

アイドルプロジェクト
Mimu Emilton is a cute fourteen-year-old who has come to the annual Starland Festival to become an idol, just like her role model, Yuri. It is the most celebrated event on a united Earth, and Yuri, now the President of Earth, has encouraged people to join the ranks of Excellent Idols. Unfortunately for Mimu, she can never seem to make it to her audition on time, as misadventure after misadventure lands her in situations (usually involving undergarment exposure, I might add) that she escapes with the help of the current Excellent Idols, whom she befriends. Just as she makes her place on the stage and begins her audition, though, an unknown group of aliens kidnaps her and the Excellent Idols. It is only the beginning of a wild interdimensional goose-chase that places Mimu in the position to save the world, if only she can believe in herself. (Source: AnimeNfo)
Mimu Emilton is a cute fourteen-year-old who has come to the annual Starland Festival to become an idol, just like her role model, Yuri. It is the most celebrated event on a united Earth, and Yuri, now the President of Earth, has encouraged people to join the ranks of Excellent Idols. Unfortunately for Mimu, she can never seem to make it to her audition on time, as misadventure after misadventure lands her in situations (usually involving undergarment exposure, I might add) that she escapes with the help of the current Excellent Idols, whom she befriends. Just as she makes her place on the stage and begins her audition, though, an unknown group of aliens kidnaps her and the Excellent Idols. It is only the beginning of a wild interdimensional goose-chase that places Mimu in the position to save the world, if only she can believe in herself. (Source: AnimeNfo)
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ktulu007
July 12, 2017
Today we'll be looking at an OVA from the mid-90s. Idol Project was a work by Studio Ox. If you haven't heard of them, it's not surprising. They've mostly done production assistance and design work on anime spear-headed by other studios. I can't say I've ever seen an anime where they were the driving force before. So, this'll be a first. It was written by Amano Hiromitsu & Arakawa Naruhisa. Arakwa may sound familiar since he wrote the anime adaptations for Spice and Wolf, Upotte & Terra Formars Revenge. Which isn't exactly a record to boast about since the best of those wasSpice and Wolf and the other two were quite bad and sub-par respectively. Then again, those were adaptations and this is an original work. So, we'll see how he does with that. Story: We open with our protagonist, fourteen year old Mimu, going to the Starland festival for her idol audition. On her way there, she gets caught up in all kinds of random events involving the six excellent idols. She barely makes her audition and is about to sing when she and the excellent idols are kidnapped by aliens. From there, more randomness ensues. Therein lies the big issue with the OVA. The “humour” is based on random events happening. In the first episode, it's the random things while she's trying to audition. In the second, it's random events that happen during a highly haphazard competition. In the third episodes she's caught up in a bunch of inane nonsense while trying to make a delivery and randomness does not, in and of itself, equate to humour. Randomness can be funny when you have some kind of deliberate set up that ends in an unexpected non sequitur, and if you're going to have a lot of it you need a good pay off or a clever logic to it that works when you think about it. It doesn't work when everything that happens is just random nonsense. Consequently, the comedy largely just leaves you scratching your head or rolling your eyes rather than laughing. The best thing I can say for the OVA is that the comedy is largely inoffensive. It's stupid and it barely registers as comedy but it isn't actively annoying, for the most part. Characters: There's really nothing to the characters in this. They're only one step above your average harem characters. They're all very basic archetypes. You've got the dumb martial artist, the child, the obvious lesbian, the bad girl, the elegant young lady, the tranquil Buddhist & the ordinary protagonist who manages to have big dreams in lieu of a real personality. At least they didn't do the Baka to Test thing and make fun of the obvious lesbian because... someone being gay is inherently funny? Here's the thing about under-written characters in a comedy. They can work if you can give them dynamics that offer a lot of comedic possibilities and you take advantage of those. In this series, we don't get that. The comedy is based less on the character interactions and almost entirely on the random events. So, having under-written archetypes for characters doesn't work in this context. Art: The artwork and animation in this are frequently lazy. The parts where they seem to put the most effort are the ones designed to be fan-servicey. Because when you have a fourteen year old protagonist it's vital to see her panties because... class is something for other works. I've seen so many trashy, fan-service heavy portrayals of way too young characters in anime at this point that I'm probably on some government watch list. And people wonder why anime fans have a bad reputation. It's this sort of thing. Sound: The performances in this are kind of weak. They got some good actresses. Hisakawa Aya, Kanai Mika & Inoue Kikuko are all in this. Their performances in this are just lacklustre. The music is decent but really could have used more effort considering that this is an OVA about idols. Ho-yay: There's a little bit with Corvette and her clear interest in our heroine but there's never any sign that it's reciprocated. Final Thoughts: That's Idol Project, a stupid, unfunny OVA from the mid 90s. Ultimately, the series is one that just falls short in every regard. The characters are weak, the comedy is weak, the acting is weak, the art is generally weak, at times delving into outright trashy territory. It's a dumb little OVA that I can't really recommend digging up. My final rating is a “solid” 3/10. Next week I'll look at something a bit longer with Kill Me Baby (That's the name of the anime, put the blunt objects down.)
Timz0r
September 28, 2022
This anime comes from the source of a visual novel, more specificly the second visual novel Idol Project 2 for PC back in 1995 because there are in fact at least two visual novels of this so far I've done my research. I don't know if those are translated in English, but I assume they are not. Don't count on it; I have pretty much zero expierence with reading visual novels in overall. This OVA is done by Studio OX. If you haven't heard of Studio OX before, fear not, I got you covered. It's founded by Atsuhiko Sugita in 1985, Studio OX was originally afreelance art studio that produced more "anime styled" Transformers art for TV Magazine and Comic Bom Bom throughout the early years of Generation 1 in Japan. While the populairity for Transformers was declining at the time, in 1991 they became a company, providing production and conceptual artwork for various anime, primarily for reboots of older franchises, such as Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier, Tekkaman Blade, and Getter Robo: Armageddon. They also created some short OVA series like Wild Cardz and now this OVA. Lastly they have animated a few hentai as well of course as their assumed struggle in order to survive, which is honesty not that suprising how rough the anime industry really is. The founder Atsuhiko Sugita left the studio in 2000 and the company was declared defunct in 2003. Story: (3/10 Very Bad) The story starts with 14 year old Mimu Emilton that wants to be an idol and then ... yeah, a lot of mumbo jumbo happends. What story? Was there a story? I honesty don't know. Let's be honest, after a while I had the mindset not to think about it and just enjoy all the nonsense that was happening on my screen and it became a lot more enjoyable and bareable to watch. It's one of these "don't think about it" anime, you see. Let's go with that. There's no need to act like a 'pretentieus elitist' and what not and thrash this anime into the ground, but just some humble opnions. In the end of the day these opinions in reviews don't even matter anyway and I don't want to crack my head around it iether. I have more important stuff going on around my head. It all depends how how much you actually care for a story in the long run. It's probably somewhere in there and it's not at all on the levels of famous novelists and you might find more story in the actual visual novels. I just don't know. Maybe you'll find more story in the actual visual novels. This anime is pretty much a barrage of nonsence with fan-service sprinkled around. I was honesty more busy enjoying the visuals, which was for me the best part. Art: (7/10 Good) While visual-wise it is what you can expect from the '90s. Not that good in modern times (and even then, even modern anime can look like utter dog shit like half of the time - there, I said it), but for at the time if you take in concideration of the time period it was made still pretty decent. Maybe it's just my nostalgia bias talking of the kind of animation I got used with when I was a kid. Mind you, I'm a late 80's kid, so yeah. Still I'm not a fan of these even more enormous shoujo anime style of eyes back in the day and I'll probably never will. I'm honesty glad the Japanese has moved away from that kind of design from the most part. Is it cute? Aw, hell no and it never will for me. It's a bit unappealing if you tell me. But if you can appreciate cell-animation from the 90's, you can enjoy this on the visual department. Yeah, back in my day the Japanese drawed their anime by hand and none of that computer generated bullshit nowadays. Deal with it. Sound 5/10 (Average) Not really sure what I can say about the audio. It felt a bit lacking here and there, but then I also had some very fun expierences at other times I just had to smile from enjoyment from the sounds they were using. Voice acting is done OK for the time being, but that's about it really. No mayor huge awards to be handled here, but I've expierenced much worse voice acting and other audio related isseus in other anime. Just don't get high expectations and it will be allright. The same can be said with the charathers, mind you. Charathers: 5/10 (Average) The charathers, well, there all very basic from what I've seen. You have the ordinary protagonist, a silly goose which is also a martial artist which was honesty my most favorite one of the bunch, a small girl, an obvious lesbian, the young but elegant lady, the bad-ass girl with an electric guitar, a traditional religous girl and a young female that seems to like cats. It is what it is; I guess. Very bland, but I felt the charathers together combined with all the nonsence that was happening fitted together. For the bit that I've seen at least. If you're hoping on character development; are you for real? It's only like two hours of length in total. You really can't do much with that ammount of time. Even though they may sound all so bland, in overall it was still an enjoyable bunch of charathers. Enjoyment: (6/10 Fine) In overall it was enjoyable. At least after the bit I just stopped overthinking about it and just starded to enjoy the content in general. It even managed to make me laugh out loud for at least two times just because from all the sillyness that was going on. There's also plenty of fan-service if you're into that kind of thing. I'm not judging you. If you're a (pretentious) prude, this anime is most likely not for you, because lots of swimsuits and a bit of nudity and some ecchi jokes that will be shoved in your face. Overall: 5/10 (Average) So yeah, should you watch this 2 hour long in total OVA from 1995? In summery it all depends who you are and what you like to be honest. If you like something that starts as an idol story, but then suddenly you're watching the charathers dealing with mindless mumbo jumbo with fan-service as a cherry on top; go ahead. Go ahead and watch this mindless silly OVA. If you care about a deep story and development, you're probably going to have a hard time watching this and I'll advice you to stay away, you filthy casual.
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