Reviews

In a word, disappointing. Idoly Pride had a fantastic opening episode that soon degenerated into a very by-the-numbers, predictable storyline. The principal issue with the show is that the characters are never meaningfully challenged and overcome every test without any difficulty. Our protagonists are going to be up against the biggest veteran idols in the industry? I can't wait to see how they'll work to prepare for this! Oh, they just did more of their usual barely coached training routines and won in their first face-off, okay. There is no reason to be invested in their struggles, because, aside from paying some minor lip service to a potential scandal or family conflict, the characters don't seem to have any they aren't able to immediately shrug off. No one has to grow because they're already perfect at what they do.

The majority of the cast is also severely underutilized. If you're not the ghost or directly related to the ghost, good luck getting more than a few lines each episode. For purportedly "main" characters, it's next to impossible to remember their names from week to week. The rival groups don't fare much better. They get very little screen time until it's their day to perform, at which point they get five or so minutes of a flashback for the audience to maybe feel sorry for them when they're summarily beaten. But it's okay; somehow, losing still won them the approval of their dad/producer or whatever, so we can count their character arcs as complete and realized.

The performances themselves are incredibly bland. The CG animation noticeably stutters when trying to render more than two people at a time on stage, and the 2D animation is few and far between, compensated heavily by stills. Every group that performs does little more than sing and dance, which might be fine for a small-time gig, but the competition at the center of Idoly Pride is advertised in-universe as one of the biggest events of the year. And yet, the performances at the finals are no different from the performances in the early rounds. I realize asking for a few explosions or fancy fireworks might be outside the realm of feasibility for the animation studio, but at least attempt some more inspired lighting effects. Is the audience happy to pay presumably over 10k yen a ticket and travel across the country just to see the occasional little puff of fire at the end of a song?

Though Idoly Pride might have enough cute girls to distract the less attentive viewer from its excessively formulaic storytelling, its problems will be readily apparent to anyone who has already seen their fair share of media. If you're interested in this show, by all means start watching it. I still enjoy the first episode as a stand-alone tale of a girl with big dreams that ended up getting cut short. But if you find yourself losing interest afterwards, go ahead and drop it. It won't get better from there.