Just as a reminder, Aikatsu Friends, as the rest of Aikatsu entries, is stand-alone and you can start with this one without worries, which considering the length of the others can be a great idea if you want to see if this anime is for you in order to try out the others as well. In Aikatsu Friends we follow Aine, a cheerful and kind girl who can quickly make friends with anyone to terrifying levels. One day she meets Mio, a very popular girl from the idol division of their school and they quickly connect, the story focuses in their idol activities together as friends,wanting to become the best duo someday.

This anime is doing a fantastic job so far handling their relationship, Aikatsu Friends seems to be centered in "becoming Best Friends", with two characters forming a unit together, and this leads to heavy focus on the interactions between pairs of characters (be the main duo or the other characters that got protagonism, all with their fun and likeable personalities). Each episode is a lot of fun seeing in what events our characters are, be preparing dresses, participating in TV programs, or doing performances between others, while also seeing them develop and becoming closer as time passes and they get to know more about each other.

Talking about the performances, the CGI animation of them just keeps shining with its quality, the dances are beautiful and full of movement and effects, making for a visual treat, the series as a whole looks nice, with very appealing character designs (I love the gradient hair of the main duo in special), the animation of the series is also solid, although as expected of long running series, some episodes can't keep the level of the rest.

Aikatsu Friends has been fantastic so far and I can't recommend enough to give it a chance, be it your first Aikatsu entry or you having already watched others before.