Uniquely MiliLive has inherited both negatives from Cinderella Girls and SideM. You have a stupidly large cast of girls, none of whom get any real focus on to flesh out their individual characters, alienating anyone who isn't into the games, alongside with a total non-entity of a Producer. See, one of the core aspects of Idolmaster is that the Producer himself is not just some self-insert; he is as much of a main character as any of the girls, and his proactiveness in some episodes is what elevates him above the usual "token male character in an all-female show" compared to other shows. You can easily remove MiliLive's Producer and it would not make a single difference. Speaking of the girls, there's just too many of them to keep track of, and their core archetype/personalities just get forgotten the moment they're offscreen. It's really bad when I can't even remember the names of half of them even at episode 12. They've also brought in the original cast (albeit some alternate reality version of them more similar to Imas 1's universe than Imas 2's) as bait, since they don't amount to much in the end as well.
And, I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding for people making Idol shows, and not just a MiliLive problem, but the actual idol parts of the shows are actually the most boring parts. In any work related show, the work aspect is just set dressing at the end of the day, and what people want to see are activities that happen outside of work. The 2011 Imas and U149 got this right by having the idol aspect be secondary while the real focus shifts to the characters and their interactions, growth, and relationships outside of work. Most of Million Live is just about preparing for the big show, and doing the big show. It's just watching people work. It's honestly no different to coming to the office and having one of those shallow conversations with your colleagues: You pretend to talk about something exciting to mask the dread of monotony in the workplace. Most of Million Live's interactions rarely involve the personal relationships or developments around the characters, but instead are mostly work-related. Oh Shizuka's sad because her dad disapproves of her idol work? Come on that's boring. This is nothing like Risa's anxieties in U149 or Chihaya's dead brother in 2011. Why is it so difficult for the production committee to understand that we enjoy these kinds of shows because of the characters, not because of the work they do. At this point I'm even content with the melodrama from Mio in CG or Sakuraba in SideM, because at least those were focused on the characters themselves.
Honestly, maybe the adaptation was too little too late. After all, the heyday of MiliLive was around when the 2014 movie aired, and that was as good as an adaptation MiliLive was ever gonna get, even if it's only ever focused on Kana. But at least it was focused on someone and delivered a spectacular finale. I felt nothing after MiliLive's 2023 adaptation ended, and I dread to think how the Shinymas adaptation is gonna be like. At this point maybe giving the girls Mechas to fight asteroids may have been a better alternative.
5/10
