Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Idol Spin-Offs and Crossovers
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Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
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KariOhki
 Posts: 57 |
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Slight correction to the streaming part - MyGO also streams on Crunchyroll, there's a split between what's available/licensed on HIDIVE and what ended up on Crunchyroll.
"Different, but not revolutionary." is how I also feel about Yohane. Not living up to my expectations, but not outright bad either. MyGO on the other hand has set itself apart as my AOTS and probably AOTY, and I've done similar to the writers here where me, the Bandori franchise expert, roped in multiple people who hadn't touched the franchise before, and everyone's enjoying it immensely. |
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champeagle3
Posts: 37 |
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This edition of "This Week in Anime" really has it all!
☑️ Toxic gaslighting yuri melodrama ☑️ Mecha idols ☑️ "Spinoff-ception" I am among those who initiated my Love Live! journey thanks to Yohane. I think after the third episode (which yes... AMAZING!), I decided to finally see where it all started. Can't watch Sunshine without the OG and my goodness has it been thrilling. I'm four episodes away from wrapping up Superstar!! and I'll be completely caught up on all things Love Live! including the movies in about six total weeks. I holding out hope for at least two more callbacks to the series: spoiler[an episode 9 slap (maybe Lailaps to Yohane?)] and spoiler[ maybe instead of fallen angels, there are fallen Saints! The fog's coloring does make me want to Believe Again... if you know what I'm saying. ] 
Funny enough, I watched U149 on a whim last season because I heard good things about the animation. Turned out to be another enjoyable series. Now, MyGO!!!!! has been a totally unexpected surprise. It's my first BanG Dream! series and I had questions that you all immediately answered about whether this level of drama was normal because... WOW. I was not expecting to be this invested in a show like this, but every week I find myself craving more and more of this sweet melodrama. So excited to see how these shows turn out! Thank you for all of your hard work and remember to never ever trust the bassist. |
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q_3
Posts: 173 |
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MyGO is some fantastic drama that has so much empathy for its very neurodiverse cast. Love it so much. Twice now we've had full on concerts that serve as both character and plot development while also just being excellent emotional catharsis on their own.
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JustMonika
Posts: 1167 |
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I must be dreaming.. someone actually interested in idol anime! It's a Christmas miracle! I'll give you some incredible suggestions that I know you'll enjoy! Shine Post (Best animation of 2022) Idoly Pride (Has more in common with Anohana than anything) Selection Project (Same director as Oshi no Ko) 22/7 (Sally Amaki, who voiced Carol in Tomo-chan for both English and Japanese is in this group in real life and voices the character in the show) |
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RobbiRobb
 Posts: 56 |
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This article, as well as the idol shows this season in general, have been quite a ride for me. I'm used to have my opinion not align with ANN, or anywhere in the Internet for that matter, but this time it's really extreme. With both Sunshine in the Mirror and MyGO I find myself on the opposite of every opinion I've seen online over the past weeks.
While not inherently bad, I think Sunshine in the Mirror does have a few bigger flaws. First and foremost, the entire show feels really weird in its premise and world building. A fantasy setting Love Live? Cool, I'm totally down for that. However it doesn't even take a minute into the first episode for this to totally be thrown out of the window. The whole world is just a modern Japan with a few fantasy aspects added on to it. And for the most part only the nine protagonists and characters directly surrounding them are dressed up in weird fantasy outfits. Everyone else is just a normal person who could also be dropped into any other Love Live show. Which is such a shame, because I think this could have really worked well. A lot of the concepts sound quite interesting, it just feels more like a group of kids dressing up while playing a game. Which to be fair doesn't sound bad, but in combination with other factors doesn't work as well as it might have. One of those factors being the fact that the story also doesn't really go anywhere so far and we are already two thirds through the season. I'm generally fine with filler episodes, I'm here for the slice of life and it hasn't been bad so far. But it feels like the show doesn't know what it wants to be. Another idol story, but this time fantasy? An actual interesting story but with idol elements? Or just a slice of life that shows characters we love on screen again? Speaking of characters, I was never really a fan of Yohane or those Chuuni characters in general. I just think they are exhausting to be around most of the time, so I never really had much interest in her. However so far it has been fine, which is what I'd use to describe the show in general. It's fine, neither the second coming of Christ, nor a burning pile of garbage. Could have been better, could have been worse. On the topic of spin-offs, the look at the iDOLM@STER franchise is interesting. While I'd agree with calling Xenoglossia a spin-off, I'm not so sure about U149. Xenoglossia is probably the textbook definition of spin-off, you take something from a franchise you know and through it into something new. This being the characters thrown into a mecha show. And from all the shows listed in this article, this show is by far the furthest spun off from its core series. There are no actual idols (only robots called idols for some weird reason I never understood) and it really is just a mecha show with lots of battles. It doesn't really profit from the fact that it's IM@S, it could have been any characters and probably would have worked the same way. Heck, if you don't know you won't even realise it's the same characters apart from their names, because they don't share their voice actors with later entries in the franchise and their character designs have gotten quite a bit of rework since then. Overall it works, but not because it's a spin-off of iDOLM@STER, but because it's not a terrible show. The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: U149 on the other hand is a bit different. Less than a spin-off it's more a take on putting other characters from the main Cinderella Girls line of the franchise in the spotlight. If it weren't for Miria you'd have an entirely new main cast, because she alone was also a main character in the original Cinderella Girls. Though obviously all the characters also appear in the main entry, just as background characters in a few episodes. They never got the spotlight they deserved and U149 is here to rectify that. And boy does it do an amazing job at exactly that. As an idol show, it obviously follows the girls on their way to stardom, but while that of course is an important part of the story, it's actually more of a coming-of-age story that works as well as it does because the characters are all kids. It essentially asks the question what it means to be a grown up and what one has to do to become an adult. And it does that from two different perspectives. One of them obviously being the kids, with Arisu in the center of most of what's happening. But it also takes some of the older characters, be that idols from other agencies or the producer, and takes their opinions on what a grown up is into account. It creates an interesting dynamic I've not seen before and I really enjoyed it to the point where I'd say it's the best anime I've seen this year and maybe even in a long time. Because not only was the story amazing, it also looked fantastic and did a really good job at portraying the kids as, well, kids. I've seen so many shows with characters around their age that behave like they are already in their twenties and more often than not are the characters in high school dramas behaving like they are already in uni. Portraying characters according to their age is difficult and in my opinion this was executed really well. They are kids, they love running around, having fun, get sad over simple things. It just works. And then there is MyGO, and oh god, I don't even know where to start with this one. I went into MyGO with low expectations and it actually managed to disappoint me. I have seen nothing but praise online, which feels really weird considering I think it's one of the worst shows I've watched this year. The Sanzigen CG is of course what you'd come to expect of BanG Dream, the characters look like they're made of plastic, weirdly shiny and I'm worried, someone eventually trips and the LEGO breaking sound effect play. And on top of that there is of course the entire drama that's been going on for the past weeks, which seems to be what is liked about the show so much. And don't get me wrong, I generally like drama when done well and it's also not like the drama here is inherently bad. However from the beginning of the show it was clear that by the end of the story the band would come together as one, that everyone would be friends again and that they would play songs together in a band. The obvious reason for this was because it's anime and that's how this works, they are also shown in the opening and they are an actual band that existed before the show started, so of course there was never any stakes at play when it came to disbanding. And yet, the show spent week after week building up more and more drama that all just felt so incredibly artificial. The show might have worked for me if nothing was clear from the beginning, the characters would have come together to form a band, fought out their problems, realized they are unable to become friends and went their separate ways. That could have been amazing, subverting any expectations while writing an interesting drama. However that's not really how anime works and I don't think I've ever seen something like this. Instead we got a lot of drama that was all going to be nullified at some point and now that this point has come, I'm really disappointed with how it turned out. It just felt so forced that they are now friends again, after all that happened. It really didn't work for me, which is sad. Because with that this entire season has been anywhere between average at best and disappointing at worst. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2485 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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I hope that some of the folks clicking with MyGo’s downbeat melodrama will check out the similar bummer idol vibes in the Wake Up, Girls! franchise. I even wrote you a guide to get you started: https://animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2017-11-01/how-the-wake-up-girls-turn-disaster-into-dreams/.123172
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champeagle3
Posts: 37 |
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These are all now on my PTW + Wake Up, Girls! too. Merry Christmas! BTW - I've watched episode 10 of MyGO!!!!! three times so far and may go back again. Holy crap... THAT was an experience. I know the ANN team is probably stretched thin and hardly anyone was anticipating the show being this engaging, but man oh man would I have loved to read the weekly recap of that episode. My goodness! |
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