As a big fan of the original iDOLM@STER who’s seen the original series and the movie twice and planning on a third time, you should’ve seen my face when they announced another season. It was still iDOLM@STER, even if only tangentially, and iDOLM@STER holds a special place in my heart. But this… this was just never quite what I wanted it to be. I couldn’t find the passion in it that drew me in to the original so quickly – it felt way more content with its character quirk busywork, and it never really lived up to its potential. And frankly, I’m not sure if it ever even wants to. It spent so much of its time trying to sell its characters to its rabid pre-existing fanbase, and what momentum it might try to build only ended up dithering away through its obsessive focus on keeping its one-note personalities as intact and samey as possible.
While the directors of this and the original iDOLM@STER do have very different styles, it really did feel like there’s a certain energy that was missing here. And it’s not quite that it was less upbeat (although it certainly was less upbeat) and more that it was missing this extra layer of creator personality. It felt like it was just going by the motions – like it was just being iDOLM@STER – what with it spending so much time on giving each character quirk its dedicated screentime. And, sure, you could make an argument that the original iDOLM@STER also went by its motions, but it felt like this show really ramped up the optimisation for Maximum Screentime Efficiency. The original iDOLM@STER felt like it was directed by someone who likes The iDOLM@STER, while this felt like it was directed by someone who just really likes anime.
And with the less creator personality in this show it also apparently comes without any of the cynicism present in the original – this really is just much more content with its characters quirking it out and letting the fans do the rest of the engagement work. Something from the original that really caught me off by surprise was during the Gero-Gero Kitchen reality cooking show where they deliberately show these small visual asides like a cameraman focusing their camera on Haruka and Chihaya when they fell over, trying to frame their compromising situations with an enticing spin. The show wasn’t going to make its quirks Super Nuanced Characters but it was moments like this along with how it liked to revel in some of its obvious ridiculousness that I thought really gave it an extra breath of life.
I bring this up because there was a scene halfway through one of the earlier episodes with three idols posing in police uniforms when one of them suddenly bursts open, revealing part of her chest. They give it a close-up shot and play it completely straight, with no cameramen zooming in or even any remarks from the audience.
And I was like, “what?”
It’s a small scene, yeah, but it didn’t feel like something The iDOLM@STER would ever really do. It almost felt like a sort of cynicism in its own way, like the creators were sticking to their market data studies and concluded they needed to add something like this every once in a while between all the quirk screentime to maximise its fan appeal. But it didn’t stop there.
I thought the biggest offender of this show’s constrained, passionless core was when three other idols ended up on a variety show and they play out their quirks without missing a single beat. Having them go on a variety show was fine, but having them go on a variety show and just letting their one-note personalities do all the work felt pretty darn lazy. It put the focus on their inherent character, but since they’re pretty much entirely predefined entities there wasn’t a whole lot of personality to them in the first place. Of course, you could draw the immediate comparisons to the original iDOLM@STER’s Namassuka!? Sunday, but that episode felt far more playful and self-aware. The show never really gives most of its expansive cast any particular nuance and it’s especially exacerbated by the very passive, self-contained writing – all the small moments of self-seriousness kept piling and piling but refusing to burst, leaving the entire segment feeling even less passionate than some of its busiest of busywork.
And I think it’s really a shame because this show’s more organic dynamics could’ve really worked well with the things it tried to do, and it didn’t have to compromise any of its own integrity to do it. The performances, while not entirely common, were fantastic visual treats, and they were great to see how far this show could stretch its creative muscles. Its dramatics had visual subtlety in spades, and it imbued a whole wealth of personality to even the smallest of gestures – a small hand movement or a slight sideways glance – that spoke quiet volumes by themselves and helped keep everything firmly grounded in the personal. I don’t think we've ever really had anything like this in the original iDOLM@STER outside of dramatic setpieces like episodes 20 and 24, so there were parts of this that almost felt like a completely different show.
Because the more I keep looking at it, the more I can see its very obvious strengths. The genuine heart I could feel from Producer's final "You had a nice smile today" despite his usually stoic and uninvolved nature brought the biggest grin to my face from all the shows I've seen in the past month, and it was a perfect reflection of both the Producer's and idols' journeys while very smartly playing to this show's talents as an organic and natural product. It's something unique to this show you could've only barely found with the original iDOLM@STER, because that was rarely going to try to be as grounded as this. It's a high-profile, high-budget, and high-effort franchise blockbuster that could've done things few other shows would've ever even dreamed of. It’s not over yet, and there’s still a whole second cour to go, so maybe this is when things will actually start kicking in and this show can finally be the star it’s always wanted to be. But for now all I can think about is how the ballroom's been packed for hours, yet it's been dead quiet - the ball's halfway over, and no one's really tried to dance.
