Let me tell you something: there are entire, hundreds of episodes long shounens that can't do suspense and tension like IDOLISH7 can. There were way more instances this season than there should have reasonably been for an idol anime where I was absolutely astounded at the intensity and dark themes that bled all over the place. Admittedly, the last third of this season wasn't quite up to the standards I expect from IDOLISH7 at this stage, which is why I've not given it a 10, but the majority of this season was more heat than anything I've seen from this show so far. Which is my favorite part of the whole experience. Who doesn't want to walk away from every episode feeling hype?
In more concrete terms, this season took a departure from the personal dramas the characters were experiencing that were beginning to feel underwhelming and used the season to widen the scale of the series from being about seven guys and their friends to being about the entire industry. With that came new character developments that felt fresh and positively contributed to the new tone being built this season. But the thing that I found the most impressive is that this half of season three was meant to set up for the second half, and yet, this half didn't feel like it was only doing what it had to do. It had so much color within it that it felt like the point of the whole series, despite the fact that it was only an introduction to everything else.
Back into the small issue I had with this season, I'll mention that the way certain stories were revealed this season, as well as a few events that happened, felt disconnected from the rest of the story. They even felt like a drop in quality from the rest of the season. It's not that insane things have to happen every episode, but the navigation between lightheartedness and the darker, soap opera-esque content wasn't great this season.
Continuing with the good stuff, we had some super interesting characters make their debuts this season. One of them in particular is one of the most intriguing characters I've seen in recent anime for a long, long time. I thought the character relationships that got introduced and developed this season were much preferable to the ones we've gotten before now. It's not that those relationships were forgotten, but the plot did acknowledge that they needed to be shelved for the time being to introduce fresh concepts.
I guess the main point I have with this review is that IDOLISH7 took a step outside of its box and managed to make a really fascinating season full of drama and suspense and darkness that was extremely enticing to come back to week after week. I think the direction it's going in has the potential to be really flat if it doesn't bring back some of the heavier themes that were within this season, but if those themes continue, IDOLISH7 will only get better. I'm more excited about this anime than I have been about an anime in a long time, so I'll be in this for the long haul.
