The story centers around the first-year student Mana Shikimiya as she pursue her dreams of winning at the Prism Stage, the competition that determines the top middle-school idol. – MAL
Streaming: Hidive
Episodes: 12
Source: Mobile Game
Episode Summary: It’s unusual for students to transfer schools right away in the Springtime, but that’s first-year student Mana Shikimiya’s situation. Despite being an oddity, Mana would really like to lay low and not call attention to herself. Unfortunately there’s a school-wide rule that all students must belong to a club or other extra-curricular activity, and so she resigns herself to that reality. After a member of the student council gives her a tour of the campus and its clubs, Mana feels overwhelmed by all the potential choices. By chance, however, she ends up passing a basement room in which the Lyrical Tradition Dance Club holds their meetings.
The president of the club is not-so-subtly looking for new members, and nearly dupes Mana into signing up despite the point of the club being a complete mystery. When Sayu, the only other club member, arrives for the daily meeting Mana learns the truth; despite its traditional trappings, the club is focused around the thoroughly modern art of singing and dancing to pop music. Mana turns out to be a natural, but suddenly insists that she can’t join. It seems she may have some kind of related trauma in her past, and though the club members are sure she’d be a great addition to the team, getting past that trauma may end up being too high a hurdle.
Impressions: Video games can be a fruitful source of storytelling, and with so many mobile games these days it’s no wonder that they’ve started to inspire several anime series per season. From my measure, idol-building games seem to be one of the more popular genres (right up there with historical-revisionist bishounen narratives). I’ve never played one of these games, and so I can’t quite speak to their appeal, but I suspect there’s an element of building something successful from the ground up, which can be kind of fun.
I play a lot of Minecraft, and in fact, if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been the past few weeks, I’ve actually been spending a lot of time playing that particular sandbox game as I work through some tough real-life emotions I’ve been having. What I like about that game is that it accepts so many different styles of play. I like resource collection and a minor amount of challenge, so I usually play survival-mode on easy or normal difficulty. If I wanted to build something ridiculous, I could switch into creative mode and have at it. Sometimes I just feel like exploring, so I create a map and head out from my home base. In any case, there’s a strange sort of freedom to be found in starting from square one and achieving some self-chosen goals in situation that doesn’t ask very much of the player.
Considering that idol games probably have pre-established characters and something of a finite story arc (at least judging from their related media properties), I doubt the appeal is exactly the same. But I can imagine that taking pre-populated characters and helping them to achieve the game’s goals after starting from a low-level starting point provides its own specific sort of satisfaction (I also play Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, which I suppose might be a bit closer to this type of game).
This episode, unfortunately, doesn’t really serve as a good advertisement for the game to which it’s attached. The primary issue is that the first episode, which I usually believe should pull out all the stops, feels haphazard. The character introductions are silly and cliche, Mana’s “accidental” introduction to the club is a predictable as it comes, and the quality of the animation is middling at best. The production feels like an afterthought or an obligation to its source material, and doesn’t do very much to present an argument for its own appeal. There’s nothing saying that tie-ins are by design inferior to their source, but the basic story does not seem to have been all that inspiring as piece of source material in this case.
The episode drums up a bit of intrigue by the end by suggesting that Mana has some familial trauma stemming from the idol contest central to the series. Despite being kind of an obvious and ham-fisted dramatic ploy I’m always at least vaguely interested in these kinds of portrayals of anxiety; I relate to them because I’ve been there (though obviously not in the same context). I know what it feels like to go through a life situation that causes one to lose confidence and stop doing things that were previously enjoyable, so at least in that sense I can sympathize with Mana’s situation (despite not knowing all the details – it’s pretty easy to extrapolate). It’s not really the most graceful character conflict I’ve seen, but at least it adds some flavor to the first episode.
While writing this impression, my brain’s been flitting back to my Minecraft game almost constantly. Part of that is likely due to other outside forces (including a desire for escapism from my escapism), but I think there’s an element of disappointment in play, too. I didn’t have expectations for this series and I assumed it wasn’t going to appeal directly to me. But I made the conscious decision to tear myself away from my coping mechanisms in order to try to finish off this season’s offerings in the near future, and I feel like the episode I chose to watch only proved that I could have spent my time more effectively (or at least more enjoyably). This episode’s not bad, but it’s definitely not compelling.
Pros: Suggests a bit of drama with Mana’s backstory.
Cons: The production is mediocre in almost all respects. It feels like an afterthought to source material that’s already lost in a sea of similar properties.
Content Warning: Depiction of some model (airsoft-style) firearms in the episode and promo video.
Grade: C