Hi folks, recently it was anniversary of my blog, indeed another year passed. The idea of Wieselhead.de was born 2010 and it went online on May 15th. I really run this since six years. In the last 12 months I’ve reviewed 16 figures, apparently I like my variety of swimsuit figures.

I simply write reviews about my recently purchased figures, wieselhead.de is my baby and taking pictures, writing text, in the end adding another review fills me with joy and also pride.

What I really noticed this year is that I managed writing and structuring reviews much faster.

Staying active and dedicate your freetime to something for such a long period is a positive thing, still with more and more figure blogs shutting down activity, I start to feel lonely, I can count the number of remaining and active blogs with two hands, it was so lively back then.

My activity decreased a little since some time as well. I simply ordered less figures compared to previous years. Partially of lacking interesting material, insanely high prices also play a big role. An additional reason is that my interest shifted more in the doll territory.

Yeah the dolls, a few people are upset about Dollfie Dream and the likes. but I really began to like this hobby a lot. In the first place I started with fashion dolls for photography reasons. I’m still a rookie at dollphotography, it’s really difficult to get everything right. But that also makes it very interesting because it’s a real challenge where I can slowly learn to improve. Also just taking care of pretty fashion dollls and spoiling them with new stuff is surprisingly fun as well.

Taking care of my now 3 Dolls , Lady Mirai (SmartDoll), Rio (DDS) and Chiyoda (DDdy) distracts my usual worries about the blogsphere. I’m feeling less bitter about certain things now.

The stats of Wieselhead.de stayed as they always were, which is actually hilarious. I really suck at advertising my content, it always made me feel strangely uncomfortable. Which is not beneficial for a ambitious hobby photographer in times of omnipresent social media. I will never win a popularity award, but actually I feel confident in my figure photography.

I still appreciate bishoujo figures and figure photography a lot in general and still have as much fun with the actual process as when I started. Figures became surprisingly popular more as when I started the blog. These days many people worldwide take figure pictures, less for the purpose to put them into reviews, the obvious trend is a more artistic approach on figure photography, focusing on creating the one or a handful of nice and elaborate shots.

I always had some doubts about this certain step, but this year I started a facebook page for my blog, I quickly noticed that I, if at all should have done it much earlier, now it’s too late and apparently won’t result in a bigger audience. I’m also a little clueless about what to post XD.

Aside from blogging, I put my focus on flickr, it’s a very nice platform for figure and fashion doll photography. I also joined Instagram, it’s a fun place to look for and show pictures in a slightly different way. Although I stopped uploading pictures on mfc, it always gave me more grieve than anything else and just brings out the worst emotions in me ૮( ᵒ̌▱๋ᵒ̌ )ა.

Anyway I genuinely enjoy this photography thing. After all this time, I can’t think of a better hobby, oh well maybe gardening comes as 2nd in my case. I will continue with Wieselhead.de in the future, maybe I will invest in a new theme or create a second, only Dollfie related blog.

I won’t forget to thank my audience, thx for all your support, be it comments, feedback or just looking at the content. Thank you for staying with me, even with less frequent posts.

Greetings and applause to all still active bloggers out there.

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?