Aikatsu Planet!

I've been a fan of Aikatsu since 2014 and have kept up with the series until now, Aikatsu Planet has been nothing but abysmal, and I'm saying this in the nicest way possible. The story is very hard to follow with the live-action and anime being one of its main selling points, especially on the acting; no harm to the actresses I'm sure they're lovely people but banco has a thing for hiring rookies and these girls just, simply could not act if their life depended on it, even in the anime portions of the episodes the girls sound so monotoned. Another issue I had ... with this season was the shift from collecting cards to collecting monsters; one of Aikatsu's key points was cards, what was the reason for even changing that if no one had an issue with it? The only good point Aikatsu Planet had was the character design, but that's, honestly it. If you really want something that's more reminiscent of Aikatsu's older works then I recommend "Waccha PriMagi!", especially if you're an old Aikatsu fan like me.

As of writing this we know the forecasting for the rest of 2021 and 2022...Aikatsu Planet was a mistake but it has some decent parts to it.

I'll honestly break each section as I view it into 2 parts, live action and then animated as I feel they should be judged separately. Sound and Character will be combined into 1 as I will use it to focus on the acting quality of people as both actor and seiyuu but will be again split between live action and anime

Story(As a whole)- 2: It's just really bad. MC gets handed a top tier character cause the ... previous account owner was like "I'm tired of this so I'm out" and honestly never faces really challenge even when she loses she's given a rundown and behind the scenes look to why she lost and then just wins again.

Art Live action - 3: This goes into set design and costumes. Everything just looks so cheap here like they went to the local cosplay store and bought costumes and then called it good

Art Anime Section - 7: Honestly not real complaints here as I think it fits what is supposed to be going on well enough.

Sound/Character (Live action) -2: it's dreadful, if you've seen any stage play adaption of any anime/jrpg...its worse than that. I honestly have a hard time calling this acting to be honest. There's a high cringe factor to all the live action segments. Sentai/Kamen Rider/Garo aren't exactly high standards for acting but this makes those franchises look like oscar winning performances instead.

Sound/Character (animated) 4: Look I'm being generous here with the 4. It's barely above what we got with their live action performances but at least its more inline as its animated and I honestly felt like throwing these poor girls a bone

Enjoyment/overall 3.5: I honestly find some great aspects in this...only when it comes to the animated parts but at the same time the live action sections literally ruin this show.

In the end I get what they were sorta going for as I have my own opinions for why they chose live action for half the episode but that's not for here. Ideally what should have happened was they left the base idea we have intact but instead of using live action, animate it and then still have the girls travel into a virtual world for Aikatsu. As of this review I've only seen 6 of the 18 episodes out and there is to be 50...we can only hope we go back to a traditional format after this crashes and burns like the financial forecasts show and Bandai pretends this was just a fever dream.