The iDOLM@STER SideM

I don’t think highly of A-1 Pictures. There aren’t any particular people there who I think are at fault, but rather how the studio itself is managed has led to some rather lackluster projects. The typical A-1 anime isn’t particularly ambitious, and while it will be enough to entertain you while you’re watching it, it’s unlikely to leave a lasting impression. That said, I think A-1 has had some more interesting projects over the course of 2017, such as Demi-chan, Saekano Flat, and Fate Apocrypha. But sadly here we are at the end of the year, with a few projects that are the quality I’vecome to expect from this studio. The iDOLM@STER SideM is the latest entry in the iM@S franchise, though this time, the idols are all male to cater to a female audience. There isn’t much of an overarching story present in this season, and it instead serves mainly just to introduce the characters. That said, every entry in the series prior to this point has continued for two cours, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see another season down the line, that would potentially bring up a greater conflict. But until then, I hope you like character introductions…. …because you’ll be seeing a lot of them. SideM has an expansive cast of 20 characters, and it takes the first 7 episodes to even introduce all of them. Similar to Cinderella Girls, SideM manages this cast by dividing it up into units, so that audiences can meet the cast a few members at a time and not be overwhelmed. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the same character archetypes are being recycled in each unit (I particularly dislike “Guy who can’t go two sentences without injecting broken English into his speech”), and little is done to characterize the cast beyond their most surface traits. It’s not like it would have been impossible to distinguish a bit more between characters in the same archetype. One detail that had the potential to be interesting was that most of the characters were adults that had had careers prior to debuting as idols – including a doctor, two soccer players, three teachers, and even a prince – and it would have been neat if that factored into their characterization instead of just being lipservice backstory. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the producer, who, despite appearing the most since he serves as a mentor to all of the units, ends up being the least developed member of the cast. While it’s true that his development is secondary to that of the actual idols, previous entries in the franchise have demonstrated that it’s possible for the producer to have a compelling character arc in the background, and it’s a shame that this one ended up staying a blank slate. Equally disappointing is the performance scenes, or rather, the absence of them. Almost every time that a performance is about to begin, the camera cuts away to focus in on another scene somewhere else. While this is an understandable move to lighten the load on the animators, it seems strange to have an idol show where the performances aren’t used for spectacle. And when the audience does get to see these performances, the camera either lingers close enough so that there’s never many characters in the shot at once, or far enough away so that the use of CG can be disguised. The choreography is unimpressive and the camerawork is uninspired, and the performances all end up feeling like missed opportunities. And with so little focus on the performances, it’s only natural that the songs would suffer as well. When the camera isn’t even on the stage where a performance is happening, it’s not uncommon for the focus to instead be on a conversation in a separate scene, reducing the song to just background noise. In addition, the official subs also don’t bother to translate the lyrics, which seems to be standard practice at this point. It wouldn’t even have been hard; many of the songs weren’t original and were just taken from the SideM mobile game, so the translation team could have used the English lyrics that already existed courtesy of Project iM@S. It seems strange to say this about an idol anime, but the music basically feels like an afterthought. With all of these issues, I had originally written SideM off as another cash-in about which no one on the production team actually cared. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. After finishing the show, I learned that much of the staff has been involved with iM@S since the beginning, and care about the franchise a lot. For example, there’s Kuroki Miyuki, one of the directors for SideM, who was a key animator for the original 2011 iM@S, and has been vocal about her love of the Jupiter boys. It was heartbreaking to learn that so much love had gone into this production, and that the end product had still turned out so lackluster. This team had been passionate about the project, but they weren’t given adequate time or resources to create their vision. Going back to the first paragraph, this is my problem with A-1 – that they view anime as a business more than as an artistic medium. There are definitely exceptions to this, but in general the studio seems to strive for acceptable rather than exceptional – projects that are just good enough that people will buy the physical releases. I hope to see more bold and interesting originals in the future, but A-1 Pictures simply isn’t the studio from which I expect them to come. There’s talent in the anime industry, and it needs to be given a chance.

First review on MAL! I may clarify that I have watched a lot of male idols anime's, and not even the ones from my favorites franchises (Uta no prince-sama and Ensemble Stars!) are even half enjoyable as Im@s SideM. One thing that really catch my attention was the fact that most of them (12/19 if I'm correct) were 18 or over. Seeing adults in this kind of animes is really something fresh! I loved this! The animation is, really, amazing. I'm not a big fan of The Idolm@ster franchise since I dislike the producer-idol relationship it portrays. Just personal taste. But from the clips from the 2011 animeand Deresute I saw, Im@s SideM animation is just as good as them. The standars of animation in idols' animes are really low. And worse yet, when the staff decides to mess around with cg. It usually ends bad. But this is not the case, i'm glad to say. - The animation is stunning. Go watch the opening (Reasons!!) on Youtube. I swear it stays in that level. - The character desing is just on point, not to simple, not to complex. The characters are super likeable! They are not that edgy/tragic past/war criminal/class traitor we tend to see in idol anime. They are just lads having fun! Yes, there are some characters with trauma they need to overcome (like Tsubasa "idol Makoto Tachibana", my favorite), but is just a part of them growing up. Another thing I *really* aprecciated was the lack of unnecessary drama. Only in the 12th episode. And it wasn't even unnecessary drama. So yeah! I would highly recommend this show if you like Idolish7, Tsukiuta, or Marginal#4, slices of life without romance (or a little, if you count i7 as romance). Am I biased? yes. But after watching so trashy idol animes, let me have my moment.

wowee my first mal review! i've watched the original idolm@ster anime as well as cinderella girls, and played a lot of the mobile games. it's my first time actually diving deep into the sidem series though. i didn't really know much about the series besides the dirty looking science guy whos really hot (lol) but this series was ok if a bit weirdly paced at times! theres not a lot of dancing performances, i want to say theres like 5 when in the other series like cinderella girls there were way more even in just one season. most of the group specific episodes ended up getting montages instead,which was pretty disappointing. one of my favorite groups, S.E.M got a nice dance for their episode which made me really happy. the transition from 3d to 2d in the dance scenes was also really jarring especially since OG idolmaster and cinderella girls used 2d for all the dances. i don't think it was necessary to switch between them especially from behind. i did think the usage of 3d for the light sticks in the audience was very smart though. a lot of characters could have had their backstory touched upon, but they'd probably need for the anime to be a 2-cour instead of just 13 episodes. theres the same if not more amount of idols in sidem like OG idolmaster, so i don't think 13 episodes is fitting for it. though i guess it was because of budgeting? the story was also pretty typical, if a bit boring at times because they didn't go for bonker twists and falling outs like cinderella girls and OG idolmaster. i feel bad for comparing sidem to the other series, but at the end of the day it's all a part of the same universe so it's hard not to see what makes the other series better than sidem at least anime wise. i hope if there is a season 2 they make up for its shortcomings! also please at least watch to see jiro animated i love him so much

I've been a huge fan of the SideM series since 2016. Of course, I was very excited when this anime was announced, even though my favorite characters from the game weren't featured in it. However, I wouldn't recommend this anime to anyone who is 1) unfamilar with SideM already, or 2) hasn't watched THE iDOLM@STER (2011) and its film. This review will consider Episode of Jupiter as part of this anime. Story (6/10) - Fair There's two points I'd like to focus on. First, I think it's important to watch THE iDOLM@STER (2011) and its film prior to watch Episode of Jupiter and the SideM anime. EoJexplicitly has a scene from the movie and while it's not really considered a spoiler, new watchers would probably feel nothing for EoJ if they hadn't yet experienced Jupiter's story through the original anime. Although I'm a big Jupiter fan and EoJ was my favorite episode, I've already met multiple people who disliked Jupiter because of the 'suddenness' of their story in EoJ; they don't really get a good introduction in comparison to the others. Secondly, the episodes themselves. There was an overarching plot... I think? But it's not memorable to me, so I don't think it was anything significant. SideM has a pretty lax and chill atmosphere, it's just a bunch of dudes trying to become idols. It almost has a slice-of-life feel in that it's mainly made of self-contained episodes. One of the latter episodes has some drama, but it gets cleared up quite quickly. Most episodes focus on one or two idol units. The episodes themselves are fine for what they are, cute and short stories. However, there ARE 19 characters in a 13 episode anime, so while they do a good job at introducing the characters on a base level, they aren't able to go into the characters very deeply (even for aspects that may be a major part of their character in the games). More on this later. Basically, it's fine if you like more light-hearted stories that don't have much of a serious plot. Usually, I'd like this sort of story, but I also feel like SideM doesn't handle it the best what with all of the characters. Art (8/10) - Very Good Art and animation is very nice, appealing and easy on the eyes. Heaps of wonderfully hand-animated dance scenes with just a little bit of CG that's barely noticeable. My only con is that some character design features were softened in order to fit the art style, but I don't really mind that either. Might make characters look a bit same-facey. Sound (10/10) - Outstanding Nothing to complain about here! As usual, the voice actors suit their characters perfectly and are all distinguishable except maybe the twins, but they ARE twins, even if they're voiced by different people. Many new songs were created especially for the anime and they all sound great! Character (7/10) - Good I'm biased, having read a lot of the in-game material, so I think all of these characters are already great. The units chosen for the anime are definitely the less gimmicky and niche ones, so they should be able to appeal to more people in general. However, due to the units only having one or two episodes to themselves, more interesting aspects of their character easily get overlooked. This makes them seem boring in comparison to their portrayal in-game. For example, the anime does not mention Minori's ex-delinquent or dead uncle past at all despite it being a large part of his character. Sure, there was one minor reference to this in a gag, but without mentioning it directly he simply seems like a normal soft anime boy. For that reason, I think that the cast should've been cut down further, perhaps to just Jupiter and DRAMATIC STARS. Not only would it allow them to dive deeper into their characters, but a more serious plot could also work with a smaller cast. Enjoyment (4/10) - Decent Not going to lie, after EoJ it was kinda a slog to get through the rest. I don't enjoy watching anime in general, so there's that. But I also felt like it was pretty boring. Not just because my favorite characters were only shown for 5 seconds. Maybe it is the lack of strong overarching plot afterall; iM@S 2011 had a similar episodic format yet I still found it enjoyable because there were clear storylines running throughout it. This could be because of what the anime was adapted from, though-- there's no 'main story' in the SideM games for the anime to follow. Maybe if it were longer, they could go deeper into the characters and have some interesting plot lines. Overall (7/10) - Good Ultimately, SideM is good, maybe even great if you enjoy soft and light-hearted anime with good music. I would treat it as a sequel and watch iM@S 2011 first for full enjoyment of EoJ. It's OK as an introduction for these six units from SideM, but don't expect to learn a lot about them and anything about the others. If you want to know more about the characters, I would suggest looking at the dozens of translated SideM game content (just google "SideM English TL Archive"). A lot of the characters have a ton of translated manga that talk about their backstory and personality, which is how I'd personally recommend one 'gets into' SideM. But if you prefer anime, this show isn't bad either.

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