Story: 4
Let me start by saying this: when it comes to idol and music anime, I'm very hard to disappoint. I have on my shelves right now all 9 Love Live! girls, all 13 Idolmaster season 1 girls, and even the entire K-On band. I love me some good idol anime. This is not one of them. Even at first blush, the show looked ultra awesome. I mean, c'mon, they have mic-sabers and flying platforms! But the more they moved into the series, the more disjointed and nonsensical it became. They pick up threads, get half way through them, and then just dump them outright for the next gimmick. Add to that the incredibly weird system of 'generations' and we're just in all kinds of a mess.
For example, there are some girls in the actual main group that are like 11th or 12th 'generation' and are young women singing. Yet our main cast is primarily built around the 75th 'generation' growing and coming of age! How can we have a young 20-ish girl being SIXTY 'generations' older than the trainees in the current class? Even if you don't take 'generations' to mean an age group, and instead as nothing more than the most recent recruits, you still have to end up washing out dozens of 'generations' because there's only a handful of actual 00 members, and most of the trainees (our main cast) are from the 74th and 75th generation. Bout the only way it works is that they are churning out a generation every week or two, and even then it appears that the vast majority of the girls completely fail. This view is somewhat tempered by the fact the trainees are shown learning the ropes for a month or even more. This system is asinine and does not work.
Then we have a plethora of plot points picked up and then just utterly dropped for no reason. Late in the second season an important character dies, one who should have had a huge impact on a cast member, along with the policing force because of his immense power and wealth, but naw, he's dead, who cares, let's all dance and sing. He is mourned slightly, but gotten over quickly, and they never bother to tell us who killed him or why.
That's not the only flaw to come up. At one point they introduce an understudy position, of which there is competition and such for. They use the system basically once, and it's never mentioned again, for the most part. And why would this be an issue? Every performing group, from music to theater have plans in place to deal with unexpected absences. Why introduce the idea as something so radical and cause so much drama with it when it should have well been a given?
Furthermore, we're given a 'Dr. Claw' situation in a character called, I kid you not (in the dub) Sensei Sensei. He's like a pair of eyes and that's it, only says a word or two at a time, but is approached by the manager of 00 and the other attendants in full shrine maiden garb, like he's some kind of god or something. We never learn who or what he is. In fact he is rather redundant because we learn that it's the floating jellyfish things in their magical cave that make the decisions on who becomes a full fledged member or not.
Then they throw nonsense at us like the idea of a general election, which logically should decide who is a full member and who isn't right? Wrong. Succession still comes as the flying jellyfish or the god thing decide it. Why elect anyone to anything if the deciding factor is some flying, glowing blobs? Exactly what were they elected to? If the election picked the group, then why does the succession phenomenon occur?
They also go a strange route of having each girl that becomes a full fledged member take on the name of a retiring (or retired) former member. It's not absolutely outlandish, but it does cause a good deal of confusion as some girls move from being their given character name to being known as their 'new' member name. Also we really never see how retirement works for the group. There are a few characters that are former members, but they never explain if a girl is forced to give up the group at a certain age, or if she waits until her successor arises or anything. It's very random feeling.
They throw in extraneous details that seem to make no sense as well. They have friendly rivalries between girls who never complete on anywhere near the same level. They have a trainee they put forward as having real potential for leadership that never leads. They just seemed to grab an idea, run with it, and drop it before finishing it out properly.
All of these issues are set against the backdrop of entertainment being banned on many planets, which is utterly ludicrous. Who in the world thinks that sugary J-pop is going to destroy the fabric of society? I know there are those in the real world that live austere lives, but they do so by choice, not because they are forced into the lifestyle by the law. And of course we have an anti-entertainment military force fighting the group, along with a ragtag group of insurgents. If you really want to look at this way, the 00 group is kind of terrorists in a sense. They go someplace via spaceship, break the law concerning entertainment, and while they do not kill, they do destroy military equipment left and right. We have situations where the girls are singing their happy-go-lucky songs while beating the shit out of soldiers with their taser like mic-sabers.
The biggest issue throughout most of both seasons is this thing called the center nova. Apparently it has to be triggered under exact circumstances to happen, and the last one to do it literally disappeared. It is shown later that she is either dead or in a different dimension or some such. Yet everyone wants to be the center nova. Why in the world would there be so much competition for a position that, as far as is known for most of the run, killed the last person that held it? They never adequately explain what the center nova truly is beyond 'special' and what it means beyond 'music is love'. It's this big thing everyone wants to be, but with no clear motivation as to why.
I came into the series just loving the idea of Love Live! meets Star Wars or something, and I was completely let down by half baked ideas and nonsensical plots. I was more than ready to overlook flaws many would call out, but I just can't help but be utterly disappointed in what I saw, and the wasted potential they had and misused.
Art: 8
Wow, what a swing huh? The art is so cute it hurts. Most all the girls in the group or the trainees all have heart highlights in their hair and in their eyes. Other characters, especially former members, those hearts turn to diamonds. This is as cutesy as it comes, and I have to admit I did like the way the girls looked. There is one big issue though, in the concert mode, they kick over to CG and it is incredibly noticeable. This is really bad in the first season where we're not so familiar with as many faces, but even at the end of the second one, we still have this jarring transition between 'hand drawn' and CG animation that is absolutely irritating. It was the main thing that detracted from the score for me, as the 'moe' looks of the rest of the show work just fine for me.
Sound: 7
There's a lot of music to be had in this anime, and I found a lot of it catchy and fun. They don't hesitate to play music very often, sometimes playing a song in the climax of the episode just to turn around and play the end theme immediately afterwards. I liked the music well enough, none of it drove me wild, but I did tap my feet along with it many times. To me, if you're going to do a music/idol anime, you need to actually play some tunes, and this one does just that. Of course being based on a real life group I imagine helped a great deal in that respect.
The themes were nice enough, though none of them really stood out to me. They seemed to fit the feeling of the show nicely and I have no complaints, they just weren't all that fantastic to me. They get the job done, and that's what we're looking for.
The voice acting in the dub is a mixed bag. Some of the girls are absolutely ear destroying (the blonde in pigtails for exampe) while others, such as the main character sound just fine. A lot of them seem to be trying too hard to match up to the cutesy persona of the characters instead of working on putting in a good performance.
Character: 4
The entire cast seems to be overwritten. They try to shoehorn in too many elements such as the rivalries and other dramatic elements to the point it's just hard to keep up with. They seem to write each character with an arc in mind, but forget to make that arc match up with any other character, leaving each of them out in the wind, and making the whole thing disjointed. It's like they saw higher quality shows, and decided they wanted to use every element from those shows they could. But by throwing it in all together, instead of a delicious dish, we get just awfulness. Ambition for a project is good, but there is such a thing as overdoing it. They cross that line many times with most of the characters.
The character types are cliche, have the shy one, the earnest one, the annoying one, the sad one, the one filled with determination, so on and so forth. And with them all over dramatizing the plot points, it just really doesn't come together very well.
Enjoyment: 5
I found moments of the show to like, but very few. The music was a highlight for me, and a character or two kind of drew my attention, but for the most part, I wanted so much more than it could give, and I couldn't bring myself to really get into it. If they would have stuck to a few plot points and fleshed them out, we might have had a great show on our hands, but instead we get so busy with this and that, that the show kind of loses it's identity. A fatal flaw for any form of entertainment, for sure
Best Girl: Suzuko Kanzaki mainly because she's not over the top voice wise, she's quieter and more introspective, and very intelligent, knowing a great deal about the group's history and such. She doesn't seem to get caught up in the inane drama as much as the other girls do. Hence my vote.
Really there are better things to watch out there. If you're needing idol anime in your live, check Love Live!, check Idolmaster, check Kids on the Slope, hell check K-On even. Just don't let the cool sci-fi bend to this one fool you, it is nowhere near as awesome as the first couple episodes make it out to be. If this was the people's only form of entertainment, I can see why they banned it. Pass for sure.
