llewellyn32 - 2014-05-27 17:52:47

Story: Green Leaves Entertainment is a tiny production company on the verge of going out of business in Sendai, the biggest city in Japan's northeastern Tohoku region. The agency once managed the careers of magicians, photo idols, fortune-tellers, and other entertainers, but its last remaining client finally quit. In danger of having zero talent (literally), the president Tange hatches an idea of producing an idol group. On the brash president's orders, the dissatisfied manager Matsuda heads out to scout raw talent. (Source: Wikipedia) There, they come across some interesting girls.

Story: This is a pretty mundane story as the chances are we've seen this a million times before, what with the manager trying to convince some pretty teenage girls to join, the bubbly personalities and fanservice [maybe], and of course the girls being instant hits on the boards. However they do quite make this concept and turn into a more realistic approach, for example the characters all have some hopes and dreams and don't just want to be idols cause it sounds cute or they just want to make people feel better(well, most of them anyway) and they don't perform on a huge concert and become huge successes either, they take it one step at a time starting with a small concert thing with only a few people watching (but they do have some minor fans at least). So I give credit for that. 9/10

Animation: I like the movements on teh girls when they dance or run but when they cry or sing, it just seems off putting to me. The tears are pretty hard to see. It's only decent at best... 6/10

Sound: The voice work is top notch, everyone has perfect sounds and while the expressions on their faces can be odd, I can still tell how they're feeling due to the tone of their voice. The song they sing at the end is also pretty good, but you'll need to hear it a bunch of times in order for it to truly get stuck in your head. 9.5/10

Characters: Here is also where the show loses some minor touch. I like the girls and their personalities and how they interact with one another but aside from Mayu (the main star and used to not want to be an idol anymore), no one in the show gets enough time for any development (at least they did that in teh show but still), and I know its a 50 minute movie and you probably shouldn't rush it but still.

The president is kind of a jerk with no motive beside money and power (but she can be mildly entertaining if you can tolerate her) and her manager is such a bore, he's totally forgettable and I cannot think of one personality trait from him. Again I know its 50 minutes but still. The side charaters are all forgettable too, I don't even remember their names (except for the center of I-1 club, now if they were the main focus, I think the movie wouldn't have been as good so thank goodness for that). Uh... 8/10

Enjoyment: While I did enjoy most of the movie, they still manage to make it a little bit predictable, what with them still using the loser guy trying his hardest to get a no nonsense girl to sing for the idol group and she says no but then by the end when it seems all is lost, she ends up joining anyway cause of dumb speech and dvd I guess. I still like it though, but the pacing sometimes... ugh. Also the beginning of the movie was boring, I nearly fell asleep during it but its not as bad once you get further into the movie... ending was nice too... 8/10

Overall: Despite some problems, I really liked the movie. Sure the pacing was awkward and the designs were... awkwarder but I still found it to be a blast... for the most part. If you're sick of idol anime, I'm not sure if this will convince you otherwise but if ya want to see a good idol anime then why not check this one out?

Thanks for reading my 43rd review~

elwyn54 - 2014-01-11 06:29:42

Now, let us talk about director Yutaka “Yamakan” Yamamoto. While I liked his work on Senyu. last year, I can’t claim to be a fan in general. Most of his stuff I have not seen and the rest I’ve been lukewarm on, with a few exceptions both ways of course. His biggest crime to me was contributing some episodes to Air.

As such, I don’t have any strong feelings what so ever on Yamakan as a director, unlike many others. In fact, I walked into Seven Idols without even knowing he was the director.

Seven Idols is a fifty minute movie serving as the set-up for the TV-series that began airing the same day. It tells the story of the talent agency Green Leaves that is slowly running out of business. In a last money-grabbing move the director of the company orders Matsuda, her assistant, to assemble a teen idol group called Wake Up, Girls!, which will then start training and eventually debut so that the agency can be saved.

Throughout the fifty minutes we meet the titular seven idols. Airi, Minami, Nanami, Kaya, Miyu, Yoshino and finally Mayu. Mayu was previously in the idol group I-1, which is currently one of the biggest idol groups in the nation. While the movie does introduce all seven characters, Mayu is really the only character we get to have any proper character development time with, which is a shame seeing as there was potential for much more.

If anything, that sums up my main problem with Seven Idols. It doesn’t really work as good as a fifty minute movie as it would have a feature length movie or possibly a separate OVA series.

There’s a good story told here about the forming of Wake Up, Girls! with plenty of clever ideas that are executed good but not great. Things are passed by in a second and when we finally get to the big climax of the story it feels like we should have been along for a longer ride than we have.

With that said, the actual tone and style of the movie works in its favour. Presenting a idol story as what’s basically a more cynical look at the genre, while still keeping the idea of idols being all about spreading happiness intact is not easy, but I felt this movie did it quite well. Seven Idols could have easily gone to far with trying to be depressing and if it had I think it would have hurt the movie a lot. But we have an entire TV-series that might mess that up, so we’ll see.

The voice-actresses are doing a good job and while the idols didn’t get much development aside from the previously mentioned Mayu, they all have distinctive voices that help the characters quite a bit.

Their singing is pretty good as well and I really like the title-song from the movie that will also be used as the opening theme song for the TV-series. The rest of the soundtrack was nothing special.

But let’s talk about the elephant in the room, the art. Yes, I won’t deny that there’s some shoddy artwork and off-model stuff going on here. Though far more in the TV-series, but that’s a different review. I don’t know if the franchise is just under-budgeted, rushed out or if it’s just a case of bad artists.

But the movie gains so much respect for actually going with 2D dancing for the idol performances and having that look really impressive. I’m tired of questionable CG in my idol shows.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the regular style of idol-shows more than I probably should and I’m not going to sit here and claim Seven Idols is an amazing deconstruction of the genre, because that’d be really silly. But as an experiment in a slightly different approach, I felt it worked really well. Far from perfect and a bit rushed, but very satisfying.

Now …what about that TV-series?