IDOLM@STER Xenoglossia

I'm using up my first review for this show... I am someone who enjoys all sorts of shows with idols involved, and as a fan AND player of IDOLM@STER, I wanted to give Xenolgossia a try. First of all I don't normally watch mecha, so my knowledge about them is minimal, to the point I can count with my hands and still have fingers left of the amount of shows that have them I have seen. When you jump into XENOGLOSSIA as an IDOLMASTER fan, you are prepared for the consequences. Aside from Haruka (which doesn't saves herself too much either, but it is the mostintact character) all the character personalities are TWISTED, in the meaning that they aren't what you normally see on the franchise. Do you know Makoto? the one that strives to become girlier and wants to be an IDOL? She is DARN SEXY but very mean towards everyone, she only cares about missions and her big sister complex. Ami? DOCILE AND QUIET (wut) she is as energetic as her sister, but Xenoglossia didn't care, and made her to be a quiet (yet very helpful) girl. Yukiho? Not afraid of men anymore, still quiet, not so much change until later in the show. Chihaya? Well, not that she isn't like that, but they gave her plot, she is old and very dark as a person, even more than before, and I can go on and on about how the chars sucked... but there's a trick for this The only way you can really enjoy this anime is to forget that this even has IDOLM@STER characters. Forget it, and you'll get your run of the mill EVA wannabe show. Realizing this sooner would had prevented the amounts of time the impressions I had on certain characters crumbled into tiny bits. The story becomes good by the episode , but is still not good enough. If you are an IDOLM@STER fan, avoid this anime by all means. If you want to be tortured and suffer for the sake of supporting the franchise (like I myself thought was doing) do so prepared by reading the warnings above.

STORY: Well, there's not much to say except it was your basic fare. There are some hidden secrets and such, and many of the people are connected in some way. However, while there isn't a problem with this formula, it was executed terribly. Most of the "revelations" weren't surprising, and when you expected something great, it couldn't have been any further from it. For a mecha anime, there was a surprising lack of action throughout the whole series until the end. When there was action, it was extremely boring. It's almost as if they were saving their budget for the end, and as a result,the ending significantly better than the rest. But still, this is not saying much. There were definitely some plot holes*, or at least events that should not have even happened if the characters had a fraction of a brain. Oh, and look out for some episodes (not that I recommend watching it) that basically mirror NGE and musical ideals that parallel RahXephon somewhat. It just seems to be an extremely bad mashup of other mecha anime. ART: I did like the designs of the mecha, especially when shown up close. Overall, the art was done quite well, and so was the animation -- again, it looked quite good for the last couple of episodes. There also weren't that many reused scenes (probably due to the lack of a significant amount of action). In fact, the only one I can't think of off the top of my head is the launch sequence. SOUND: I won't go into this too much. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't excellent. However, along with the animation, it was one of the better aspects. Plus, you should not be basing a watch on sound when there are more imperative qualities that are lacking. CHARACTER: This is probably my biggest gripe with this anime. I couldn't even count all the time I was left entirely disgusted with the amount of angst that all of the pilots had. Just when you think they became a better person and learned that important lesson, they regress back to exactly where they started. Talk about frustrating. And of course, the relationship between Master and Idol was portrayed ridiculously. The main character, Haruka, said multiple times that she loved her Idol. She even called it her boyfriend. I am not making this up. No matter how many times they said that the Idols might have something equivalent to a heart, it's a ****ing robot. Really, it started to get extremely creepy. OVERALL: I could go on about other faults with it. It's really just an average mecha anime, but they also did some very odd things with it. It just makes one question their thought process when they were making it. You also might be wondering why I finished it -- believe me, I had a hard time. But I just don't like to drop a series for some reason. So even though it was obvious that I don't like it, it wasn't bad enough to where I had to drop it. I definitely thought about it more than once; thank God it started to get better eventually (although it took around 18 episodes). *PLOT HOLE; HUGE SPOILER: For example, why could Chihaya pilot Imber near the end all of a sudden when he was supposed to be so finicky?

I'm mainly a fan of mecha anime, so never once did I wish to watch an Idolmaster anime. However, when I became aware of Xenoglossia, I decided to give it a go. I was pleasantly surprised. It was a genuinely good mecha anime. The mechanical designs are unique and appealing, supported by supplemental information that lends Xenoglossia more Real Robot credibility than I expected. I understand now that the cast of Xenoglossia aren't original to this anime, but debuted two years earlier in the original iDOLM@STER arcade game. If these are faithful adaptations of these characters, I can't say, but what I can tell youis that the characters presented here vary between good and great. I can pick out weaker, supporting characters, but I couldn't target any single member as poorly written. The development of the main, pre-existing characters is certainly one of Xenoglossia's strengths. What I can't praise quite so much is Xenoglossia's music. It wasn't outstanding but it isn't bad at all either. There's one or two particularly nice tracks but overall it's simply 'good'. There are two distinct halves to this anime, and the second is more typical of a mecha anime. Whereas the first half is very character driven and devotes most of its time to their development, the plot comes to the fore mainly in the second half. It's an admittedly strange plot but I still found it very enjoyable. Overall, I think Xenoglossia is underrated. It's truly much better than it appears to be given credit for. I've read that is has since gained some popularity, and I would be happy if it continued to do so from now on.

As many other reviews are quick to point out, Idolmaster: Xenoglossia has quite a lot of stuff working against it. In fact, I think it has a lot *more* going against it than people seem to give it credit for. I would almost call it cursed! For starters, the show aired on Mondays from April 03, 2007 to September 25, 2007... At 02:30 in the morning JST. Are you joking? We're talking about a timeslot where, if you were already into the whole 'mecha' thing, you would have to wake up at 08:30 AM on Sundays to catch the new Gurren Lagann, then set your alarmfor 02:30 AM Monday to turn on the DVR so you could see whatever this new Idolmaster-meets-Eva thing was all about. Not to mention that if you were more into the cute girls side of the cute-girls-meets-mecha amalgam, then you were already staying up until midnight to catch the new Lucky Star! Of course, none of that really matters now in the age of streaming. I just find it funny that, for one, a lot of young mecha fans probably experienced some very sleepy Tuesdays during the first term of their 2007 school year, but secondly, that it seems that this show has been fighting an uphill battle for survival since the moment it debuted — poor timeslot atop strange adaptation atop stranger romantic pretense atop the fact that the writers were pretty unashamedly cribbing off Evangelion's homework for a few of the finer points... and to top it all off, the show has the unfortunate distinction of also being released during the final phase of the transition from analogue to digital animation, giving it a certain style that it seems not many are particularly fond of and certainly didn't help in the all-too-easy Eva comparisons. So if any of the strangeness you've probably already read from other reviews is a turn off for you, then this is probably not a show you're going to care about in the least. There's a lot wrong with this show, and it would certainly be hard to argue that those things are "good, actually" in the way so many re-evaluations of older franchises seem to do. But if what you've seen elsewhere (romance? Eva-iM@S?) has peaked your interest enough to read another review but not enough to just go watch the show, let me be the one to humbily point you in that direction. This show is actually really, shockingly good despite what other people seem to think. So if you *are* interested, then I do need to make one very important disclaimer. I've never seen an Idolmaster series before this one, nor have I played any of the games. That seems to be where at least a part of animosity toward this show stems from -> people saying that X or Y character "wouldn't act this or that way in this situation". I can't speak to that. I'll probably watch a season of Idolmaster now that I'm done with this, but if anything, that feels like the more appropriate way to do things, considering that the first season of Idolmaster proper didn't air until 2011 (which is another thing this show has going against it — could you imagine being an Idolmaster fan in the mid-2000s and the first time you get to really see these characters shine on screen is while they're piloting giant robots? I can only imagine it would be like if the first Project DIVA game ended up being a first person shooter or something! — hilarious and fascinating in its own way, but probably not in the least what you were hoping for). My familiarity with the series aside, what I can say is that 1.) there is an unflinching sincerity to the setting which was both hilarious and engaging, and 2.) that whatever the distance between the characters in this show and their alternate selves from other Idolmaster parallel universes, the characters are good and while tropey and occasionally a bit contrived, gave the show that most important quality of a giant robot show: that I cared a lot more about the individual characters than I did about whatever was going on with the moon or the battles or whatever. Which is for the best, because those fight scenes are not good! But that's okay ; it's not really what the show's focusing on. The setting and set-up to the show are endearing to a fault in my eyes. No spoilers here unless you care particularly deeply about experiencing the first 10 minutes for yourself —> Girl goes to an idol audition, flubs it, ends up getting an offer anyway, moves to Tokyo to join the agency, then lo and behold the audition wasn't for BEING an *idol*, it was for PILOTING an *iDOL* - the exceptionally contrived and silly name that they have given to the giant robots which no one in-universe seems to think is the least bit hokey. If you stopped right here for want of a show less -- well, hokey, then I could forgive that. For me, however, it lends an extremely strange sincerity to the show that endows it with this very disjointed sense of humor that permiates through every episode. It is at times a very profound show, asking questions about love and consciousness and what it means to be alive in the world, at times a very strange and silly show where teenage girls get jealous and angry at each other over very superficial things while trying to maintain a normal life and reach their dreams, and at times it is a bewilderingly written show which occasionally throws its hands up, gets bored with itself, and tries to contrive some reason for a girl to put on a sexy outfit. It all feels very goofy and human when it's not trying to be serious, and for better or for worse the all-over-the-placeness of the tone (and the tone IS all over the place) makes it feel human and interesting. I felt like I was seeing the world through the girls' eyes, not really understanding what the potential consequences and stakes of a given action really are -- things swing wildly between a "fun and games" sense of abandon and then suddenly crash down to reality and recontextualize everything before it. It's weirdly engaging! I can't say too much about the characters or arcs without giving away more than I'm comfortable with, but I will note that, if you're anything like me, the first thing that caught your eye about this series was probably the mysterious "Romance" tag which seems to accompany this series on some websites but not others. So do be aware: this IS a romance show. The romance element of the show is more important than any of the fights or tragedies, because all those other things just dance around the romance which keeps the rest of the plot orbiting around it with its massive, bizzare gravitational pull. You should watch this show. You should watch it as a romance show -- albeit an unconventional one -- not as a mecha show or an idol show or an idolmaster spinoff. It's a weirdly executed, weirdly human, weirdly directed romance show written by people who were really, really into Evangelion and clearly wanted to make something LIKE Eva while exploring some of the other crevaces and possibilities left unexplored by Eva. And it's really, really good! Don't get me wrong, there's plenty wrong with it, but going into that stuff kind ruins the fun and surprise that the series has. Ultimately, after watching a lot of other, newer, better animated, more cleanly written, and -- let's be honest -- more forgettable stuff this summer, I came across this weird little show by chance and watched it very hestantly because everyone seemed to hate it. The only positive reviews I could find seem to talk about it like it was a bag of potato chips -> fun in the moment, but ultimately just a cute little snack between heartier meals. I disagree completely! The show is great and completely worth a watch on its own. There's plenty bad stuff in there, but good, bad, in between, none of it is boring and I certainly don't think I'll forget it any time soon barring some unforeseen blunt force trauma. Go watch it, go talk about the good parts and talk about the bad parts, go have a nice time watching a weird, goofy, inscrutable, and deeply human show. And have a good day while you're at it!