Jul 8, 2021
Not good.
Since there are no reviews yet, I guess I'll fire the starting signal. As a big fan of idol/band anime, I was waiting for this movie to get subbed since it aired (many thanks to the team of translators), but I've been greatly disappointed. Disclaimer first, I'm not a fan of the original Tokyo 7th Sisters games and this has been my first real exposure to the franchise, so I won't be able to say how faithful to the original or how good as an adaptation this is, just judging it as a standalone film.
This is probably the blandest and most insipid idol anime
...
I have seen; even moreso than the first Love Live series, which is saying a lot. The fact that the opening act of the movie isn't even animated and just some SD models over music is already a redflag, and it never really picks up.
We get introduced in a fairly cool way (via a relay race of video presentations) to the group of 12 idols, of which exactly 0 get any character presentation nor development after the initial establishment of the anime archetype they represent. The cheerful leader, the aloof dark-haired girl, the ojou, the gaijin, the lazy bum who really shouldn't be working as an idol realistically, and so on. Instead of developing the idols, it goes for iCarly level writing by introducing us to Badguy McYuppie, who confronts the girls a million times to laugh like a maniac, belittle idols, and tell them how worthless they are, and how he's buying their stadium and... converting it to... other type of business. How evil!
It's the cheesiest and most boring route they could have taken, and they of course did it. I'm not opposed to these kinds of characters as a concept. I like Kuroi in the 2011 Idolmaster Anime because it was an over-the-top, ironical take on these kinds of villains. I like Mishiro in Cinderella Girls because her actions actually make sense for a capitalist tycoon and isn't really confrontational, same with Shiraki in Wake Up Girls. But this is just utterly stupid, and unlike my previous examples, it also takes up the entire plot neglecting what should be the focus of an idol anime (or almost any story really): its central cast.
If you want to watch it for some cute dance scenes, I've got good and bad news. The good one is that every dance scene is animated on 2D. The bad one is that there... isn't really dance scenes. I'm not kidding, they show us two live shows and they consist on the girls staying on the initial spot and doing a basic move while singing. There isn't any choreography, nor cool camera shots that make what is happening stand out. It's almost impressive they pulled out on this too. There are some nice insert songs along the way that I'm sure T7S fans would appreciate, at the very least.
My very low score of 3/10 might seem offputting or too harsh, but I really didn't find anything enjoyable in this film aside from character designs, and is not even remarkable in that sense. I really cannot recommend it to anybody, not even fans of the genre.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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