The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls is based on a mobile Game, made by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment. The anime started airing in January 2015, it is a 2 cour anime , in the post which was supposed to be a review, I’ll write about my impressions of both seasons.

https://youtu.be/n-_HcT6eRSI

When it started airing, I watched two episodes and thought “Well, maybe I’ll rather stop here”. The whole Idol hype around that time appeared rather awkward to me. Miette-chan was more excited about it, I noticed that my lack of idol knowledge started upsetting him XD. Since I also wanted to watch a complete anime anyway I decided to continue with the anime.

The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls is labeled as Comedy, Drama and of course Music anime.

The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls game features around 190 different Idols, but of couse not everyone could appear in the anime. It centers around ~14 main idols, but there are some short guest appearance, each character gets their fair amount of screentime.

The anime centers around the big talent agency 346 Production and a newly developed project, called the Cinderella Project! “Normal girls” who are actually not considered as idol material are chosen to be aspiring idols. The first episodes are used as intro of the setting and introducing the Idols, each character gets steadily more fleshed out as the show continues.

The nameless Producer-san is in charge of scouting, managing the Idols and develop their career. He is a dilligent office man, although rather inexperienced. His outer appearance makes him look kind of suspicious, which turned into a running gag now and then.

Comedy is an essential element in the beginning, the excited and impatient Idols obviously create quite a ruckus in the office, but it gets less crazy soon. Producer-san tries his best with preparing each Idols debut, the story slowly goes on and tells more about each Idol. As the Idols and Idol groups are going to be official, each gets a nice episode dedicated to them.

The second season is more about moving on as Idol, parting ways, etc. Also an antagonist is introduced  in shape of the label boss, who strictly uses an authoritarian leadership style, which makes things slightly uncomfortable for everyone. Most episodes center about the weakness or problems of the single Idols and Idol groups some weeks after their debut.  In this aspect it feels more grown up than the other iDOLM@STER anime from 2011.

The anime has an overarching plot, focusing on the three aspiring Idol trio Uzuki, Mio and Rin, together they are New Generations. Surprisingly the happier episodes are dedicated to the more eccentric Idol characters and their struggles and adventures in the Idol industry.

Personally I have a little problem with the Idol industry by default, the Idols only stand there in cute clothes with their created image. The music and text already gets arranged before the Idol does anything or can anything decide by herself. Sure most popular pop songs weren’t written by the performer. Furthermore, I would agree that singing and dancing is already hard work enough for a teenage girl, I can’t demand that they all can write their own songs.

Surprisingly the issue of having only little influence on the music and image is also addressed in one episode, I nodded approvingly. iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls adresses the problems and circumstances of the Idol business rather openly. Although most idols mainly experience smaller hardships. Uzuki, Mio and Rin experience the really bad things.

The members of New Generations are high maintenance, it is a problem group. Their story consists of drama, the last heavy drama, made the audience suffer with a mentally stressed girl, reduced to a pile of bitter tears. I was surprised about such an heartwrenching event.

The reduced amount of happy events concerning the members of New Generations makes them look neglected, as they are ought to be main characters.

In summary

As a whole The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls is a very good anime, as it is portraying the adventures of normal girls with lovely personalities, that are chosen to be sparkling idols.

Most idols are naturally enchanting, some are a bit crazy but that doesn’t make them look bad. The nervousness an anxiousness of inexperienced idols is shown very convincing. Another strong point of it is definetely variety, funny, thoughtful, dramatic or touching episodes, everything is there. The authors did a good job with the setting and making every idol, not only fit in the plot, they wrote great subplots for each girl to make them shine.

I had a few prejudices when I started to watch this show, but I quickly enjoyed this wonderfully made  anime. While a few things, like adding such an antagonist were slightly questionable. Also the main characters except Uzuki couldn’t really convince me, Rin is beautiful, but emotional she is a bit awkward and Mio… she really made things a mess, not only once. Fortunately the other idols make up for the little shortcomings of the anime.

On another point Cinderella Girls is real eye candy, it looks very appealing with it’s mainly great animation works. Music also sounds very good, quite some effort was put into it.

The appeal of animes with so many idols is, that there are guaranteed a few characters the viewer might like or can relate to. While watching the show and the especially nicely directed subplots I liked nearly every Idol in this anime and I also developed supporting feelings.

In the next paragraph let me languish over my favorite idols XD

Kirari Moroboshi was quite a surprise for me, I instantly fell in love. Kirari is extremely kind and brimming with positive energy. Kirari loves all cute things and all cute girls. I liked her great sense of fashion. She is a somehow crazy and upbeat girl, also the tallest idol. She always pitches her voice at the end of the sentence *kyahhh!*. Her size and personality and the fact that she always has a helping hand for others, make her a happy hippie older sister type.

Anastasia is the daughter of a japanese mother and russian father. She often uses russian words in her speech . Her soft, slow paced way of speaking gives me impression that she’s a thoughtful person. When dealing with other people she is very gentle and extraordinary sensitive torwards others feelings. And just look at the gorgeous eyelashes (｡’▽’｡)♡!

As group I really liked Miku Maekawa and Riina Tada. At first Miku is an annoying girl, but she grow on me, she’s actually enchanting. When put together Miku and Riina appear like an impossible combination with their totally polar interests, over time they really grow together as group and also as close friends.

And you… have you already watched The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls?

Do you like a certain Idol?

When you think you have seen everything in anime Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai! will disabuse you. SekaTsuyo is a 12 episode long  anime which aired during the Anime Fall Season 2013 from October till December. It was produced by Arms who always combine fanservice and fighting in their shows, Maoyuu Maou Yuusha might be a popular exception.

The show combines the world of women wrestling and Idol industry. Someday everybody learned that WWF and the likes are scripted events and no real tournaments where the best one wins. Also women wrestling always appeared a bit silly as far as I remember.
In SekaTsuyo they portray women wrestling like a real sport without much of fake events or much *bling bling*, it’s more honest competition than show.

httpvh://youtu.be/Yi_4R9mFeN0

Sakura Hagiwara is 17 and the heroine of this show an honest, cheerful and considerate girl who is part of a large Idol Group called Sweet Diva.  Sakura is a hard working and talented character and so she constantly wins the vote, of being the center girl, very much to  the frustration of her biggest rival and best friend Elena.

One day Sakura and Elena have an appointment in a wrestling gym called Berserk, it was planned that they should be filmed while doing some light training, but after Elena acted a bit disrespectful in the gym which calls the  ger of one of the female wrestlers, Kazama Rio. During a little quarrel between the wrestler Kazama and Elena one thing leaded to another and Kazama insulted Sweet Diva as silly bimbo idols, this offended Sakura with her honor as idol on the line Sakura challenges Kazama to an official match. A quite stupid idea.

Sakura tries her best, but never had a real chance of winning. After her quite humiliating defeat Sakura announces to take a break from Idol business, to fully concentrate on becoming an professional wrestler until she had beaten the girl who kicked her ass in the recent event and insulted  her and her idol friends. The manager of Berserk allows her to train in the gym to become a pro wrestler, but the more experienced wrestlers see her as a real eyesore.

Unwillingly a coach offers to give her some advice and coaching, but instead of starting slowly the coach treats her really rough. Nevertheless, the coach acknowledged Sakura’s potential and gives her a tough training shedule, as top Idol she already has a certain level of fitness, but some quite hard months awaited the girl.

After many months of training Sakura has a final exam or something like that before she will be allowed to participate in official matches. She has to endure a barbaric ritual and really suffered this day. I never felt so bad for a girl in an anime, the duration made it even worse, also that Sakura never complained, she blindly endured it, even though she was in pain and quite vocal about it. At this point I thought about dropping this anime, since this scene looked so cruel.

As she is allowed to take part in matches she unintentionally plays safe and just gives up the match, after she is in too much pain, that this won’t get her anywhere is no secret.

Sakura’s cute cries of agony are actually rather hot, but when you see the submission moves (which means the painful bending and stretching of limbs where the opponent can hardly escape.), you can easily feel sorry for her and start rooting for her to leave the ring in one piece.

Just from listening the show could be mistaken for an hentai, a really grim one. I bet my parents thought that I watched hentai instead of an wrestling anime.

That the fights often have a sensual sometimes arousing outcome, is made entirely on purpose. Sakura’s cries, moaning, heavy breathing can be rather exciting in combination with her  pretty body. It might have something in common with hentai, but the horny monsters are replaced with rough wrestler women XD, don’t get me wrong there is really no sexual harassment.

The targeted audience of this anime are males. Well, there are a few shower scenes, yet most of the fanservice stems from the tight, partially skimpy outfits of the wrestlers. Sakura’s outfit in particular, which seems like a tribute to Gunbuster is showing a lot of cleavage and skin.

Most of the girls look very attractive in close up or portray scenes, the animation style really shines.  They have minimal more muscles than the usual anime girl, which actually looks very hot. I think Sakura and most of her wrestling buddies look gorgeous.

The level of violence is rather mild, there is a only little blood, one broken bone. Also kicks and punches in the face are pretty rare, the worst scenes are  the submission moves, it’s so painful to watch and a Sakura in tears makes it even worse. I’m quite familiar with stretching pains and twisted tendons, it fucking hurts. Even from just watching  it, it hurt. At one point, I just wanted her to quit wrestling forever. Watching girls in pain is something I don’t really like in general.

Many frustrating, unsuccesful fights later, one experienced wrestler shows a heart and offers to improve Sakura’s fighting style, as I’ve witnessed this certain training, I felt really sick and angry.

The best moment of SekaTsuyo is the episode where Sakura finally gets rewarded for all the hardships and pain she suffered  until now in pro wrestling. The suffering before really made sense at this point, all the sympathy the viewer hopefully built up for Sakura was unloade in this moment. It is the kind of feeling wrestling or other sport fans have when their favorite overcomes a tough fight, match or whatever. It was a touching moment, I felt so proud of her.

The show does a good job in pacing the story over it’s 12 episodes, on the downside the anime is so strongly focused on the wrestling and the events in the gym. Well, sometimes it is showing what Sakura’s idol friends are doing. There was much more potential in it  than just that. Where it falls short is the portrayal of some free time activity or in telling the viewer a bit more about the other characters, but the 12 episode limitation prevented such things from happening.

 Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai! has an interesting, refreshing concept of a sport themed anime, it features a charming main character with both an attractive body and a likeable personality. It was fun, often painful to follow Sakura until she gained her victory.

With attractive girls and a nice animation style the show also has some good eye candy.
When this anime would have been about males, in all honesty I hadn’t watched this show.
The wrestling moves are portrayed in a convincing way, the submission moves in particular where quite detailed. yet it appears to be more realistic than the wrestling fake on television.

When you can’t watch girls in pain, stay away from this anime, it won’t do you any good.

Idolm@ster is a 25 episode long anime which aired from July to December 2011 it was produced by A1 Pictures and Aniplex. Idolm@ster is an anime adaption of the popular XBox console game with the same title, I never played any of these games, but I was interested in watching the show.

At first I wasn’t sure if a 25 episode long anime show could do justice to the background and personality of each of the 12 (13) idols. But I must say that it worked surprisingly well.

The anime starts with short introductions of all the aspiring Idols of the Idol agency 765pro through the lens of a cameraman. 765pro appears like a small, family like agency, where the idols and the staff are hanging out and having fun, unfortunately they don’t have many appointments, so they read magazines and do other nonsense. Later the cameraman turned out as the new producer, called Producer-san who should help the Idols to become more successive.

The Idols

An interesting aspect of Idolm@ster are of course the Idols, all the girls are quite unique characters with different personality’s, while sharing the same dream of becoming an idol, everyone of them has different motivations and reasons to take a step into the Idolbusiness.

Despite the number of characters, every girl has a good recognition value. The Idols are Haruka, Ami, Mami, Hibiki, Yukiho, Miki, Makoto, Chihaya, Iori, Azusa, Takane, Yayoi and Ritsuko, who is mainly working as producer at 765pro and only acts as Idol in case 765pro is short on people.
All of the characters can be considered as main characters, but there are certain persons who get more screentime than others. Haruka for example is very present during the whole show.

My favorite characters were Haruka, Iori, Makoto and Azusa. Haruka the main heroine who is also the heart of the 765pro , I liked her since the first second she appeared on Idolm@ster.

Iori, well I have a weak spot for petite anime girls who are voiced by Kagumiya Rie. With her rich girl tsundere attitude Iori is rather enchanting and her even brown hair is just beautiful.

Makoto is cool and athletic, I was able to see her feminine side despite her more tomboyish style.
With her 21 years Azusa is one of the older Idols at 765pro, she has a very pretty appearance, is extremely kind and has a bad sense of direction, she is somehow the motherly and caring type.
All the characters are quite likeable, even though I had a few problems with Miki in the last part.

2DT had more refined descriptions about all the Idolm@ster girls in part 1 – 2 – 3 on his blog.

I also would like to know which were your favorite Idols, so feel free to tell me at the end of this post.

Story

At first Producer-san seems to be quite overextended with taking care of these lively and happy characters and the jobs he gets for them are quite lame, but soon things slowly start to improve, but as they start being successive, a villain appears, the boss of the Idol agency 961 Production, who sabotages the appointments of 765pro by using his influence in the industry.

The main story follows 765pro and the Idols on their journey to success. Most episodes consists of episodic stories which concentrate on a certain Idol dealing with her weaknesses or problems and mentally growing during this process, these episodes still feel connected with the main story because the main goal of becoming an Idol is always present. The relationships between the group of Idols are very well fleshed out what is also noticeable in the character centered episodes, there are always Idols who are supporting the main character of the episode when it is needed.

The anime consists of character centered episodes and episodes where everybody at 765pro plays a role. Idolm@ster feels diversified in regard of storytelling, the personality of each girl is very well reflected in the character centered episodes as well as in the group centered episodes. Even when you don’t like a certain girl you can at least see where they are coming from.

Idolm@ster is mainly light hearted, slice of life comedy, but also makes good use of drama elements. At the beginning of this anime there is a lot of hilarious slapstick comedy, but as the story progresses there is less comedy, especially near the end, the anime gets a darker tone.

I guess I already told you in an older post that Im no fan of the real Idol industry, while I like cute girls and a little Jpop, I don’t like how some of these girls are or have to sell themselves.

The presentation of the Idol industry in Idolm@ster is a bit romantically idealized, but the show at least scratches a bit on the downsides of it, like being exploited in questionable entertainment shows or receiving bad gossip from the media. In episode 4 a few of the Idols appear in a bad game show where the cameramen were trying to peek under the skirts of girls all the time.

technical aspects

The visual presentation of Idolm@ster is very appealing and shows a high quality, the backgrounds are very detailed and the animations, even during the concerts seem very fluid and are very well choreographed. In some episodes they made use of nice lights and shadows which gives certain scenes a cineastic look. Overall the quality leaves a very positive impression.

The idols are voiced by very good voice actors since a few of the idols are younger and there’s quite a number of high-pitched voices. There is a lot of Jpop music inside this anime and the always different ending songs are either performed by one or more of the 765pro Idols. I only liked a few of these ending songs, for me they don’t had the same impact as the opening songs.

“READY!!”

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r53LlIRGG7E&feature=related

“CHANGE!!!!”

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIG4mhLcplo

 Final Words

Idolm@ster delivers a lot of entertainment over the entire 25 episodes. The anime combines cute girls, slice of life, comedy and character development placed inside an Idol business setting. What first appeared as a mere comedy show about a bunch of weird Idols, quickly developed into a very likeable show about all the 13 aspiring Idols of 765pro aiming for their success in the industry.

The miscellaneous kinds of episodes range from lighthearted, slightly cheesy stories to very well executed drama. The very nice character interactions overshadow the one or another not so good part in the storytelling. The character centered episodes are very well interwoven with the main story and every Idol is equipped with an proper amount of screentime. Only Takane seems to received the short end of the stick, she was a rather undeveloped character during the show.

For me Idolm@ster was a highly enjoyable show which I liked to follow in the second half of 2011,
I had a lot of fun with all these likeable characters and the technical presentation of this anime.
My favorite episodes were 7, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20 was very good, 24 and 25.