Wake Up, Girls! Shin Shou

"Wake Up, Girls!" is the story of growth and friendship of seven girls living in Sendai, Miyagi who form the idol group "Wake Up, Girls! (WUG)" and work together to become top idols.

Operating under a small production company in Sendai known as "Green Leaves Entertainment," WUG overcame countless obstacles to beat national idol group "I-1 club" at the Idol Festival and win the event. They had suddenly become top idols... but with an idol recession going on, things weren't so easy. The days of steady and honest idol work continued for the girls.

Meanwhile, Sendai-based middle school trio Hayashi Ayumi, Morishima Otome, and Atsugi Itsuka have developed an increasing desire to become idols...

(Source: wikia.com)

Shimada, Mayu Main

Yoshioka, Mayu Japanese

Okamoto, Miyu Main

Takagi, Miyu Japanese

Katayama, Minami Main

Tanaka, Minami Japanese

Nanase, Yoshino Main

Aoyama, Yoshino Japanese

Kikuma, Kaya Main

Okuno, Kaya Japanese

Hisami, Nanami Main

Yamashita, Nanami Japanese

Hayashida, Airi Main

Eino, Airi Japanese

Atsugi, Itsuka Main

Atsugi, Nanami Japanese

Hayashi, Ayumi Main

Hayashi, Coco Japanese

Morishima, Otome Main

Morishima, Yuuka Japanese

Yoshizawa, Takashi Producer

Shiraishi, Naoko Producer

Tanaka, Hiroyuki Producer

Momoda, Hideo Producer

Reviews

Sep 9, 2024

lycoping

Recommended

This is the second series, and third installment, of the "Wake up! Girls" story. Not to bury the lede, it was not quite as good as the first season, but I still don't quite understand why it's ranked so low.

Alright, the animation wasn't great. I'll admit that. There was a point in the end where the CGI was actually choppy, and it was clear that they took as many shortcuts as they could. That is why I didn't rate this a ten. But the story was still really good, and the ending, while not perfect, was very satisfying and I ... thought it was a fitting end to the series.

I found the interplay between the different idol groups to be very interesting, and I think one of the great messages of this series is that even though the groups were rivals and at odds with each other, they still supported each other, because at the end of the day, they became idols for a reason. That reason may be different for every idol, but the theme seemed pretty consistent - they became idols because they loved how they could make people smile. This may be a somewhat idealistic representation of idols, and in some ways this series is a love letter to idols and idol culture, but in other ways it's a stinging indictment, and I found that fascinating in its own right.

I don't regret having watched this. Truth is, even my cold, critical-of-idols heart was a little taken in by the kirakira, and that's not an awful thing. Recommend from me. But if you're looking for a work of art, well animated cute idols, and don't care about the story, you might as well skip it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Oct 7, 2018

rangerkoji

Mixed Feelings

Wake up girls is a series that was really low on my "to watch" list, and I think this is true for most people. As someone who loves to binge watch everything, I was waiting until the entire franchise finished, and I binge watched it.

My Overall Thought:
Some cool characters, ok story, good music, bad animation.

Synopsis:
Just the continuation from the "beyond the bottom" (not going to spoil it). However, we are introduced to a group of three girls that wants to become an idol. Job for the WUGs are steadily increasing, and are ready to put out their first album.


Story:
It was neither good or bad. Compared ... to the previous seasons, it felt lacking, but this is expected. It's hard to have a good story when you already develop your idol's story. The addition of the new 3 girls was refreshing, but it was nowhere close to revamp the story. I think this is why many idol anime end in 2 seasons, and WUG was no different. I don't think you can make another sequel with these characters. To me, this story felt more like the studio saying "we gave up on WUG and want to create a new story in the future, so let us add some new characters for the future franchise".

Art:
If you love watching the artwork (someone like me, especially if you can understand Jpananese and watches anime for the animation), I would not recommend this series. It got worse and worse over time. There were cut scenes that were too long, and I think it had to due with financial problem with WUG production. I think the overall rating would have been 8 if the artwork was better. Last episode was the only redeeming quality (it was really good).

Character:
I actually quite like the characters, but the character development is poor. We are introduced to some of I1 idol's problem (find out who yourself), and that was quite nice. However, I wish there were more to this. Also, alot of the characters disappeared from the previous seasons. For example, I was wondering what happened to bvex?

Sound:
Idol anime needs good songs. One thing I really liked about the songs in WUG is that all the songs felt like it was WUG (as they include this in the song). However, I felt that the songs were overused too many times, and it felt stale towards the end. I would rather have one new song being played, than have a repeat of 5-6 songs that WUG has already sung. Especially the last song they sang. I don't understand why the production team though it was a good idea to play the last live song before the actual finale.

Enjoyment:
It wasn't terrible. If I had my full attention to this anime, then it would have been a much lower score, but its not a bad anime to zone out of.

Overall:
I gave it a 6. But, this series did have potential. Nicer artwork, more funding, etc. Especially when there were some cuts that were okay for too long.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Dec 19, 2024

nanakibh

Not Recommended

The animation in this season is incredible. Incredibly bad. Like, it's actually impressive how bad it is. I can't believe that a show went to air in this condition. You've probably seen shows with bad animation before, but this is on another level. I don't remember the first season being especially well animated or anything, but it was nothing like this. This is like the show was given to people who tried to cover up the fact that they didn't even know HOW to animate.

I didn't notice it as much in the first couple episodes, but once you start to notice it, it's impossible to ... stop noticing. Shots will linger for 30 seconds or more on static shots of random things so they didn't have to worry about animating the characters. It happens VERY frequently. As a result, if you aren't very familiar with the voice actors, it's hard to tell who's even speaking sometimes. They often neglect establishing shots, so you won't even know who's in a scene until you hear them speak from somewhere out of frame. There are also a lot of very bizarre shot choices which all seem to be done strategically so that they won't have to animate anything, like only showing a character's head from their eyes up. Imagining what the storyboards looked like is depressing since all of their choices seem to have been based around doing as little animation as possible.

The artwork is terrible. Backgrounds look blurry and gross. Characters are often drawn off-model. Sometimes they look like they were drawn by people who don't know how to draw humans at all. It's weird.

The animation is at its "best" when they have performances with 3D models. You've definitely seen better 3D animation, so don't get me wrong. But at least the characters are moving. I can see how going full 3D could make production cheaper, since they wouldn't need to manually draw and color each frame. If that's the case, it makes me wish the entire season had been in 3D. Bang Dream switched from 2D to 3D and I don't think it suffered terribly for it.

It's hard to comment on the story because the animation is just that distracting. However, I can say that it feels like it has its eggs in too many baskets. One of its plots focuses on a virtual idol called Machina X. (It seems like it's supposed to be a synthesized voice like Hatsune Miku rather than a character voiced by a real singer, but that isn't made clear.) I think the show is trying to suggest that this virtual idol is a threat to the jobs of real idols. As someone who's been religiously keeping up with Hatsune Miku since 2008, I know that this wasn't true and especially wasn't a real concern in 2017 when this show came out, so it feels like this particular plot was written by someone who wasn't very familiar with virtual idols and/or saw them as an easy topic to fearmonger about.

I felt like the first season of Wake Up Girls was a hidden gem among idol anime. It was very, very good and deserved better than this. I'm shocked that anyone gave this higher than a 5/10 because it's THAT bad. I definitely wouldn't recommend this to people who liked the first season, but I might recommend it to anyone who wants to see just how amateurish a supposedly "finished anime" can look.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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