless characteristic.
 * It's noteworthy that the international version of the game explicitly refers to the player character as a "She" by several characters.
 * Aside from her appearance in the Anime-exclusive illustrations such as Mebachi's poster for the 11th volume of the Love Live! Days magazine, she did not appear in other illustrated non-Anime media such as the Nijiyon 4komas drawn by Miyako Hito.
 * Yu does appear (as a cameo) in a chapter of a 4koma (also drawn by Miyako) displayed in the Odaiba Tokimeki Stamp Rally, where is she mentioned by Rina and Ayumu. However, those 4komas follow the Anime continuity rather than the ongoing comic's timeline, given Ai Miyashita's different hairstyle.
 * 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 until Everyone's Dream, My Dream, in which she mentioned that she has been practicing a lot. Though it has yet to be determined if Yu will be adopted as the club's song composer.
 * Yu briefly plays the piano in episode 3, Shout Out Your Love. However, not until episode 10 Summer Begins and Blossoming Feelings did she show proficiency in playing it.
 * 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.
 * Like Honoka Kosaka and Chika Takami, Yu also wears a shirt with a Japanese character, though it was used on her childhood.
 * Japanese fans online have mixed reactions to the possibility of Yu ever becoming an idol. On the one hand, some would like to see her voice actress sing and dance live, while others argue that taking away Yu's role as a manager would simply "rehash" the plot from the previous Love Live! shows, rather than bring something fresh and new to the series. But many are at least open to the idea of having a character song released.

Gallery

 * Please refer to this character's Image Gallery.