Shelf Life

The Idolmeister

Idolmaster's first episode is a lot like the first episode of Hetalia. Forced to introduce a giant cast, it's confusing, awkward, and off-putting. Especially off-putting are the first person POV camera angles from the headless male protagonist (he's not a dullahan; rather, he's shooting a documentary). I've mostly seen that kind of camerawork in hentai. Fortunately, they do show the cameraman's face at the end and he becomes slightly more real character and less of a blank slate by the end of episode three.

Guilt is the feeling that you've done something bad and shame is the feeling that you are bad. Episode three had me feeling both guilt and shame. The idols get their first gig in a rural town at essentially a state fair, but they pack the wrong costumes and end up performing in street clothes. I felt ripped off at this turn of events. I mean, when it comes to idol singers, they don't play instruments and they're not original, so the colorful matching costumes are a huge part of the act. Robbing the audience of a costume change just seems cheap and kind of cruel. And I immediately felt bad about feeling that way.

Despite my internal struggle, episode three is surprisingly decent for a show based on a game that I am totally uninterested in. It is a night and day difference between episode one and episode three. By episode three the generic characters are all fairly well established, and the show can relax into the plot, and thankfully, it has a plot. It is something like watching a very well animated Josie and the Pussycats but with more career-mindedness, less mystery solving and no snickering cat (although there is a hamster).

Nevertheless, Idolmaster isn't a show I'd watch if I didn't have this job, especially not after the first two crumby episodes. (Episode two features three of the younger flat-chested girls trying to look sexy by putting a variety of fruit into voluptuous dresses to look more grown up. Silly girls! Your child-like bodies are already sexy for some audiences! I would laugh if I weren't throwing up in my mouth.) I hesitate to recommend Idolmaster to anyone just yet. Maybe it will turn around. Someone else will have to let me know if it suddenly gets good.[TOP]

Straight out of the gate, Haruka, our pretty yet naive girl protagonist is late for her entrance exam to get into a music high school. Not one, but two bishonen help her talk her way past the strict guards: "This girl is late because she was helping a lost child," our second long-haired blonde prince charming exclaims. After Haruka's inevitable admittance, she is surprised to find a boy who looks exactly like her idol crush attending the school, and I was equally surprised that I could guess why he was identical. The explanation is, of course, ridiculous. This show should be re-titled "Ridiculous Bishonen Singing," since that would be more to the point. (On second thought, maybe that is exactly what the Japanese title implies.)

At this extra-ridiculous rich school with no less than four hedge mazes out front, students are either idol song composers or would-be idol singers. Dating is strictly forbidden, by the way, so none of the six gorgeous guys who sing the cheesy closing song ("1000% Love!") can ever truly claim Haruka as their own.

All of the cute guys look like cute guy types from other shows, and even Haruka reminds me of Yukino from Kare Kano, save for her freaky yellow eyes. Like in Brother Dear Brother, Haruka quickly falls into the shojo cliché of getting bullied at school, and by some strange coincidence Haruka's best friend Tomochika is suspiciously like Tomoko from Oniisama E… . Uta No Prince-sama seems to assume that you like this kind of thing, and they've super-sized it to give you more of what you like. But more of a good thing isn't always good…

In another note to future animators, plaid is freaking hard to animate, even with today's high technology. I suspect that we almost never see the characters from the waist down because of the plaid skirt uniforms. That aside, though, the visuals are striking. The characters, cliché as they may be, are all as sparkly attractive as Twilight vampires. An amazing amount of detail has been worked into their elaborate hairstyles and pinstriped blazers. Dance scenes are rotoscoped, although they still look laughable somehow.

This is streaming on Niconico.com, which has a feature that lets fans add comments over the picture. I never understood how that wasn't annoying on videos from the Japanese site, but after my initial charm with Uta wore off, I turned to the commentary for entertainment. This made the show 75% more watchable, which is undoubtedly a bad sign. The commentary track is essentially like the internet performing a stream-of-consciousness unfiltered MST3K/Rocky Horror Picture Show treatment. Or, alternately, it's like watching the show with an incredibly obnoxious anime club.

That said, the top 10% of the commentary is laugh out loud funny. The viewers constantly hate on Haruka's bizarre golden eyes (my favorite joke: she's a basilisk). There are sheep in the Arcadian green hills around the school, and I probably wouldn't have given the sheep much thought, but the Nico Nico viewers overwhelm the screen with unrelenting sheep jokes. For example, as one of the emo bishies looks over the pasture: "Oh sheep, only you know my pain."

If I keep watching this show it's primarily because the comments are funny. Otherwise, the hollow characters would be indistinguishable from the cast of Uraboku or Neo Angelique Abyss.[TOP]