Anime Review: The Idolmaster Episode 1

Anime Review:
The Idolmaster Episode 1

What this is about: Watching all of the anime shows so you don’t have to! For more information about me and my reviews, click here for details on what I am reviewing.

Series Premise: The Idolmaster, alternately “The Idolm@ster”, is a weekly anime television series started in July 2011, based on a popular video game of the same name. The show follows the fictional 765 Studio, where a dozen different girls vie to become the next superstar pop idol.

Click on the thumbnails below to view the picture in full size in a new window:

ep. tl;dr review: Twelve girls behave like twelve silly girls; Lonely otaku everywhere retreat to their darkened bedrooms for a session of one-handed fisticuffs.

Episode Summary: This episode is from the perspective of a camera-man asking questions as he films a typical day at the “765 Studio”. Throughout the day, the camera-man meets the staff as well as all twelve girls being represented by the firm, each of them with a different personality, interests and appearance. At the end of the day, it is revealed that what the girls thought was an interview was actually all staged — the camera-man is actually the new producer for the company.

My Impressions: Rather than give my thoughts, how about I lay out my own Idolmaster Character Generator, so YOU TOO can create your own dozen fantasy girls!

First, choose one or more physical characteristic from the following list (or roll a 12-sided die):

1. Long, straight black hair
2. Short pink hair (or purple, or bright orange, or combination of all three)
3. Strangely white-gray hair…in twin-tails, of course!
4. Unusually large boobs. Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy.
5. Tomboy (husky voice and lesbian overtones required)
6. Small and short, like an elementary school student (nympho alert!)
7. Cat ears and/or tail (whiskers for extra points)
8. Head-to-toe tattoos, piercings and tight leather straps, maybe some shiny latex, too.
9. Identical twins! Bonus!
10. Double/triple/quadruple amputee…because stumps are sex-ay!
11. Medusa asps for hair
12. Robot Idol RX-9000…from the future!

Second, choose one or more personality characteristic from the following list:

1. Tsundere (roll a 10-sided die to determine percentage of “tsun” to percentage of “dere”)
2. Moe to the max! Wait a minute…doesn’t that describe about half the girls already?
3. Dark, brooding, and mysterious
4. Always adds some sort of annoying suffix to everything, like -desu or -fuckme
5. Sleeps/eats/smokes waaaaaaaaay too much
6. Loves animals just a bit too much…if you know what I mean
7. Has a paralyzing phobia to men/women/children/marmots/Pocky/whatever
8. Inappropriately hilarious flatulence…all the time.
9. Only speaks in iambic pentameter
10. Lesbian with sexual overdrive, always trying to hump everyone else like a horny dog
11. Has multiple personalities, including a 500-pound sumo wrestler and the Prime Minister of Japan
12. Secretly alien overlord trying to take over the universe…as an idol singer!

Finally, choose one or more added characteristics from the following list:

1. Megane…megane…
2. Always wearing schoolgirl sailor’s uniform (or nun’s habit, or revealing ninja outfit)
3. Spiky anime hair that requires three bottles of cement-like gel to style each morning
4. Rich girl always has a butler following two steps behind her
5. Unexplained alien antenna or horns (or gills, or claws, or tentacles)
6. Can transform into a magical girl with the swish of a wand (five-minute-long transformation sequence)
7. Hey, that’s actually a dude (It’s a trap, aiieee!)
8. Hopelessly goth. ***sigh***
9. Has frickin’ lasers attached to her frickin’ head
10. Can you say…Siamese triplets?
11. Hits everything with a 10-ton cartoon mallet when angry
12. Actually a collection of super-intelligent hamsters controlling a girl-shaped automaton

…And there you go! Repeat the process twelve times and you have your dozen girls to create your own Idol Studio! Well, at least the twelve girls you choose will be infinitely more interesting than the cardboard cutouts of anime stereotypes they jammed into this show.

There really wasn’t any plot to speak of in this episode, it was all about giving each girl a minute or two of airtime so you can get an idea what they are all about. Frankly, nothing good can come (cum?) from this show except fantasy masturbation material. ‘Nuff said.

The verdict:

---

For more information:

• Closing credits sequence on Youtube
• Info resources: My Anime List, Anime News Network, AniDB, Wikipedia.
• If you like this, you might also like: Chance Pop Session.

Sampling of Online Reviews:

• “It just seemed like nothing happened the entire time and the episode was more based towards the people who know the characters already rather than someone who was watching for the first time. The animation was okay, the character voices were okay (mind you, a few of them hurt my ears) and the episode was interesting.” – Metanorn
• “It’s not bad. It is just terribly boring unless you are into the games, or a nerd who jerks off to these 2D girls as hobby. Thankfully they introduce the producer at the end of the episode. At least it has a male cast now so I won’t be feeling too neglected. Maybe I’ll end up enjoying this. Maybe I don’t. *shrugs* Grade: 6/10.” – Conspicuous Klux
• “I was expecting some sort of fanservice-oriented harem setup, and while my expectations ended up coming true to an extent, at the same time the way in which this episode went about things was actually kind of neat…The characters here are very stereotypical, with a lot of the classic anime girl archetypes popping up in this introductory episode (such as the light hearted ditzy girl, the ojou-sama girl, the hard working girl, and there’s probably a tsundere in there, etc al). Grade: 7.0/10.” – Emory Anime Club
• “Idolm@ster did start off on a better foot then Memo-chou and Mayo Chiki!, but that doesn’t mean it has the room to improve like those shows. The Idolm@ster feels in a way, a lot similar to K-ON. You know what’s going to happen to the girls and you know exactly how they’re going to do it, thus viewers need to keep in mind that Idolm@ster won’t be quite like a standard show.” – Rabbit Poets
• “Ultimately, where Idolm@ster stumbles isn’t in its execution, but rather its source material. Just as the game has no plot, the girls have no real depth. They’re all one-note wonders along the spectrum of moe archetypes and tropes.” – Japanator
• “This is something new and I at least appreciate this series for going in a bit of a different direction, and the chaos of this episode did have its charms beyond the annoying bits. I’m a fan of series with large casts when done well, but the IdolM@ster is really going to have to put in effort to make everyone step away from their stereotype. Potential: 50%” – Star Crossed Anime Blog
• “The anime’s demographic seems to target IDOLM@STER otakus. The first episode hasn’t really done anything to make new fans. It’s still too soon to tell if the anime is going to fail…Other than being potentially a harem, the only reason for me to watch the show seems to be CUTE girls, but it will require me to switch off my brain in order to avoid short-circuit. Grade: 5.5/10.” – Bokutachi no Blog
• “Okay but seriously, back to the REAL matter at hand: my personal highlight is their… personalities!…Despite choosing favorites, everyone else was quite fun! I’m just stating my favorites so the rest of you losers can BACK OFF!!! RAWR RAWR!!!” – Sea Slugs
• “It’s just so completely soulless…There are hardly any attempts at humor, drama, or anything. It’s just the characters talking about themselves. Way to… uh… sell the brand?” – Tenka Seiha
• “This was like a police line up for irrit­at­ing female anime char­ac­ter arche­types. Each and every one is nerve-jammingly annoy­ing with scary effi­ciency. They screech and whine and go “ah moo”, every single one sound­ing like they’ve got a blocked nose. Each one is over­ac­ted, des­per­ately try­ing to high­light their single char­ac­ter trait. None of these aspir­ing idols are char­ac­ters. They’re such cal­cu­lated moeblob arche­types that they’ve sur­gic­ally removed any actual per­son­al­ity from each one. Every single one made my eye twitch.” – The Cart Driver

---

ROUND ONE RESULTS FOR SUMMER 2011 SHOWS:

Thumbs-up for Round One: Busou Shinki: Moon Angel, Blood-C, Mawaru Penguindrum, Kamisama Dolls, No. 6, Dantalian no Shoka, Uta no Prince-sama

Thumbs-down for Round One: Double J, Morita-san wa Mukuchi, Mayo Chiki, Nyanpire the Animation, Carnival Phantasm, Copihan, Yuruyuri, The Idolmaster

Coming up next: Sacred Seven, Manyuu Hikenchou, Ikoku Meiro no Croisee, Kamisama no Memochou, Nekogami Yaoyorozu, Nurarihyon no Mago Second Season, Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi, Twin Angel Twinkle Paradise, Baby Princess 3-D, Natsume Yuujinchou-san, Usagi Drop, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu Second Season, Rou Kyuu Bu, R-15