AKB0048

After an interplanetary war at the beginning of the 21st century, planet Earth has been left in ruins, with much of its ecosystem completely destroyed. Because it was no longer possible to live a normal life on this planet, the inhabitants are forced to move on to other planets where life will, hopefully, be more comfortable.

The Deep Galactic Trade Organization, a totalitarian government that affects many of the newly inhabited planets, has somehow come to the conclusion that music is a source of evil, and that it must be banned and destroyed for good. The talent group AKB0048 is soon formed, based on the original AKB48 members that once lived on Earth. Even though their music is now considered universally illegal, they make it their mission to bring their music back to life by travelling from one planet to another and holding as many concerts as they possibly can. They must undergo a whole new set of training methods in order to become the best that they can possibly be, while also avoiding the constant danger of being arrested because of their music. Join interplanetary popstars AKB0048 as they try to save the world－with music!

Motomiya, Nagisa Main

Iwata, Karen Japanese

Sono, Chieri Main

Watanabe, Mayu Japanese

Shinonome, Sonata Main

Yagami, Kumi Japanese

Shinonome, Kanata Main

Ishida, Haruka Japanese

Kishida, Mimori Main

Satou, Sumire Japanese

Kanzaki, Suzuko Main

Hata, Sawako Japanese

Yokomizo, Makoto Main

Mita, Mao Japanese

Aida, Orine Main

Nakaya, Sayaka Japanese

Ichijou, Yuuka Main

Satou, Amina Japanese

Kimishima, Hikari Supporting

Kanda, Akemi Japanese

Kawando, Kenjirou Producer

Kawamori, Shouji Director, Storyboard, Mechanical Design, Original Creator

Hiraike, Yoshimasa Director

Aketagawa, Jin Sound Director

Reviews

Jul 22, 2012

Stellio

Recommended

With the large amount of questionable things AKB0048 attempted, this show was inevitably doomed to fail. The large casts of characters, the doubtable synopsis and its variety of genres clustered together just to name a few. Most ridiculous of all, the director expected AKB48 singers, a real-life, popular idol group, to successfully convert into voice actresses. Furthermore, most soundtracks in the actual anime will be inserted directly from AKB48's popular debuts, and this all just seemed too convenient to work out. Thus, I walked into AKB0048 expecting some terribly scripted dialogues, incorrect utilization of AKB48 soundtracks, and tons more to name. But here I am, ... telling you that AKB0048 can actually be safely described as multitudes of great things, one of them being a successful collaboration of impinging, tricky anime genres.

However, ignoring AKB0048’s flaws would be too generous. The plot of this Series was just too chaotic in the beginning, and awkward even to the extent of a laughable synopsis. Its attempt at mixing interplanetary mecha themes with the assemblage of idols, who are all such independent loli's, just seemed too silly to fit together. At first, I continuously questioned the silly premise of the story, but later I just decided to go along with it just due to the fact that I don’t have a time machine.

=Now the Actual Review Begins=

Even with all its flaws, AKB0048 proved to me that any future is possible.

Behind all this seemingly plugged up garbage plot, I found a pearl in the sea of sewage. Before watching this series, I constituted all my opinions about idols in a Western sense. Long story short, I live in a very industrialized environment where idols are all seemingly just good-looking people with no talent whatsoever. In other words, certain despicable individuals over the past years have influenced me to completely lose respects for others with similar occupations (even in anime). Ironically, AKB0048, a crew consisting of cute girls, has elaborated enough on idols’ daily lives that I’m actually reconsidering my view point on this world’s entertainment industry. How it has done so with the slice of life, comedy, & science fiction genres fascinates me even up to today.

As a male, I never understood why a vast amount of the female population have always wanted to become an idol (not a sexist statement, it’s a fact that most idol groups include females). But, that is not to say they all have such ambitions for the same reason. With different feelings, intentions, and reasons for becoming an idol, most people who desire to rise to a position of fame come from places scattered all across the board. With that being said, most successful idols do share one thing in common; the way AKB0048 depict these idols, they all seem like a determined bunch, despite their inabilities, adversities, or any obstacles in their way. Now the supernatural situation within ABK0048 doesn't seem as irrelevant, does it? This constitutional restriction on entertainment, although clumsily scripted, immediately creates a universe where young females are disallowed their dreams of perhaps rising to become an idol. Too bad even in a universe where interplanetary wars are supposedly happening, teenagers still don’t think when they act.

As the story starts developing, three young girls who want to become the 77th Generation of AKB0048 idols consistently meet more and more obstacles as the story progresses. The first few episodes explore some character’s family issues, backgrounds, personalities, and give a vivid detail of where the series is heading, while the whole entertainment ban theme over-arches all these episodes. Things get tougher the more you get into it. Haters, dealing with failures, and stressing over little details of your actions will all lead to shed tears. But in the end, you’re never the only one going through it. There are always people going through the same pain as you, as they walk the same path as an idol. This relationship then establishes friendships between the idols depicted in this series, and it is a very interesting concept of friendship that it illustrates, by simply dealing with every day issues. As the Series progresses, the intensity builds up as well. At first the plot was driven simply by a few science fiction references, but by the end supernatural and mecha themes are thoroughly explored. Though, don't get confused because although the plot is very detailed in its description; the overall mood of AKB0048 still remains to mostly be drama/slice of life. Even though the execution of mecha scenes in AKB0048 seemed needless and unnecessary, the appearance of mecha did contribute to illustrating (symbolic) difficulties that even idols have to overcome. But to an extent, this theme was probably exaggerated on too much, while lacking the correct coherence most mecha/shounen shows actually have.

Besides these heavily emphasized themes, AKB0048 also frequently (meaning, A LOT) transitions into comedy moments. These scenes often follow serious, dramatic moments, but rarely feels barged in through the whole development. In fact, the serious moments themselves appear to be melodramatic sometimes too. But, those are just the result of the conflicted traits within some characters, which essentially arouses a feeling of drama without the actual atmosphere being so just by itself. This makes even further sense because most of the characters are professional drama queens, which, as I mentioned before, makes up these lighthearted comedy moments within this anime. Just the over dramatic atmosphere itself being consistently interfered by clumsy, klutz moments are hilarious by themselves, but the show sometimes even makes fun of itself. I won't go into details, but let's just say perversely suggestive jokes occur frequently. Even in the one beach episode (ep10) and other possible candidates where fan-service was visible, the story still progressed and was always accompanied by those suggestive jokes mentioned above. In other words, fan service done correctly without being too distracting. Personally, this consistent aspect of the show made it a more enjoyable watch.

The developments of characters were incredibly smooth as the series played out. That is, to say, if you didn't get annoyed by them from episode 1. Some characters are very irksome when they are first introduced. Unlike most anime though, these annoying characters all change in some ways in AKB0048. It's not just subtle or slight adjustments either, it's life changing choices these characters decide on which makes the viewer so attached to them. These character developments don't just occur to a few selected people either. While there are obvious main characters with bigger roles, most other (side) characters actually get their own arcs, and have a re-occurring role(s) throughout this whole series. Please note that though the cast of character is about 2 dozen idols, AKB0048 was able to handle all those characters while getting the plot to flow well, and making sure nobody gets overshadowed for the most part either. Now, that's just a bit impressive.

For an anime almost made to commercialize AKB48's songs, I'd have to say it did a great job. Any fans of the real life AKB48 idol group should check out this anime (and vice versa), think of this show almost like a behind-the-stage TV series. The music was top notched in terms of the J-pop genre, but I feared for terrible synchronization with the animation, and luckily it didn't turn out bad at all. There were also notable background music playing and it's remarkable how just a lighthearted themed soundtrack can help scenes transition from one to another (especially from those dramatic to comedy scenes). Also, due to the lack of experiences it probably took a while for those AKB48 member to suddenly become voice actors. But by the end not only was the voice acting minimal quality, they all seemed to fit the character very well, so well that It should be considerably outstanding for those undergraduates.

Animation was good, and there were obvious efforts put into the character designs. Those efforts are exemplified by the motif of carving cute (loli-like; moe) things such as hearts with a very shallow curve into characters' hairs. Not only the characters, but it's choreography within those dancing scenes also seemed fairly unique. The animation even switches into a 3-D dancing crew during actual performances of dances, and my eyeballs were just overfilled with soothing joy. For someone who's impatient to the point that even waiting 10 minutes for a movie to start becomes a problem, I'd have to say it did a fine job entertaining me with those mesmerizing dancing performances.

All in all, with a few due casualties, I think AKB0048 deserves a better rating than what most viewers are giving it. While exploring the daily lives of idols, AKB0048 accurately depicts symbolic obstacles faced by those working in the entertainment industry. Although this anime is layered over by exaggerated, heavy mecha/supernatural themes, AKB0048 still manages to blend it in somewhat nicely into the rest of its plot, and ended up with a just right amount of varieties of genres. There's never any overly done action scenes, and the serious parts/arcs of this drama have nicely attached meaning behind them all. Though, do look out for comedy scenes caused by melodramatic moments, inelegant characters, and some referenced jokes which barely cut for PG13-audiences. As for recommendations, this series is a tricky one due to its vast amount of genres; however, I would recommend AKB0048 especially to slice of life fans out there, who won't mind a few awkwardly fastened mecha plot points here and there.

Thinking back on AKB0048 now, there may be hope for the entertainment industry after all. With such a surprising treat from the first season, I can safely say second season may be just as exciting. Now if people would just listen...

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 18, 2020

LegendAqua

Mixed Feelings

AKB0048 is a mouthful to say much like how bloated this idol anime is!

AKB0048 is a futuristic idol anime that focuses on the Old and New "generations" of AKB0048 or "00" as they fight against the anti-entertainment bans thrghout the galaxy through guerilla concerts, but there's something deeper of being a 00 as well. Now a group of girls by the names of Nagisa Motomiya voiced by Karen Iwata, Chieri Sono voiced by Mayu Watanabe, Sonata Shinonme voiced by Kumi Yagami, Suzuko Kanzaki voiced by Sawako Hata, Makoto Yokomizo voiced by Mao Mita, Kanata Shinonome voiced by Haruka Ishida, Mimori Kishida voiced by Sumire Sato, ... Yuuka Ichijou voiced by Amina Sato and Orine Aida voiced by Sayaka Nakaya as they become the understudies of the current generation of AKB0048. Add to that but each of the characters have stakes in wanting to become successors and be a member of 00, some relational clashes from their current generations as well as old, something about Kirara's, the Center Nova, Sensei-sensei and you already get what one of the glaringly flaws to AKB0048 and that AKB0048 has....well at bit too much going for it in ALL it's elements.

From the already HUGE cast of characters, that spans two or three generations of girls, their support staff and the minor supporting characters to it's many MANY MANY plotlines it has going for it. As much as the character development helps flesh out the cast especially from a huge cast as it is, gets absolutely bogged down by it's world building of the 00 right down to the core, from the support staff especially Tsubasa Katagiri voiced by Yumi Kakazu, the debacle with the Center Nova that heavily concerns Shiori Arisawa and Tsubasa, what the entire deal with Sensei-sensei, the head of the 00, to the Kirara allowing people to recognize people in showing that their true idols that concerns Nagisa....like that just at the top of LA's head and there's more what with Chieri's father tied to the DES (the anti-entertainment ban people) and Yuuko's romantic love interest to Mamoru but MAN that's ALOT of plot points and half of it doesn't addressed or have resolutions.

For the character themselves, they get episodes in the limelight now and again but with it's huge cast and how many of those core cast have plot points major or minor that swallows any development into the mist...well to this end it's bloated with a somewhat narrow focus isn't a good sign. If LA will say this, LA's favourite character at least was Suzuko Kanzaki as her airheadedness was funny and helped lift the mood with her wacky personality alot of time....LA likes alot of megane idols *cough* Makino Yagami *cough*.

So yeah saying AKB0048 is bloated is a freakin' understatement.

In terms of animation done by Satelight, well LA will say one thing, Satelight SHINED when it came to the character designs giving them all "exotic" looking color palettes with some literal shine to them but they also have consistency to them (what does LA mean?...majority of the 00 members and understudies...ALWAYS have lovehearts in their irises as well as love hearts on their hair one way or another). As for the "battle lives", well it's use of 3DCGI is ehhh blatant, not as jank but just ehhh blatant, the few mecha times have some grace, but the choreography mainly the concerts were a bit janky at times, though at least the concerts used the 3DCGI sparingly on the characters. At least the space setting was decent and the planets they go to are schizo-futuristic to dystopian dilapidated landscapes depending if the planet has the ban or not (get it dystopian if ban in place, thriving if ban not in place). All in all, Satelight's animation was mixed from ehhh to decent...kinda expected from the bombastic Shoji Kawamori.

Now, here we go...the voice cast.....yeah what do you expect when the REAL life AKB48 members actually transition into voice acting with NO experience and this is their first?. Yeah "some" of the AKB members sound it, like Mao Mita, Karen Iwata and Sayaka Nakaya where LA can't explain it but they have this stilted non-pop filtered sound whenever they speak. Nonetheless there was some AKB48 members that did fine, from Mayu Watanabe as Chieri, Sumire Sato as Mimori and Amina Sato as Yuuka. Coincidence that some of the current AKB0048 members are actually voiced by veteran voice actors like Mai Nakahara as Youko Asamiya, Ayako Kawasumi as Akira Igarashi, Kana Ueda as Tomoyo Itano, Yui Horie as Ayako Kuroki, Miyuki Sawashiro as Atsuko Maeda the 13th, Mamiko Noto as Chiharu Sakuragi and Yukari Tamura as Mayu...YEAH. Much like the animation and even with some amazing veteran voice actors in the backline...the voice cast was mixed to say the least.

For an anime that's focused on AKB48, well has some "real life writes the plot" mainly with the understudies and trainees based on the VA's actual lives. Like Sayaka Nakaya droppin gout of school to makes ends meet is an example. Weirdly enough one episode has a bit of weird clairvoyance that's to do with *ahem* "I won't let anyone tarnish Sashiko's name"...yeahhhhh considering what happened to the real life Sashiko...just errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr art imitates life...

As much as LA has been somewhat HARSH to this anime, LA will give some graces to this anime and what this first season does, as much of bloated mess it tried to set up it's characters and settings, ven with some of the one off episodes, they did give us some small development to the characters in question, as for the major plots, it at LEAST dealt with some (not all) but some of them and what resolutions we did get was a bit satisfying in some ways, mainly with Nagisa. Finally for an anime that has is stuck with a brand as famous as AKB, this anime is militant about it's brand and shows itself well, almost like it's projecting what an AKB48 would be in an a wacky anime setting and GOES ALL OUT WITH IT showing how great they are, by extension making us curious one way or another about the AKB48 brand. If there's ONE thing Japan is great in doing is advertisement and branding and with anime it damn well shows it!

AKB0048 is a hodgepodge of bogged down ideas with the AKB48 brand implanted into it. Sure the production value is...eh to decent but man with it's tons of multiple active plot points, be it world building or the characters and their relationships to the mix of genres AKB0048 had on being a slice of life in the daily lives of an idol to an idol anime looking at how AKB0048 trains, to a dystopian entertainment ban trying to eliminate the 00 to a slightly yuri anime with it's characters to a mecha anime fighting the DES while doing a guerilla concert. This anime is ALL OVER THE PLACE. While this doesn't mean AKB0048 isn't outright horrible, more like an unfocused bloated mess, but not horrible...per say....but it's flaws are not only detrimental but blatant at what AKB0048 wanted to do but failed in it's execution but to this it tries to leverage itself with what resolutions were taken place in this season and was satisfying, it tried to world build, tried to develop and flesh out the HUGE cast of characters...it tried.

Maybe...maybe AKB0048 might finish up it's many many loose plot threads with it's second season, but for a first season's first impression, AKB0048 if anything in "meh" territory with all it's strengths and weakness accounted for.

If there was a comparison LA could make to AKB0048 anime, it would be that AKB0048 is what AKB48, as Idolmaster Xenoglossia is to the Idolmaster franchise.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Nov 21, 2015

saikoxtreme

Not Recommended

Story: The story is about the universe being banned from entertainment. That means no music and no concerts. The rebels known as AKB0048 are a bunch pop idols who defy the laws and bring music into peoples hearts. The problem with the story is fact that they took it too far with the plot as in a group of teenage girls facing off against male soldiers in war. Its not believable that girls can beat soldiers with guns. Very dramatic with too much crying among the female characters.

Art: It was okay I did not like the eyes of the females with hearts in them ... and I get it there idols but it doesn't work for me. When they are singing its in 3d which I don't like keep it 2d.

Sound: No songs on this show stood out to me not memorable for viewers to go back to listen too.

Character: There are a lot of characters on this show and a few of them get a chance to shine I guess. The show doesn't focus too much on Nagisa which its strange since she is the main character.

Enjoyment: Not much enjoyment came from me everything seemed bland to me. Too much drama for these teenage girls about their idol status more than saving the world form boredom.

Overall: This anime did something fresh and different but sadly its not an anime that stood out. Ive seen better idol shows that kept it realistic unlike this show which it let it down. They did too much which they didn't have to just keep it simple and enjoyable. 4/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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