The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

THE IDOLM@STER Million Live!

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Mirai Kasuga has always been happy to help out anyone. Whether it's basketball, biology, or tea ceremonies, she'll pitch in – but she's never found an interest she could call a “dream” of her own. That is, until she attends a concert by the popular 765Pro All Stars and becomes enamored with the beauty and charm of idols! With her heart set, Mirai's off to audition for the production company's newly announced “39 Project,” hoping to make her dreams come alive on stage.

THE IDOLM@STER Million Live! is based on Bandai Namco Entertainment's THE IDOLM@STER Million Live! free-to-play idol-raising simulator. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

I'm certainly not what anyone would call a THE IDOLM@STER fan—or even a fan of idol anime in general—however, I don't tend to hate them. It's simply that the “cute girls doing cute things” aspect has never really hooked me and that, all too often, I find the music incredibly sub-par. While that remains true for THE IDOLM@STER Million Live!, I will admit that this first episode was able to connect with me on two levels.

The first is the idea of finding your dream. As a kid I had tons of things I liked—some I was good at and some I was not. However, none of them ever hit that magic strike zone of “I could do this for the rest of my life” and “I want to do this for the rest of my life” until I discovered my love of writing in a class I took only to avoid taking AP English my senior year. In a single moment, it all just clicked. I knew what I wanted to do. So I get what Mirai is going through. I 100% empathize with her and hope she manages to attain her dream, no matter how impossible it may seem to those around her.

The other thing that kept me interested in this episode is far more shallow: the concert scene. Oh, not the music itself but rather the location. At this point, Makuhari Messe is like a second home to me. As Japan's premiere event space, I go there constantly for work. Seeing it and the surrounding area on screen in such detail was a bit of a treat. Even better, I have sat in almost the exact seat that Mirai sits in. But what made me laugh was the fact that concerts sound horrible in that arena. The acoustics are terrible and I have to wear adjustable noise-canceling headphones whenever I go there. The idea that Mirai was able to be charmed by the idols singing there is frankly hilarious to me.

But while I certainly wasn't bored by THE IDOLM@STER Million Live!, I wasn't charmed by it either. All in all, it seems to be just another in a long list of anime about normal girls becoming idols. There is nothing objectively wrong with this and I'll be happy if fans of the series enjoy it but I know when something is not for me.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

All of the Idolm@ster titles I've dipped into for Preview Guide over the years always seem to start this same way: bubbly, perky girls and their slightly less bouncy counterparts decide to be idols and start the process. This iteration of the franchise casts Mirai as our heroine with the energy of a caffeinated puppy, and her awakening to an idol's siren song is when she sees a concert put on by what I assume is an earlier cast from another franchise entry. If you love this kind of show or are already a franchise fan, I suspect you'll be quite happy with this one.

As someone who fits neither description, this didn't do much to distinguish itself. Mirai feels a little perkier than other similar heroines, to the point where she truly beggars belief. Not only does sound seem to leak forth from her mouth every time it's open, but she's also apparently never had a nightmare in her life and is so busy chasing the next shiny dream that she's yet to settle on any one thing she loves over the others. That's a gift, and it certainly keeps her busy, but it also doesn't make me believe that she will give being an idol her all and stop helping out eight different groups at and outside school. (And judging by her mother's reaction to her announcement of attending an audition, she feels the same way.) Alongside Mirai, we have Shizuka, the quiet and wealthi(er) girl whose father is opposed to her dream of idolatry but who is pulled into Mirai's enthusiasm, and Tsubasa, who the nameless producer has already recruited. We don't know much about her yet, but I'd wager she will fill "the hungry one" slot on your stereotype bingo card.

This is fine. It's not anything new, and I'm still a little creeped out by the way that adult male characters mostly have titles, not names, and the refusal to show Chief Producer's face onscreen. The music is perky and cheery to the nth degree, and the choreography is believable for the dancing the singers are doing. (For the most part – that one girl who had to pose on one leg for a long time before the song started has got to hurt.) The CG isn't great, but it also isn't egregiously awful, and faces are the source of most issues, most specifically when a character tips her head back and raises her chin; there's something about the shadowing that isn't quite right every single time. I guess the long and the short of it is that this is for franchise fans. It's pretty standard, but I think it'll make you happy if you are one.

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Nicholas Dupree
Rating:

While I've never been the biggest idol-anime fan, I'm certainly not as allergic to the subgenre as many folks, and I was genuinely curious to see if this anime would act as a solid entry point to this long-running franchise. I bounced pretty hard off U149 but was hopeful this entry might work better without the weird child star gimmick. Heck, I have some friends who are super deep into Im@s, and I figured it would be nice to finally understand who all these girls they're constantly yelling about are. So let it be known that I am risking some long-standing friendships when I tell you this premiere was a chore.

While nothing here is incomprehensible to newbies, it does seem to assume a certain affection for the rest of the franchise and the original 765Pro All-Stars group in particular. The central performance in this episode is acceptable, though it's more concerned with showing all 13 girls on stage than delivering a compelling or memorable performance. I'm sure it's a fun time for the existing fans to see these characters – last featured in the original Idolm@ster anime – in action again. Me, as an uninitiated newbie, who wouldn't know any of these girls from Eve? I couldn't get into it. They had some nice outfits, and the bit with their silhouettes at the beginning was a neat visual idea, but I couldn't tell you a thing about the song or their choreography, and it certainly didn't leave me with the slack-jawed awe of our main characters.

Speaking of, while the OP animation is promising (read: threatening) something like three-dozen girls, we only really get introduced to two-and-a-half in this episode, thankfully. Less thankfully, Mirai doesn't make a very good first impression. She's your typical genki idol lead, very casually in search of her dream, which she predictably finds in becoming an idol. All that's fine, but I wish she had a volume setting below 11. It feels like she's got an exclamation mark after every sentence. When she's having an extended dialogue scene, it quickly flips from "endearingly cheery" to "ear-gratingly monotone" and never changes back. So even in the most sentimental moment of this premiere, when she encourages Shizuka to pursue her dream of idolatry, it's hard to take her seriously because she's just yelling every line. These shows thrive off of endearing character interactions, and that just isn't here yet.

The animation is... okay. It's certainly better than some other full-CG offerings from this year, and the characters have an acceptable level of expression in their faces and animation. Though things like Mirai's uncannily static side-ponytail will always look weirder in 3D, I'm not a fan of the frame cutting. The color palette is a bit muted for this kind of show, but it works well enough. Overall, it's an adequate approach to the herculean task of animating an enormous cast, especially those who will eventually have to sing and dance. Like the rest of the show, I doubt it will win over any newbies, but for existing fans wanting to see their faves in full motion, this seems like it'll do the job.

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James Beckett
Rating:

Some things, as they say, are inevitable: Death, taxes, the crushing disappointment that comes from a beloved celebrity outing themselves as some kind of creep and/or weirdo, and of course, the semi-regular releases of new IDOLM@STER anime. Only some things have changed this time around. For what I am pretty sure is the first time, the venerable franchise has gone for (mostly) CGI character animation, even outside of the usual 3D performance sequences. I'm not in touch enough with the franchise or fanbase to know if this will be a controversial change, but I do know that the lush and often beautiful 2D animation of the prior series is one of the only standout features that I can remember, so I'm going to personally count this as a net loss for IDOLM@STER.

It wouldn't be so much of a negative for the series if the 3D animation was as astounding as what we saw from the traditional animation in shows like IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls, but what we get in the premiere of Million Live! is just…okay. The character designs are as generically appealing as ever, and the animators don't cut the frames too much or limit themselves to only static medium two-shots (though a lot of the time, the camera is definitely stuck in static medium two- or three-shots). Honestly, my biggest issue is with the facial animation, specifically in how the eyes are done. I don't know if it's a lack of shading/depth in the eyes themselves or if characters just don't move their eye muscles enough, but the result is that our two leading ladies of the episode, Mirai and Shizuka, end up seeming like dolls that aren't quite looking at anything in particular.

Sorry for spending so much time on the technical details that stood out to me, but given the nature of this genre of anime, there's not a whole lot for me to say about the other elements of the show, like the characters and the plot. I'm not familiar with the game that this season is based on, so I couldn't tell you if there is some sort of gimmick or twist that makes the setup of Million Live stand out from the other IDOLM@STER shows, though if there is something new to this story, we're not seeing it here. Mirai is your usual plucky heroine with too many responsibilities (but no dream, dammit!), but everything changes when she attends an idol concert and decides to pursue a career as a pop star. Shizuka is…also there, and she also wants to become an idol.

At the end of the day, there's nothing terrible or offensive about THE IDOLM@STER Million Live. It's merely a slightly worse-looking rehash of what we've seen before. If you're a huge fan of the IDOLM@STER girls, then I'm sure you already know whether you're on board for this one. For everyone else, I doubt you'll miss much by skipping over it entirely.