The Idolm@ster was a series I’ve been a longtime fan of. I discovered the series by reading one of the many mangas based off the series and just instantly liked it. This series is based off a game where you take on the role of producer working for this small music company. Here, you are tasked with producing an idol of your choosing and make her the biggest star the world has ever known. The game was a hit as instead of giving you three idols to choose from you actually got to pick 12/13 girls to choose from. Because of the series popularity in Japan an anime was based off it back in the day which wrote its own story and became a mecha series. It came out around the height of the mecha genre. Years later they would make another anime and this timed stayed true to the source material while once again telling its own story.
I really did enjoy watching this anime. I like how each girl has their own personality and reason for being an idol. Each girl gets their own episode that focuses on them and they all work off each other well. Although I have to admit there’s a bit of favoritism towards Haruka, Chihiya, and Miki. They also did a good job with the Producer in this series. Rather than him just being this bland and forgetful guy they actually gave him his own personality and character. He’s new to the job but at the same time knowledgeable of the industry. He doesn’t look all that special but he’s quite reliable and caring. He puts his all into his work and as the series progresses he becomes more and more reliable at his job. I do like how the first half of the anime is the girls just starting out at idols. They’re not famous yet but they’re still a group who are trying to make their dreams come true. It’s nice to be with them at the beginning and see how they grow and learn. In the second half the girls have become famous and finally getting the attention they deserve but with that attention also comes haters and Kuroi is probably their biggest hater. They really go out of their way and make this guy mean and nasty. I really did come to hate this guy in the anime, especially what he did to Chihiya. If he was in front of me I would have punched the guy. The music is also great in this anime as well. Every song is sung by one of the idols and they’re all really good. I think my favorite song was Rest@rt. That song just had so much energy and I always get hyped watching them perform it in the anime.
Looking back, this was also the first time I did a two-parter in my reviews. Originally, I was going to review the whole anime in one review but I felt that would just be too much writing for one review and I didn’t want to overwhelm you guys or myself in the process so I split it up into two-parts. Again, one of the main problems I do have with this anime is that they do a poor job on some of the idol episodes. Usually we learn a little more about a particular idol in their episode but for some of them (i.e Takane and Hibiki) we really don’t learn that much about them which is a letdown for me in particular. In the future if they ever do make another Idolm@ster anime I would love to see an origin series showing how they all came to 765 Pro and what inspired them all to be idols. When I reviewed this anime I gave it an 8.5/10 and I stand by that score to this day. It’s a great series and one that I think set the bar for what an idol anime should be about and the one anime that bought attention to idol animes.