Idolm@ster anime

Now that there have been 4 episodes of the show out, I feel it's ok if I give my opinion on it now.



It sucks.

The show seems to be a idol of the week format. It doesn't have much of a structure to it, and doesn't really follow the games or anything. It's just the producer and his interactions with the random idols of this weeks episode.

It is not very consistent with the source material, for example, let's take a look at a screenshot from Episode 4.

What's wrong with this you say? Hibiki is supposed to be the second shortest idol in the series, at 152cm. Yet here we have her standing next to the tallest idol in the series, Takane, at 169cm. Takane should be about half a foot taller than Hibiki, yet there is hardly a difference between Hibiki and all the characters pictured here in terms of height.

It should be more like this. You might think this is just nitpicking, but it really affects Takane's character design to be displayed like that. It also shows how much they actually care about the source material.

Other than that the characters are occasionally out of character, as you can see from the first image. I would almost think that the director played the first game, but not the second, even though the show is supposed to be based off the second. Miki doesn't really sleep a lot or laze about in idolmaster 2 so much, for example.

They should've chosen to follow the game plot more, instead of doing this random idols in random situation weekly, format that they're going with. Considering there are 12 girls, 13 if you include Ritsuko, and only 26 episodes, it doesn't seem like a very good choice. How much plot or character development can you have, with each idol getting such a small amount of time devoted to them? And how is it even feasible that the Producer and Ritsuko could manage to produce 12 idols? He struggles to successfully produce 3 by himself in the game, and Ritsuko fails altogether. I would like to see more auditions, lives, FES, etc rather than just dumb cooking events and shit.

The animation is also questionable. As you can see by Iori's chimpanzee face below.

I think the show would be a lot better if it followed the game more closely. You would have the protagonist, the producer, new to the company. He chooses 3 of the idols to produce as a unit. The show could have whatever 3 girls are the most popular, as the ones he chooses. Then you also would have Ritsuko's group, containing Iori, Ami, and Azusa, as your rival group. So right there you have 6 girls. The main focus on the 3 that the Producer is producing, and the other 3 having events and appearances and such.

It would be about the start of the new unit, the Producer new to it all but still trying hard. Doing TV events, holding concerts, etc to raise his unit's popularity. Releasing singles every now and again, and seeing how well they sell. Focus on the development of the 3 idols, their relationship with each other and the producer. The ultimate goal being to win the Idol Academy awards, to be held a year from the start. At the end of the show, having won, the Producer goes to Hollywood for year, to undergo further training and development of his skills. He says farewell to the idols, and then they could have an epilogue or something.

I think that would provide much more worth in watching than what the show currently consists of. Who knows, it may change later, we already saw a came by a member from Jupiter previously. Either way, it will still have too many idols, with nothing going on.

So if I were to give the show a score, it would be 4/10. Watchable to those that have no taste.