THE IDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS: U149

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ComedyTHE iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: U149
ANIME ComedyTHE IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls
OVA ComedyTHE iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: U149 OVA

REVIEWS

• 

  YukkuriAE

  100/100
  Shine In The Sky☆ - A glamour spin-off soaring with cuteness!

  U149 is a delightful spin-off of Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls that offers a fresh and endearing perspective on the world of idols, with its main focus on characters that are under 149 cm (hence the name U149). With its lovable characters, engaging storylines, and heartwarming moments, it successfully captures the essence of the original series while introducing a new set of aspiring idols.

  One of the standout features of Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls U149 is its charming and relatable cast of characters. The anime focuses on a child idol group called U149, each with their own unique personalities and motivations. Thus, viewers can easily form a more or less personal connection with them. From the diligent and responsible Arisu Tachibana to Risa Matoba, who is really passionate about idols, it is a pleasure to follow the U149 idols through the ups and downs of the entertainment industry.

  

  The storylines in U149 are both engaging and heartfelt, effectively highlighting the struggles and triumphs of the U149 idols as they face challenges and grow not only as performers but also as individuals (even the producer). Furthermore, the show strikes the perfect balance between light-hearted moments and serious themes, resulting in a compelling narrative that keeps viewers engaged throughout. By exploring themes of friendship, perseverance, and the pursuit of dreams, U149 brings depth and relevance to the characters' journeys.

  

  Visually, U149 has stunning artwork that captures the essence of the characters and their performances. It also features beautiful illustrations that showcase the idol's vivid and expressive personality. Moreover, the concert scenes, in particular, are magnificent, effectively conveying the energy and excitement of a live performance. The meticulous attention to detail in the character design and overall art style further enhances the viewing experience, immersing viewers in U149's captivating world.

  

  All in all, U149 is a charming, cute, and fun spinoff that offers a new perspective on the world of idols. Whether you're a fan of the original series or new to the world of idol anime, U149 is worth a watch for anyone looking to embark on a warm and funny journey through an idol's life.

  

  ---

  Continue on AniList
• 

  Megabutterfree

  100/100
  The beauty of U149 and CGDCT at it's pinnacle

  Mainly Spoiler Free Review of U149 and why you should watch!!

  Before I start this review I just wanted to say that I haven't watched any Idolmaster season outside of this one lol so I can't say much from an Idolmaster fan's point of view.

  So why should you watch this show about cute Lolis? Why should you take some advice from a fan who just randomly found this show? And what makes this different from the other idol/CGDCT shows out there?

  I wanted to make this review not only to reflect how amazing I really do think of this show and the impact it has had in my life in the few 13 weeks it's been airing. But I also believe it to be one of the cutest and most emotional shows in the genre. Mainly the former part but yes I came into this show expecting just a cute and funny sol and I got that and SO much more. A new love for a new series I have never consumed.

  

  So what is U149 Cinderella Girls? and what makes it so good and not just some random cgdct show that you'll forget about in a few weeks after it's finished airing?

  Well, this show is about 9 young girls who are all under 149 cm (which conveniently is why they call it u149) who are all inspired to become an idol with all different dreams. Their producer is also really short and when he meets his new unit this starts their journey to stardom. A lot of their dreams are relatable to the viewer without harming their childlike appearance. Some more than others, however, you can see how a lot of people can see themselves in many of these girls along with how heavy their backstories sometimes play on their dreams. One thing they all have in common though, is that they're ready for the spotlight and prepared to do whatever it takes to get there. However, Producer's role throughout the story is very important to the girls as of course, he acts as more of a parent to them. Throughout each of their episodes and strives to see their dreams fulfilled. You can obviously see the lengths he goes to cheer the girls up and give them that final push towards stardom.

  

  One of the things I really love about this show is the way it digs into each of our main characters. Each gets their own episode to show who they are and why the audience should care about them. With each girl getting a full ep dedicated to them this is easy to accomplish and the viewer is able to see what girl they relate to the best and help them sympathize with each of the girls more. The cast is one of the reasons I love it so much because there's no bad character that I think gets shafted by screen time or the audience not knowing much about who they are. The only outlier here is Kaoru but I think that's the whole point of her character. You'll know what I mean if you've watched episode 9. The cast is super strong every girl is so distinct in their own way and provides their own unique comedy and personality to our idol group.

  

  Now what really made me fall in love with this show is its cuteness and comedy. Just goddamn I really can't do much to bring it justice, I think the cgdct elements in this show make it one of the very best in the genre. A huge stress reliever this was to me every Wednesday I sat down to watch my cute and funny idol girls figure out their problems. Seriously, I can't really think of another show that does cute comedy as well as this one does. Every episode I was smiling from ear to ear due to these facts. There's nothing I can really say to convince you that this comedy is one of the best, you just have to watch it and go see how great these elements in this show really are. The dumb silly and emotional elements in this show are not ones to be underestimated as they deliver on what they offer you AND THEN SOME. It's probably just the fact of how each of these characters' personalities blends so well together that they're always finding new ways to surprise me and make me smile.

  

  I'm going to give this a 10/10 I think what the show thrives for is being a funny and cute show that won't be afraid to make you shed a few tears helps prove this and is more than well deserving of a perfect score. Also, I don't think I've talked about the anime's studio at all yet. No words can help back them up on how thankful I was that they did this show, Like oml the show looks so fantastic a lot of scenes episode by episode shows you how this show looks better than a lot of mainstream shonen out there no joke, I'm also a huge fan of the art style. Bravo to Cygames on what they did for u149 giving it a glorious adaptation that I couldn't be happier to see. Anyways although u149 isn't the most well-written piece of media, the elements in this show and their execution well deserve a round of applause. And don't get me even started with episode 11 an amazing masterpiece that I wish more people would tune into this show to see. So many realistic elements take part in that scene and help further the story they have been telling thus far. Seriously I won't say anything about it I don't care if you want to skip episodes 1-10, please go watch that episode. So much foreshadowing is done throughout the show that I had to think about it myself and what side I stand on on the issue.

  

  I have written weekly reviews for episodes 4-12 of the anime and can collectively say that this show will go down as one of my favorite shows of all time and helped me find a new love in Idolmaster. Although I didn't understand many of the references and cameos in the show, I didn't need to. All I needed to know about was our stars and how their journey to shine was one that I will never forget. Hopefully, a season 2 gets announced because I will be there no matter what!!!

  Continue on AniList
• 

  Juliko25

  50/100
  Just Idolmaster but with insufferable lolis. U149 is a shameless cash grab that's so saccharine it'll give you diabetes

  The IdolM@ster series needs no introduction...if you live in Japan. Basically, for the uninitiated, it's a series of video games where you raise and train idols to become famous. It's now a multimedia franchise that continues to rake in money to this very day. If you want for information on the franchise as a whole, I recommend the Project Im@s wiki, as it pretty much has everything you could ever need, from game info to translations of all the songs and their lyrics. I haven't seen any of the anime that were made for it...except for this one, The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls U149, which was touted to be focusing only on the youngest members of the franchise. Mainly because two other Idolmaster anime that are coming out later are going to be made in all CGI for some reason, and I have no interest in the other two that came before, the original 2011 anime and Cinderella Girls. I'm not really sure why I decided to put myself through watching U149, which is what I'll be calling this iteration, but I kinda regret doing so. There's really no denying it, U149 is just another corporate vehicle to bring in more money for a multimedia franchise.

  The story itself is pretty barebones. A young producer is put in charge of the Third Entertainment Division, where he tries to help a bunch of elementary school girls debut as idols, mainly because nobody else wants to deal with them. The producer, who goes completely unnamed, as is the case for other Idolmaster properties, does what he can to help them, get to know them, and bring out their strengths and talents. If you're expecting this to be a Toddlers & Tiaras or Honey Boo Boo style show, don't worry, it doesn't stoop that low...though even in its present state, U149 doesn't really go beyond being just another generic and mediocre idol anime with cheesy, saccharine songs about making your dreams come true and twinkling and so on. A lot of its episodes are just barebones "idol girl of the week" that try to flesh out the characters to varying degrees of success. I don't know how the previous Idolmaster anime did it, but the creators' attempts at writing characters here quite plainly suck.

  Seriously, I found myself much more annoyed with the idol girls than endeared, and not just because of their shrill, ear-bleeding voices screeching every single line in the most overacted ways possible. Hi again, Misaki Kuno and your nails on a chalkboard chipmunk voice. Though ironically, Kuno's character isn't even the worst one in this show. The kids constantly complain about the producer treating them like kids, with Arisu and Risa being the biggest offenders, but they continually act like selfish brats, so what right do they have to demand to be waited on hand and foot? The writers for this anime cannot write kids, because they either act too mature for their age or way too childish to the point where they behave more like toddlers than school-aged kids. The worst offenders of this are Risa and Koharu, with Risa in particular being absolutely repugnant in that not only does she threaten to accuse the producer of being a pedo at one point for an extremely petty reason, the creators decided to make her have a really, really creepy obsession with her father. And by that I mean Yuri Briar levels of obsession. Like, Risa flat-out says that she wants to become Prime Minister for the sole reason of changing the laws so kids can marry their fathers, which is what she wants to do with her own father. The fuck?! I'm not the only one who sees what's wrong with this whole thing, right? Koharu isn't anywhere near as bratty, but her problem is that in her focus episode, the whole conflict starts because she wandered away from her job and got lost...all because she let her imagination get away from her, like a toddler who saw a butterfly and wandered away from her parents. Seriously, Koharu is so annoyingly, cloyingly saccharine and sweet, her songs included, that she acts like a toddler who hasn't gotten over her Disney princess phase. She may as well have come straight out of the G3 My Little Pony Newborn Cuties specials. None of the other characters develop beyond their main archetype because the creators think having cute girls be moe is better than actually making them three-dimensional and relatable human beings.

  The writing in and of itself also doesn't really make an effort to do the characters or the story justice, and often times, the show never seemed to know what it wanted to do with itself. In one episode, Momoka is called in to do a segment on bungee jumping, and everyone expects her to be scared when doing said bungee jumping, thinking that's her true self, but Momoka goes through with the bungee jump in her usual prim and proper manner...and for some reason, at the end, she goes on a diatribe about now realizing what love is. The hell?! Where did that come from?! It was completely out of nowhere, didn't fit with the rest of the episode, and I had to question just what the writers for that episode were even going for. There are also several conflicts that are unnecessarily dragged out to fill out the episode when they could have easily been resolved in five minutes if the characters just...y'know, talked things out. The show's attempts at writing drama come off as extremely shallow because it wants us to care about these kids, but what little they show of their backgrounds and motivations don't do anything to really make them anything more than, yet again, rote moe archetypes. Considering the anime juggles a large cast in 12 episodes, it doesn't have the wiggle room to really flesh out the characters as much as it could have if it had 24-26 episodes, like previous Idolmaster series had. Though...it kinda says a lot that my two favorite characters, and the ones who wound up having the best episodes, are Haru and Chie. And I gotta say, I am SO happy that Haru's episode didn't pull a 22/7 and force her to wear a skirt when she's stated she really doesn't like doing so and offered a solution that respected her autonomy. Seriously, if that episode tried to pull the whole "Tomboys have to wear skirts and be more feminine if they want to be accepted" moral, I would have thrown a shit-fit on the level of Soraya Montenegro.

  I don't have as much to say about the soundtrack, as its your typical stock idol fare, with saccharine songs with shrill voices that have the same cookie-cutter lyrics. Honestly, the only characters whose insert songs didn't make me want to claw my ears out were Momoka, Chie, and Arisu. Even the background music was just completely unmemorable to me whatsoever. I mean, it's not like I could really pay attention to it over the girls' shrill, squeaky voices. The only thing about this anime I can really praise is the animation, as it's pretty good and fluid and whatever bad CGI models they use are used pretty sparingly. Though I honestly have to question why they'd use CGI models at all, as there are plenty of scenes with the girls dancing drawn in 2D, and those look way better than the 3D CGI dancing they use for some concert scenes. But the mostly good animation cannot save a terribly executed premise.

  So I honestly have to ask...was this spin-off entirely necessary? What is it even supposed to accomplish? What's the point of making an anime about the youngest members of the franchise if you don't even give a damn about doing anything with it? A lot of the series is just the producer trying to find work for the girls, resulting in a lot of putzing around. Which makes me realize that U149 was basically made just to rake in more money for the franchise. Yes, I know U149 started off as a manga, but the manga itself is another facet of the multimedia franchise as a whole, and U149 is just a cynical corporate product meant to both garner more brand synergy and pander to people who want to see insufferable lolis. So yeah, Idolmaster U149 is insufferable, lazy, has no idea what it wants to do with itself, and thinks shilling cutesy-poo moe girls is a good replacement for actual substance. If you're into watching this kind of stuff, you do you, but if you can't stand watching little kids screaming about how awesome idols are and the overall saccharineness of trying to shill the idol industry as being nicer than it actually is, give it a miss. You're not missing much.

  Continue on AniList

SIMILAR ANIMES YOU MAY LIKE

• ANIME

  MusicD4DJ All Mix
• ANIME

  MusicD4DJ First Mix
• SPECIAL

  MusicD4DJ Double Mix
• TV SHORT

  Comedy♪D4DJ Petit Mix
• ANIME

  MusicLove Live! Sunshine!!
• ANIME

  MusicLove Live! Superstar!!
• ANIME

  MusicLove Live! School idol project
• ANIME

  DramaWake Up, Girls!
• ANIME

  MusicSELECTION PROJECT
• ANIME

  DramaIDOLY PRIDE
• ANIME

  MusicSHINE POST
• ANIME

  MusicIdol Jihen