The time has finally come as the girls have their dream become come true at the Cinderella Ball.
I have to say that this was a beautiful episode as Mishiro becomes very disappointed that her belief turns out to be completely wrong. As expected, the Producer thinks about everything and even incorporated Project Krone into the event. From the looks of it, it appears that all the girls are having fun while the audience are enjoying their performances a lot. Still, I’m glad that everyone in the Cinderella Girls project (and their units) finally reunited, especially New Generations, who performed a new song together as the first performance for their project.
With the Cinderella Project performing their second song together, they have finally made their dream become true as it becomes a reality. I have to admit that it was nice to see where the girls are a few months after the ball. This was a nice touch along with Mio, Rin and Uzuki running into each other as the glass slipper fell out of the box. Of course, the Producer picks it up as they prepare for another live performance soon afterwards with the whole Cinderella Project towards the end. Are they hinting a movie from this? We’ll see.
As for Mishiro, it’s expected that she won’t get any type of punishment like the wicked godmother in the actual fairytale. It seems that after the ball, she never messes with the Producer ever again or try to dictate departments to do what she wants since everything went back to the status quo. In other words, she basically relegates herself to doing office work. Still, I won’t be surprised if she has the Produce manage Project Krone to withdraw herself from producing idols all together. After all, she is not well liked by anyone at the company, so it’s better that way.
Final Thoughts
As much I like the 765 Productions idols and the Anime, which aired back in 2011, Cinderella Girls Anime is a noticeable improvement over that anime. Sure, what Mishiro did is somewhat cringeworthy, but I have to give home some credit: She never went out to sabotage the idols in her company unlike Kuroi since it would cause the employees to revolt against her. I have to admit that everything Kuroi did to the girls makes me want to punch the screen literally.
With that, I felt that the drama was executed better in that respect since they focus more on the challenges the girls face. In that regard, I have to say that the drama involving Uzuki when she loses her smile after becoming afraid that she will get left behind as New Generations become further apart left a bigger impact on me rather than the one involving Haruka after the Producer got injured from a fall. As much I like the other Producer from the main series, Cinderella Girls’ Producer is clearly closer to the franchise’s theme of unity as he kept his project together despite the challenges they face while he helps strengthen the ties with the girls, especially with New Generations in two separate occasions.
On the other hand, while I grown to like some of the other characters, namely Anastasia and perhaps Minami (the best couple in the show) aside from Anzu, Ranko and Kanako, I feel that aside from the Cinderella Project girls, the other girls did not get much development. Sure, A-1 Pictures have done a better job portraying the characters, the huge cast left most of the girls having some to little screen time. Even Ranko, who is perhaps one of the most popular girls in the franchise hardly got any screen time in the second half. That is a shame, but it’s expected given that the list of idols who receives a voice keeps growing. Hopefully for a possible Million Live Anime, this won’t be a problem because there are only 37 idols in addition to the original 13 since Million Live is basically expands on the original cast. While the original 13 don’t need much introduction, I do see the same problem happening since it’s hard to develop all 37 of them in 25 episodes.
In short, while the show has it’s ups and downs, Cinderella Girls is only slightly better than the main Idolmaster Anime that aired in 2011. Sure, some veterans will adamantly say that Cinderella Girls is inferior to the original 13, but I have to say that I enjoy both of them. Although there were some animation quality issues in the beginning, which got fixed on the Blu-ray, I enjoyed the music and the performances for the most part. As one says, why don’t we have both?
Overall Rating: 9.5/10, A, Very Good
Well, good job on this review, I must say, the show ended on an alright note, could have been better if it wasn’t for all that weird drama in the second season. I think the first season is superior because of that. I guess I question how Mishiro was handled. At the start of the episode, it looked like she still disagreed with the Producer on how best to manage idols, but later on, you see her clapping after the Cinderella Projects group “MAGIC” performance, and after that, she seemed to have a general change of heart over how to deal with the Producer, and lets him do his thing from then on. I have to wonder what brought that change about? It seemed jarring for Mishiro to have a dispute with the Producer and a few minutes later, flip flop and support him (or at the very least, let him do his thing unhindered). That seemed to make all that drama she cooked up earlier on overly ridiculous. Her change of heart seemed to be poorly done considering how sudden it was, at the very least, the writers could have done that off-screen between Episodes 24 and 25. I guess Mishiro as a villain wasn’t well handled partly also because she is presented as someone who cares about profit over the Producer prioritizing personal bonds and smiles. But unlike the Producer, there’s no evidence presented in the anime itself to show that Mishiro’s methods actually work and produce results. Without that, Mishiro seems overly mercenary and a jerk.
I guess I was right to a certain extent that the writers were to ambitious in creating drama issues like Love Laika and New Generations being split up and how Rin and Mio would handle their other commitments (Triad Primus and the acting troupe) that popped up in the second season. They really did run out the clock to avoid resolving those issues cleanly, given what we got after the Winter Ball, with everyone doing their own individual pursuits. What happened there? By the sound of Mika’s comments to Rika, it seems like the Cinderella Projects girls all went off to do their own thing and haven’t seen each other for a while. Does that mean all the Cinderella Project units were disbanded? The Producer also talked about there being new girls, so have the 14 main idols “graduated” from the project like with real life idol groups such as AKB048? Or is the Cinderella Project now greatly expanded with the original girls still bring present, like with Million Live showing a greatly expanded 765 Pro with 37 new girls (but the original 13 still present)? At the start of the scene where Uzuki, Mio, and Rin bump into each other at the top of the stairs, the director commented that they would soon get to see the results of the girls’ individual adventures, so does that mean the girls doing individual pursuits was only a temporary thing after the Winter Ball, and they will go back to doing their respective Cinderella Project unit business after the concert at the very end of the episode? Or is the concert at the very end of the episode only a temporary reunion and after that, the girls will all go and do individual things again long-term? The whole thing is quite ambiguous, and I guess it’s the result of the writers creating all this drama, and not being able to resolve it cleanly in the time they had left, so they rush it and don’t give clear answers as to the girls’ long-term plans. If the Cinderella Project units are disbanded permanently/long-term, I can see that being a slap in the face for all that unit unity and cohesion that the show has been trying to promote the whole time (such as Rin badly wanting New Generations to perform again during Uzuki’s breakdown). Also, what really did happen to Project Krone? If the writers really did “resolve” Rin’s conflict between her units by dissolving New Generations so she can go to Triad Primus full-time, I’m not pleased, and I do think a number of viewers will feel the same way. So we can assume that at the end, the Cinderella Project still exists in some form, but whether in the long run, the girls will continue to perform as the Cinderella Project and as their respective units is ambiguous and uncertain. The anime may be trying to promote “distant unity” by saying that their bonds are still there regardless of individual pursuits/split up units, but it still seems somewhat sloppily done to me.
I’ve noticed they never quite addressed if the Producer won his bet with Mishiro, but given that the Cinderella Project still exists (at least in some form) and Mishiro appears to have a change of heart, we can probably assume he did win. Though, the writers really shouldn’t be making us guess like that. Shows how rushed the resolution is. On the whole, the drama was resolved last episode, so this one is mainly fanservice for those who really played the original social media game, with all those idol cameos. Still, too bad there weren’t more performances from the idols, but they had to squeeze the whole concert in two-thirds of an episode with the rest devoted to showing the idols’ individual pursuits.
Graphics-wise, I do agree, this anime is better at that than the original Idolmaster anime, but it’s been 4 years since the original, so of course the art should have improved. Character development-wise, I have to say the original Idolmaster anime was superior, and even then it struggled to develop 13 idols. Azusa and Yukiho still got the short end of the stick where development is concerned. This anime, with its 14 main idols and myriad supporting ones, really suffered for trying to develop supporting idols at the expense of the main ones. We have Ranko, who almost ceased to have any presence in the second season, even though she is probably one of the most expressive characters in the main cast. There were other interesting avenues the anime could have taken, such as Chieri being shy apparently because she has family problems. Exploring that could have been an interesting episode plot and really developed her character, but instead, the anime simply marks her as just another “cute” idol. We also have things that really should be episode plots but aren’t, such as how Ranko teamed up with Koume to make Rosenburg Engle a two person unit. I think showing us how that happened would have been a good plot, but Koume just shows up and is suddenly lumped with Ranko. We don’t get any further elaboration except for a passing mention on one of the No Makes, so it’s jarring to people who don’t follow those. In the end, I do think the anime has issues maintain a coherent focus and tried to do to much and as a result, several main idols got little in the way of development.
It’s a pity that we likely won’t get any answers on things like the long-term fate of the Cinderella Project units (whether they were disbanded or not), unless we get a movie or a No Make to elaborate on it, but even then, as I mentioned, it’s “evidence” the writers can’t resolve drama cleanly. A movie would be nice though, to resolve any of these dangling loose ends, but we get what we get, ultimately. A Million Live anime would be nice, though I assume they will do the same thing to narrow the character focus as they did in this anime, pick a few girls as the “main cast” and relegate the rest to supporting roles. I don’t know how prominently the original 13 765 idols will feature in a Million Live anime, but I would assume they would play supporting or cameo roles so that they don’t overshadow the Million Live idols, and to allow the Million Live idols to shine on their own merits, and not just as kouhais to the original 13 idols. Anyway, nice work on the review and good job following this anime.
After letting this show settle for awhile, I do feel that the second half, while enjoyable felt that the writers are tying to be a bit ambitious by pushing the drama and such while calling all kinds of issues… It’s quite the opposite from the first half, which primarily focused on the whole Cinderella Project and almost close to the level of lightheartedness with some drama thrown in. Just before they aired the second half, they mentioned about having every idol be a main character, hence some of the other characters get incorporated into the drama in the second half along with the Cinderella Project. To me, it’s simply not enough episodes to cover it sufficiently without having more episodes. To me, I would rather have them develop the main girls more and incorporate the other girls into their arcs, somehow. Still, I agree that there is a lot of things that are untouched, and I highly doubt any of it will be covered in an OVA (since the main series had one too), since it will pretty much be a lighthearted episode.
That said, since I can’t play the Cinderella Girls game since it’s region locked and I don’t play mobile games, I kind of like some of the characters, but for most, I do feel that the character development is insufficient. At least with 765, I can play the games and despite not being 100% proficient at Japanese, I get to see the characters develop and get to know them better. Hopefully, one of these days Namco should make a console game to produce these idols from the Cinderella Project or something… you know that they will make a crapton of money off DLC and such as every Idolmaster fan who play the games knows.
Well, if the writers wanted to create this sort of drama, they probably should have done so from the start, rather than wait until the second season to do it. Yes, if they created such a big main cast in the first place, I’d rather they actually develop that main cast, instead of trying to focus so much on other idols like Mayu, Sachiko, Kaede, etc. It’s not a bad thing in and of itself for the girls to interact with and work with idols outside the Cinderella Project, but I don’t think several of these secondary idols need whole episodes to themselves. Also, for a franchise that promotes “unity”, I noticed it seems to be lacking in this anime, compared to the original Idolmaster anime, where 765 was quite tight-knit. In this anime, it seemed that once the idols were split into their own units, almost all interaction they had with each other was only with other people in that unit, and they barely interacted all that much with Cinderella Project idols outside the unit. So in a way, unit dynamics could be good in the sense that characters in the same unit can bounce off each other, but bad in that it inhibits interaction outside the unit. I’d assume that any loose ends (and there are a few of them such as the long term fates of the Cinderella Project units) would be tied up in a film if we get one, but I doubt it, since such a film would likely be light and fluffy filler.
The anime really should have taken it into consideration that some viewers have not played the Cinderella Girls game and so this anime would be their first exposure to the characters, which should have been all the more reason for them to pick a focused main cast and stick to developing them all the way through. Otherwise, these viewers will go away thinking characters like Ranko, Kanako, and Chieri are one note and shallow, and looking at the game, that clearly isn’t quite the case. But yes, a Cinderella Girls game in the same vein as One for All would be nice. I still think Mishiro was an unnecessary addition to the anime, since for most of her time there, she did nothing but cause trouble and create cringe-worthy drama, so she’s a fail character in my books.