Selection Project

TLDR: Disappointment. If you're here for the girls and the voice actors, fine. If you're here for the anime and story? Go watch Idoly Pride. Selection Project stole the plot and made it worse lol. If you're here for the music, just listen to the OP and ED on youtube.

I'm going to be pretty critical of the show, but everything is my honest opinion.

Disappointment is all I can say. The show had so much potential, and not only did it not make use of it, it trampled all over it and threw it in the trash. Before I blast you with all the negatives, I'll ... start with a few positives.
+ Great character design.
+ Great outfit design
+ Great synergy between the characters
+ Above average CGI
+ Decent animation for the most part

Okay now that I've told you the good parts about the show, let's dig in.
When you look for an idol show, what do most people expect? Usually it's 2 main things. Cute girls - which they got that down atleast - and good music + dance.

Now let me tell you how absolutely disappointed I am at the quality of the music in this show. Absolute hot garbage. To understand this let me explain without spoiling the show. There are 9 girls in this group, and within this group they are split into 3 subgroups. The problem isn't with the main group. The 9 girls together are actually really cute, have good chemistry, and the songs+dance are awesome. The problem is when you split these 9 girls into subgroups. These subgroups try too hard to be 'unique' and 'quirky' with their songs and choreography, the themes each of these groups have are either cringey, cheesy, or just doesn't work with the characters/talents within it. I know it's a marketing strategy to create subgroups within groups to make it easier for new fans to consume, but just dividing these girls up and giving them lackluster production isn't the play. Not to mention the mixing/production quality for the songs each subgroup respectively has are absolutely terrible.

TLDR; Here is my theory: To put it nicely. Selection Project has like 2 production teams. 1 team is a professional team dedicated to the whole group, they produce good quality songs and choreographs. The other team that produces the subgroup's products is a robot smashing a keyboard over and over again until something 'ok' comes out of the speakers. (The OP and the ED slaps though, but that's because it's not from the subgroups)
Edit: Did some more digging, the subgroups actually have a few decent songs, it's just not the ones in the anime.

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Okay but that wasn't even the worst part of the anime. The story was what made this show unwatchable. The best way I can describe the story in this anime is 'haha b*tch you got scammed'. The show presents itself with a pretty unique take on the competitive aspect of the idol industry. Obviously it's not the first show to do this sort of 'tournament arc but for idols' styled story, but the way it sets up the show allows for a lot of *potential* character development and interactions. But even after around episode 6, the show had done almost absolutely nothing to make use of this potential. Which, to be honest, is okay, it just became a typical idol show. But what happens after is not only blatant theft, but they stole another show's plot, and made it worse. Not only did they make a 'plot twist' that was completely unoriginal, it was so cheesy and cringey, as well as predictable that I think I stood up from my chair multiple times to go wash my eyes and ears out.

TLDR: Started off good for about 6 episodes, then: plagiarism, unoriginal, cheesy, cringey, predictable plot ensues.

(If you're curious about the show they ripped off of, its called "Idoly Pride". It's not god tier, but it's much better than this show, so go watch that instead of this)

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I'll end it on a positive note atleast. The characters. The characters are the saving grace of this show. Th girls' aesthetics and story are both well designed and cute. Voice acting and singing are decent, and they each have their own appeals.

But let me shout out one particular character from this show. And that is SumiPanda. The legend made the most cringey parts of this show bearable, and although this isn't a comedy show, the guy's humor is awesome. Great voice acting, great character, and awesome personality. Whoever put this character in the show was obviously making him a joke character, but who knew he would become the main protagonist?!?!? (He's not but I like to think he is)

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After watching this show I think I'll just follow the girls' voice actors on twitter and youtube, and try to erase my memory of this show's plot. It wasn't the girls' fault, it was the production of the anime and music that sucked. Mako best girl!!!!

I never been big on idol anime but decided to give this one a try... needless to say it is a experience that I will forget :). The show is pretty much about rip off ____ Got Talent and all that. (SPOILER WARNING AHEAD)


For me it started out fine, I was enjoying myself some what... but then they just never had anyone voted off and pulled a FRIENDSHIP IS POWER cliché. I never hated this cliché so much until this show, even after watching my little pony AND not to mention ALL of Fairy Tail. Then after they had no one voted off ... they disqualified everyone and made it a point to say they are trying to grow as a idol group (without any help from big company's like the one that runs the competition). Then about a episode or two of working on their own they just get to GO BACK AND FINISH?!?!

Now for the other point, I have no problem with characters idolizing dead idols... BUT it kinda gets weird near the end, but to explain why I first need to explain the 2 main characters back story. Our 1st main character is Suzuna who had a bad heart condition when she was young, she would watch this one idol Akari Amazawa (she was quite a fan). One day she got a heart from a organ donor, and got to leave the hospital.
The 2nd main character is Rena, who is Akari Amazawa's younger sister trying to follow in the foot steps of her dead sister. Her sister became a organ donor. Now that you know that it will be easy to put the 2 together... Suzuna's heart belongs to her childhood idol. She figured this out along with Rena
At some point near the end of the series Suzuna passes out do to overworking herself, so she gets taken to the hospital and ain't waking up. Rena is also there cause she is concerned for her friend. After a bit the show shows the dream Suzuna is having, where she is being asked stuff by Akari. Also during this conversation our main character looks like their younger self after the heart transplant. Near the end of the conversation Akari says she will always be with our main character well having her hands over the scar from the transplant. If that ain't weird enough she wakes up and says she talked to Akari and that she said she would always be with her right in front of the relative of Akari who is already established to be quite sensitive about her sister due to her sister not spending much time with her after her success.

On another note I think Rena might see too much of her sister in Suzuna after figuring out her deceased older sister's heart is in her. Even to the point that right before their last performance she looks at her and see's (and also hears) her sisters voice saying what Suzuna is saying...

This anime is pretty meh for what it does. Ok, I like the moe/yuri moment there, what’s new? Just the same usuals as seen in different anime’s that You or I watch. I won’t go hate on this anime because they are really on the same level as BanG Dream or Zombieland Saga, but not K-ON.

You can watch those animes I mentioned, because they might interest you the most than this. It’s fine if you want to give this a try because this doesn’t bother me anyways but to yourself nonetheless.

Not a bad anime, its just that same concept with different storyline and ... characters with different personalties.

The content is too same with Idoly Pride (from Winter 2021 line-up) with a really bit of unnecessarily modifications and even Selection Project haven't made a proper SWOT analysis on Idoly Pride so they are still lacking much things from Idoly Pride and even can't properly make more differences from Idoly Pride, so whatever that high quality of the animations from Doga Kobo, whatever the great job from voice actresses here, it's still disappointed because it's disrespecting Idoly Pride's creators and production companies, and also disrespecting the real purposes of Idoly Pride's production although if then Selection Project's production's real purposes has same thing with ... Idoly Pride's.

Although, I can respect only the episode 4 and partly episode 5, the only original thing from Selection Project.

6/10

This show clearly was inspired by Idoly Pride, which is not a bad thing if all it did was get some ideas from it. However, this show is a ripoff and is honestly not that great. The animation loses to that of Idoly Pride and so does the story. The story is just your traditional idol story, with some bad drama added in. The last episode was a copy and paste from the third. Very lazy overall and I expected much better than that. Additionally, the songs are worst as well. Personally, for me the songs are worst than every other Idol show I watched ... so far. Overall, save your time and just watch Idoly Pride, it is much better.

Diet X-factor.

Being spoiled by Love Live! Superstar! this summer has really backfired on my enjoyment of Selection Project. That’s not to say that Selection Project is a bad idol anime, far from it in fact. It’s nicely animated, the CG and music are good and the characters range from very likeable to… kinda there, but overall it’s just very… okay.

If you’ve seen any sort of singing competition like Pop Idol or X-factor then you already know what sort of general premise you’re getting into. Wannabe idols all over Japan compete to take part in the idol TV competition Selection Project to become the next ... top idol. We follow Suzune a former bedridden child who wants nothing more than to sing enter the competition and, thats basically the summary.

Unfortunately if you’re someone with at least ten working brain cells then you’ll be able to guess the big plot reveal the show teases in episode one because it’s really obvious. Not that I really minded all that much. It’s not a tense, drama packed soap opera or anything, but it was still very on the nose. That said, Selection Project not being that tense soap opera might be to the shows biggest disadvantage. It is a competition and though the characters to bicker at times it never really feels like the conflicts matter and they’re resolved too quickly or the story actively bends to make sure on one of the girls is left behind which doesn’t help for long term investment. I get that it’s going for light-hearted, feel good girl power, but the show feels stuck between these two ideas thanks to the nature of singing competitions.

I liked most of the characters. They all stick to their cliches very closely to try and differ from each other (there are 9 of them and one of them literally looks like a cat) but I never really felt attached to any of them as characters… expect Mako Tomo… she can step on me… anyway.
One thing I did notice in one episode was that the show (I think) unintentionally shines a light on the idol industries sexualization of young women and the weird, somewhat creepy persona’s they’re taught to forge in order to appeal to certain audiences. I just thought that was interesting.

Selection Project is not the best moe/idol anime out there, but I watched the whole thing and enjoyed it. It’s very chill if thats what you’re looking for, the characters though they don’t really stand out are entertaining and there are some good tunes in there to boot. It has it’s problems and it’s story probably won’t “wow” you, but you might have a good time with this one.

6/10 It’s Okay *thumbs up*