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I'm not entirely sure what was going on half the time, the plot is a bit unique for an idol anime, while also completely failing at whatever it was trying to do, a group of 8 girls have been sent a letter to audition for an idol group, and the show is their story of how they got popular, pretty normal idol anime plot until you realize the backstories for the characters take up a great margin of the show which really wouldn't be an issue if the events that take place within those backstories weren't so predictable, they all felt kind of half-assed and like an excuse to make us connect with the cast (and therefore the real life idol group) more, I've honestly connected more to characters I know little to nothing about than most of the idols in this show. All of the girls backstories follow a similar plotline of "two or more people existing, existence is abruptly halted for one of them, be sad" or "two or more people existing, family crisis, be sad." Yes, all the scenes in question are extremely human and personify the cast, but it doesn't really feel deserved when I'm watching an episode and it goes from 22/7 is about to preform on-stage, to watching how terrible their lives used to be, it just feels like I breached their privacy, I did not earn this, there's no warning or anything, the only character who's backstory I felt I actually deserved was Jun's, solely because the episode was based around her ALONE and it fit the plot decently well. The flashbacks have caught me off-guard on multiples occasions because they were so random, although rarely it will actually fit the story and bring some meaning to the group, but more often than not it's just trying to make me feel for the characters.
Moving on, lets talk about the "Conflict" of the anime, there's little to none, the first episode introduces "The Wall", a being that gives orders that the girls have to follow because "The Walls orders are absolute", literally no further explanation ..okay, these orders always end up working out, no matter what happens. "The Wall" poisons all the girls in one episode, but one of them coincidentally didn't like the texture of the food and didn't eat it, so she's fine and has to continue all the tasks the entire group was supposed to do, which would've made for good conflict, but I knew that she wasn't going to fail because "The Wall" is never wrong, you can predict the next 2 episodes just by one scene where "The Wall" is giving orders, that's why when the girls were told to disband, I didn't even care anymore, the show was going to end with them somehow not disbanding and it being all "woo, we defied the wall, the wall meant nothing after all and we did it all on our own!" junk. The show is sorta good at being an angst show, but not a great idol show to promote a girl group, or a good show in general really, when I watch multiple episodes in a row and the only conflict within those episodes are things that happened in the past, things that do not matter, and things that are completely unrelated to the "story", it just makes watching it feel more or less like a drag, a lot of times the present conflict was easily resolved for the cast by just saying "oh well 'the wall' said it would happen, so it'll happen" which completely just ruins all tension.
TL;DR: anime is purposefully angsty to promote idol group, all conflict can be summed up by saying "the wall is always right"
