Secret Santa 2014 – The iDOLM@STER

Are you Ready?

We saw OC’s post on House of Five Leaves on Christmas Eve as part of Reverse Thieves Secret Santa 2014 and, like her, I really enjoy the opportunity to both suggest some of my favorite anime to other people, and see what other people think I might like. I think that most people do put some thought into the shows they recommend, even if that might not be apparent (like I didn’t recommend any harem shows this year, since the person I was recommending for rated all the ones on their list low or dropped). So what did I get for 2014, my second year participating?

From some humble beginnings…

Well, since you saw the title of the post (and the first couple screenshots), you already know what show I picked to watch. One thing that I will kvetch about with the shows people recommend: why do I always get the 2-cour series? Last year I got Macross Frontier (26 episodes), and this year, two of my recommendations were the 25-episode iDOLM@STER and the 24-episode Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince. The third was a harem / magic show that I’d never heard of, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, and it admittedly is a single cour series. But given that people have been yapping at me for years to watch iDOLM@STER and the opportunity to write it off as a blogging experience came up, that’s what I picked. Plus, there’s no way I was doing two mecha series in a row for Secret Santa. I might watch Demon King Daimaou sometime, because it does seem right up my alley, tho.

Best shot of Yayoi in the whole series

So with the selection made, what was I getting myself into? On the surface it seems like a no-brainer to watch this. I like idol shows, or at least seem to. Love Live! is one of my favorite shows, I even watched Wake Up Girls! and Super Sonico and generally enjoyed both. Music is right up my alley, although I’ll admit that most BGM is not something I notice. But insert songs are, and Love Live! may be the absolute best with insert songs and performances. So maybe I was going in with a little bit high expectations, or at least a little bit of unfair comparison for the show. In hindsight that may have been a bit of my problem with the show.

(Also, unlike some of the other Secret Santa shows which are relatively obscure, I seem like the last person on earth to have watched iDOLM@STER, so I’m not really worried about spoilers. Not that there are really many things to spoil.)

Starting off as an obscure group, there’s only up to go

So the basics of the show, if you just haven’t gotten to this show yet (or have forgotten because it’s been a few years), are that a new talent agency has started, 765 Production (referred to as “nanrokgo pro”, smashing the three words together as much as possible), and they’ve got a stable of unknown idol wannabes who are trying to break into the business. From humble beginnings in a cramped office, they climb the ladder of popularity to become a really busy group of idols in a cramped office. But that’s ok, because they’re almost never in the office after their popularity starts to take off. Along the way there are some trials, some focus episodes, and changes in the way their relationships are going. But maybe the best way for me to talk about this show is to answer the important questions: which girls do I like and which don’t I. With 13 to pick from, most discussions about the show tend to devolve to this anyway.

The Ones I Liked

This was the absolute funniest moment of the entire series

There was a little variation in this category from the beginning through the end. Azusa was an early favorite, for her look and the maturity that she had. But she kinda faded as the whole group from Ryuuguu Komachi was pretty much taken out of the show. At the end of the series, if I look back, my four favorites are Takane, Chihaya, Haruka, and Miki. Takane’s focus episode was terrific, perhaps my favorite episode of the series, and even though she didn’t do much else throughout the entire show, she had a presence when she was there that kept her interest high. The other three had nice, in-depth stories that felt like we were learning about them. Chihaya with her family troubles, Miki with her capriciousness, and Haruka’s story that was the main object lesson for the whole series, with Haruka representing the force that 765 Pro was able to bring to bear when they were all united and engaged with each other. These three characters formed the backbone of the main story presented in the show, and did a very good job being interesting characters.

Takane was not afraid to be an individual

The Ones I Didn’t Like

Even Producer-san looks annoyed at these four

This list will probably disappoint a few people (for instance, this group would be skylion’s category of “Characters he likes”), but anyone who’s read more than 4 of my posts on anything can probably guess who’s on this list: Iori, Ami, Mami, and Yayoi. Basically, these characters were kids, acted like kids the whole time, and were just not very interesting to me. Actually, all four of them were positively annoying, and the amount of focus on these characters early in the series really made me not very interested in the series at all. It was actually good when Iori and Ami got shoved off into Ryuuguu Komachi, because that meant they barely showed up in the rest of the series, and with Ami off screen, Mami’s attention was significantly reduced, and her appearances improved without the whipsaw sister act. Yayoi actually seems like a fine girl, helping to take care of her family, but she literally did nothing for the entire rest of the series after the episode where Hibiki and Iori went to visit her house. If the whole group wasn’t there, then Yayoi wasn’t there. Heck, even her Nama-su ka? segment was spent ignoring her and talking with the studio characters. This did have the effect of making her one appearance on most episodes, as the camera flew over her head at the end of the OP, something that I thought was cute, but mostly she was a completely forgotten character.

Brief Thoughts on the Rest

They all end up sparkling in the end

The rest of the girls – Hibiki, Yukiho, Azusa, and Makoto – were generally non-offensive, but not very interesting. Hibiki’s talk-to-animals act was cute enough, and the episode that focused on her fight with Inumi was not bad. Yukiho and Makoto ended up completely shipped together, and like Yayoi, they pretty much disappeared in the second half of the series. And Azusa, as a member of Ryuuguu Komachi, disappeared as well, which was a bit disappointing, but after her Runaway Bride episode, it felt like there really wasn’t actually that much there to be interesting. I did find Ritsuko and even Kotori to be nice supporting characters, although I kind of wish that Producer-san had been a little less wishy-washy. He took his injury like a man, tho, and came through in the end.

General  Series Thoughts

And reach the big stage

I mentioned that I’m a huge fan of Love Live!, especially their insert song performances. Unfortunately, iDOLM@STER didn’t come anywhere close to those, either in the quality of the songs or in the presentation of performances. It was better than Wake Up Girls!, but that’s probably damning with faint praise, since WUG! had one good performance and the rest were chop jobs with static cuts and cop-out animation of heads and faces. But here there was a lot of quick cutting to avoid showing dance routines, flying camera moves, audience shots, and just general disappointment at the performances. And on top of that, the songs were just not very interesting. The only one I found good to listen to was Sleeping Beauty, the one that Chihaya sang a capella at the beginning. I was even a bit turned off by Smoky Thrill by Ryuuguu Komachi, because the subject matter of that song seemed a little mature for Azusa, and just outright squicky for Iori and Ami to be singing.

Don’t test Takane

I would say that I enjoyed iDOLM@STER well enough for a Secret Santa show. As far as impact, it definitely didn’t have as much on me as last year’s Macross Frontier, but it was probably enough to get me to continue, watching the movie and the upcoming Cinderella Girls anime. And maybe next year, I’ll actually watch a 1-cour show, and be done with it before December 24^th.