The iDOLM@STER Million Live!

Recommended for fans that following Idolmaster from latest movie or playing Million Live game or fans that listen to their music only on music platform. For me, had watched the movie, played game Starlit Season, and listen to their music on music platform.

By did three of those above, it will make better experience watching this Million Live anime because it will have a nostalgia vibe and matching vibe like "Yeah, she would doing this because her X personality". The matching vibe doesn't mean negative where know the plot went, but in positive way like "if she personality X, meets personality Y, what will happen?" that ... would find intriguing that trying to guess what interaction going about. If the guess correct, then feeling happy that the characters stay in characters. If the guess wrong, it's a new discovery of characters personality and feeling curious.

All characters introduced with great pacing from episode 1 to 4. No rushing and characters interaction is amusing because their unique personality. They are top well-written like I felt the anxiety when the characters felt anxiety. I felt happy when the characters felt happy.

The conflict solved rather fast in one episode, where original Idolmaster need at least 2 episodes for major conflict to solve the problem. So the feeling of worried, anxiety and cynicism about 60% compare to original Idolmaster but still has awkward moment that would find interesting. I believe it's because the new characters is so talented to become idols that do less mistake. However I found episode 4, the conflict is really best. Idolmaster conflict really captured depiction of real life.

The CGI is better than I expected. There are no clipping, the model matching with the background, no lighting error, and no weird movement even the 3D really pleasant to watch. However, the model of Shizuka's hair that looking from sideling seems a little buggy for me.

The ART is really interesting that when paused for a sec, the ART blended really well with CGI and were created really detailed like have a good lightning environment typical high quality visual novel background.

Overall it did make me felt anxiety, happy, laugh, curiosity, empathy.

Idolmaster's adaptations have always had an issue catching up to the greatness that is the 2011 anime. I've always been a firm believer in quality over quantity, and the 2011 anime manages to make the most of its runtime by giving each of its girls (and crucially, Producer) a dedicated spotlight episode as well as fleshing out their characters to make them appealing for people who don't play the games. The inability of its subsequent spinoffs to stand up to the 2011 show is evident in Cinderella Girls (lack of focus on both the core trio and the overall cast) and Side:M (too many idols, ... Producer is a non-entity). Then came U149, which had managed to capture the same magic as the 2011 anime, even blowing it out of the water at some points, despite its shorter runtime by having such a razor-sharp focus on its cast and by having a lot of its episodes dedicated to non-idol activities (this is important as I'll elaborate later on). I had thought the series had returned to good hands, and then the long awaited Million Live anime came out, and it blows alright.

Uniquely MiliLive has inherited both negatives from Cinderella Girls and SideM. You have a stupidly large cast of girls, none of whom get any real focus on to flesh out their individual characters, alienating anyone who isn't into the games, alongside with a total non-entity of a Producer. See, one of the core aspects of Idolmaster is that the Producer himself is not just some self-insert; he is as much of a main character as any of the girls, and his proactiveness in some episodes is what elevates him above the usual "token male character in an all-female show" compared to other shows. You can easily remove MiliLive's Producer and it would not make a single difference. Speaking of the girls, there's just too many of them to keep track of, and their core archetype/personalities just get forgotten the moment they're offscreen. It's really bad when I can't even remember the names of half of them even at episode 12. They've also brought in the original cast (albeit some alternate reality version of them more similar to Imas 1's universe than Imas 2's) as bait, since they don't amount to much in the end as well.

And, I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding for people making Idol shows, and not just a MiliLive problem, but the actual idol parts of the shows are actually the most boring parts. In any work related show, the work aspect is just set dressing at the end of the day, and what people want to see are activities that happen outside of work. The 2011 Imas and U149 got this right by having the idol aspect be secondary while the real focus shifts to the characters and their interactions, growth, and relationships outside of work. Most of Million Live is just about preparing for the big show, and doing the big show. It's just watching people work. It's honestly no different to coming to the office and having one of those shallow conversations with your colleagues: You pretend to talk about something exciting to mask the dread of monotony in the workplace. Most of Million Live's interactions rarely involve the personal relationships or developments around the characters, but instead are mostly work-related. Oh Shizuka's sad because her dad disapproves of her idol work? Come on that's boring. This is nothing like Risa's anxieties in U149 or Chihaya's dead brother in 2011. Why is it so difficult for the production committee to understand that we enjoy these kinds of shows because of the characters, not because of the work they do. At this point I'm even content with the melodrama from Mio in CG or Sakuraba in SideM, because at least those were focused on the characters themselves.

Honestly, maybe the adaptation was too little too late. After all, the heyday of MiliLive was around when the 2014 movie aired, and that was as good as an adaptation MiliLive was ever gonna get, even if it's only ever focused on Kana. But at least it was focused on someone and delivered a spectacular finale. I felt nothing after MiliLive's 2023 adaptation ended, and I dread to think how the Shinymas adaptation is gonna be like. At this point maybe giving the girls Mechas to fight asteroids may have been a better alternative.

5/10