Idoly Pride

Attachment 1887

"After a successful audition, high school student Nagase Kotono and her best friend move into a dorm with eight other aspiring idols. They quickly realize it takes more than cute choreography and cute outfits to reach the top—it will take blood, sweat, and tears to advance in the idol-ranking VENUS program, where the top spot is held by superstar Nagase Mana...who happens to be Kotono's older sister.

Source: funimation"

Genre(s): Idol, Drama, Music, Supernatural

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Three episodes in, I hesitated to fill out the genre accurately because the mild twist in the first episode really is an integral part of my enjoyment of this show.

Without divulging into it (yet), the first two episodes are of a noticeable higher animation quality than the following, which is par for the course, but it never is ugly, and the story and characters do make up for the slack. The usual archetypes area at play here, but I feel like they may grow as the series does, into their cutest final forms. The music is nice, but what I find most alluring is the growth potential of the idol group. I tire quickly of idol shows about how great it is to effortlessly be a popular idol (ignoring how dangerous that mentality, and the actual idol industry culture itself can be at times). I like to see effort in constitutes progress out.

The music is nice, too, and I hope we get more EDs that are other idol groups like the end of episode 3.

Ep5

The supernatural elements have now taken a back seat (even though they introduced another character who can see the ghost), and we have moved into full 'idol training' mode. The juxtaposition of cute girly-girls having to contend with harsh, regimental conditioning for their bodies to match up to their choreography has always been entertaining to me.

Their personalities clash and meld well, and the slower introduction of new girls allows the established ones to 'sink in' and feel less like they are fighting for screen time.

The latest ploy of splitting them into two groups was welcome, and the ensuing friction brought about by the unbalanced groupings was a hit for me. It went from being 'first world problems' to 'these girl's problems', and I could find myself rooting for them finding resolve to excel.

7

...aaaand the tension is pretty much gone. As if going through the motions, the 'training' arc is over and Idoly Pride has settled into light character drama and more build up to an idol tournament thing I have little vestment in, as spoiled by the first scene of the show.

It is kind of funny in retrospect that this entire event was cancelled for three years because an up-and-coming idol died in an accident at the last one, or is this to imply that not enough talent has been cultivated in the last few years to make a competition worth watching?

10

So, even though the tension has largely been drained as there is no doubt our two main idol groups will be going up against each other, a few decent plot developments have kept me being able to get through the episodes:

Heart transplant. Thankfully this wasn't dragged out too long, and give a bit of corporeal tethering to Mana's ghost. I'm divided on how Sakura can apparently change between two singing voices, but this is a show where pretty much any girl who wants to be an idol can if they try hard enough and practice for a couple months, so my burden of suspension of disbelief is already very high. Instead of picking apart mechanics, the odd emotional non-resolution of this mini crisis is what interests me. She decides that using Mana's voice is both good and bad: Good in that people can hear her again and it is a recipe for success, but bad in that it leads to hurtful comments for her sister being compared, not to mention the paparazzi.

Let me be clear. The reasoning or the delivery of these ideas are not what is interesting - this is about as milk toast as anime gets- , but rather that multiple angles are presented and, as far as I could tell, Sakura never fully embraces any as an answer. I still don't know how she chose to cope with the decision to 'seal away' (lol) Mana's voice for their finals song. I prefer it that way. She even said so (her reason) at the beginning of their set and I didn't internalize it, thinking back. Forgive the ramble, but I'm not sure what that says about Idoly Pride. The songs were also enjoyable?

Also, I wonder what the message is in that Mana will never be topped as a single Idol, apparently? Entire groups have lost to her, and now there is no chance to compete with her fair and square- as much as the AI judging is capable of, at least.

11-12

Complaining about the eye-rolling 'draw' that the faceoff produced would be like choking on whipped cream. There is no substance or body, so the obstruction must be purely mental. It felt like a wasted potential for one group or the other to grow, but I suppose their growth has been handled elsewhere, and they didn't want us to feel like our favorite waifu was on the 'weaker team'. Fair enough, I suppose.

I'm glad Mana finally came clean in what might be this season's most tragic accidental friendzone (her being deceased, after all).

For you sakuga lovers, I would recommend watching the dance scenes at least. They were at least 50% cell drawn and still very attractive, for all of the corner cutting measures on display.

And for the record, LizNoir's semi-finals song was the best. Looks like we've seen the limits of AI music judges, huh?

I was actually hoping someone would mash them together so I can watch the dance scenes without having to suffer through the rather boring episodes.
I tried to reach EP4 (?) for that blonde girl dancing, but I just couldn't even handle the first episode.

I saw some other clips and they looked pretty. But how often are scenes like that included?
Youtube is not showing much when I type in some search parameters for this show. It only shows the blonde girl dancing on the street and then 2 sisters(?) that look rather similar dancing next to each other in costumes and once while training/showing off. That did indeed look really pretty and very modern and hip-hoppy, which is really cool to look at.
Swinging their bodies and making the wavy-dance moves and all that jazz - k-pop style.

What I'm trying to say is, it didn't look like the usual "Idol dancing" but more like actual hip-hop or at least pop.