It sneaks up on you. You come in for sparkly stage cards and idol choreography, and somewhere around the thought of Ichigo Hoshimiya actually graduating from Starlight Academy you realize this thing has been quietly collecting a decade of your attention. The 10th STORY material already did the hard part, putting Ichigo and Akari Oozora on stage together as Cosmos and letting that first concert land as a win rather than a cliffhanger, which means everything after it is about what an idol does when the finale already happened. That is the trick here: no villain, no crisis, just the very unglamorous fact that the life keeps going after the applause stops. It stays light the whole way and still gets you. Fans who started with Ichigo in season one and stayed through Akari's turn in the third know exactly which face they are watching for.
A new Aikatsu! film set for 2023 following Aikatsu! 10th STORY ~Mirai e no STARWAY~ .