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Idoly Pride (TV)

Themes: idols, music

Plot Summary: To become an idol, I shed blood, sweat, and tears. Even so, I push on. I want to shine. I want to earn it. I want to become number one. I want to smile. I want to make my dreams come true. I want to look back at a sea of people. I want to be noticed. I want to find it. I want to overcome obstacles. I have only pride inside my chest.

No one is in the spotlight from the beginning. Everyone is weak. Only those who do not break will reach the highest peak to become an idol. This is the story of idols who face big dreams and harsh reality. (Source: MAL News)

Episode 1

For an idol show, that was complex. I think I'm at a loss for words as on one hand I'm genuinely impressed by its structure and the way it handled emotional content that at best was cut of before it became... or maybe was and we were never informed of it as spoiler[ Mana died wearing the dress Koehi first complemented her in so obviously she wanted her score reappraised at the very least]... and on the other hand, I recognize the story as a non isekai isekai story but instead of changing worlds, I think the series changed genres.

And then there's the ghost, the new girl who's the younger sister, the other new girl, the "crash into hello" that has a romantic vibes right from the start and then there's Haruko who's carrying such a torch for Kohei that if she were any more obvious, she'd be the Statue of Liberty.

Haruko: I'm giving thought to my future employment status.
Kohei: Oh, you think we're not giving you enough attention?
Me: That's not what she meant.
Haruko: That's not what I meant.
Me: What she said. Get a clue because you lose another one.

Also, it's an Idol group series because what this show needed was more gimmick, more characters and more plot.

At the rate this is going, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the ten girl group has to secretly fight an evil organization which then evolves into a Battle Royal.
Then the aliens invade and then Kohei has to get in the giant robot....

As much as the somewhat gimmick of a character being a ghost, making it not entirely seen before, maybe enjoyable. The way the ghost was introduced has instead made me think along the lines of going "you have to let me go, the accident was not your fault", as she fades away because there is not actually a ghost.

Episode 2

I love how the opening contrasts against the show itself as it has the typical idol group opening that would be expected with one brief shot of what my or may not turn out to be the lead character/characters while the show itself is all about Mana. The one girl? She's Mana younger sister who had a bad last moment with her sister so she was sulking during his sister's day of triumph/tragedy.

That other girl? She wasn't even invited. Also she has health problems, also she has the exact singing voice of Mana not that she ever tried singing before. She just showed up because she had a feeling, what a coincidence. "Yeah, right." A sentiment from Tenchi Muyo's Ryoko who had to live with such a "sudden" coincidence herself.

I love how the series has Ghost Mana directly say she has "unfinished business" but then goes how of its way to create more and more possible unfinished business for her from art to family to the craft itself... as well as the elephant in the room. Speaking of that elephant, I also love how the show dances around the main question of all: why him?

Usually it's "why her?" but why did living Mana get so attached to Kohei?
And we're still not 100% out of the possibility that Ghost Mana is just Kohei's grief manifesting itself... now that's what I call an Idol Show.

Episode 3 "Everyone's looking for the answer".

And this one continues to be my favorite series of the season as I'm even bothering to learn episode titles so either I've seen to much anime or not enough. There's an idol group now and they taking lessons, meeting rivals and learning to act as a unit; That's not what I'm here for.

Kotono has, perhaps, a photo of her dead sister which she talks to every morning, that's what I'm here for. Speaking of "Everyone's looking for the Answer", look at that, a book clearly marked "Diary" out in plain view near the photo.... and only now did I realize the word "Diary" was in English so maybe I have seen too much anime. But yeah, that's not Kotono's diary, that should be Mana's. To unquestionably get into Mana's head...it's only a matter of "when".

But whatever's in there, Kotono knows it and Mana's experiences would be coloring her own. But does she want solo Idol time for herself, for Mana or to get solo attention from Kohei?

Episode 4 "Raise the volume more and more".

Ok, outside confirmation that Mana's ghost is real. Oh, and the last two girls are introduced and oh, it turns out there's unreleased Mana footage that Kohei has and oh, Kohei has released Sakura from the group. It's an odd move for a number of reasons, none of which has to do with her being seen as part of the group in the first episode flash forward. She only has experience working with a group but she's only interested in working in the group. Kind of curious to see where that goes.

What fascinates me most about this series is it that acknowledges one thing no other Idol show will do: Men and women have sex. Most idol shows go so far to say women and women don't have sex because of the simplest truth of all: Idols "don't" have sex... and Idol shows don't have males. So when Idols "graduate" from groups, the implication or what I think it means the woman in question is moving on from being a chaste idol to an actual human being, so to speak.

So what I'm thinking is that when Mana was going to win her final Idol contest, she was going to graduate and she was going to "graduate" with Kohei. Talk about "unfinished business". If Mana can interact with one of the girls, I wonder if she can also end up possessing one of them.

I think this show is stuck with two different kinds of stories. On one hand, you have a man dealing with the loss of his significant other who he helped become an idol and is now trying to go through life as a producer with the help of his ghost lover

On the other hand, you have the super generic idol stuff, and I'm sorry to the 10 idol girls we see, but half of them are not interesting, and I find the other plot way more interesting.

I'm not a fan of Idols but I have seen more than 10 idol anime somehow and shockingly this is the first one to have a same age male character as part of the cast, let alone the lead. The closest is Zombieland Saga which can happily skip around the core "Idol" issue which is of course sex.

While you are an idol, you can have no sex as your audience is your "significant other" and your role is to get them to simp for you.

Episode 5 Separate Lights, One Feeling.
This episode leaves the Mana thread alone for a second to pick up the second plot line I've had questions about, Haruko and her role at her own place of employment, but this episode just raises further questions not just about her but about the entire industry.

Haruko is 20 and she's a good looking 20. But she was doing simple office work at an Idol agency for two, three years while still adhering to the contract she agreed to? Even if it's not for Kohei, I can see why she'd want to renegotiate her contract; Three years of celibacy and all she got for it was a simple office job. That poor girl, that poor 20 year old "but I'm forever 17" girl.

Also, how much Is she getting paid for this but then that raises the question of "are they getting paid for this?" The whole anime industry loves not answering this question about idols.

School idols: No pay.
Dropout Idol Fruit Tart: Room and board apparently.
Zombieland Saga: No question, they're Slaves.

Wait a minute. Yeah, those last two are the same. The girls are getting room and board here but Rei is working part time at a supermarket so.. what's Haruko doing herself? What has she been doing?

For an Idol project designed to sell animated idols, why are they raising so many issues about idols?

Episode 6 For a Precious Stage

I had to actually go back and watch this again because it wasn't until the second group did I realize that the groups were themed and then I noticed the songs on their own were also themed. "There's no thing really as moonlight, it's just reflecting the sun... oh wow. That's the whole dual concept of the two groups. So lucky how they got songs so perfect for his concept."

And then some things started to come together, finally. Kohei wrote the songs, didn't he? Not only that, he also wrote Mana's songs which is really the only way to explain how he was seemingly scouted alongside Mana, how Mana knew about him without even talking to him.

As well as his reaction to Mana's debut. The look on her face makes me want to see what the look on his face was.

Episode 8 "You're good just the way you are."

I suspected it, that it would turn out that Sakura had a heart transplant and that, perhaps, Mana was the donor and while it can't be confirmed 100%, it seems fairly probable.

So more unfinished business. The show was smart enough to lessen that blow by Sakura being convinced by critics that she shouldn't be the one who moves and sounds like Man, it should be her sister and she had to be reassured by her friends "you're good the way you are."

Also, Kotono does indeed have Mana's diary and she knows there was a special song Mana wanted to sing but was unable to because of a yet undisclosed death.

So yet more unfinished business. Mana had so much things she wanted to do, her karma had to be split among 10 different people just to get it all done.

Going back to the title, it would seem to be about both Sakura and Kotono but that's disingenuous. Sakura's fine the way she is but Kotono got to where she is by practice so who's to say she wouldn't improve further, or be even more like Mana, with additional practice?

And to say she shouldn't even try any further? "You're good the way you are." The other girls have started asking questions of why Haruko, who is good as she is, never went anywhere as an idol...It seems less and less the flash forward opening is about group success than it is about individual failure.

And this episode did say the girls are getting a salary but it would seem to be more a pittance than actual pay. Allowance alongside room and board.

Animegomaniac wrote:

I suspected it, that it would turn out that Sakura had a heart transplant and that, perhaps, Mana was the donor and while it can't be confirmed 100%, it seems fairly probable.

I like this addition to the show as I am fascinated by stories like this where people who have had a heart transplant suddenly start to like things/hobbies the donor liked. I don't think the voice changing is something I've heard, but I do think this is a nice add for the show.

There are dozens of us watching this. Dozens!

I really hope one of the staff writes a summarized review of the series when it finishes its run.

Episode 9 "Embrace the courage you've been given."

I loved the shot that panned from Mana's diary to Sakura and Kotono having a deep conversation regarding Mana's accident. A heart to heart conversation that panned from the thoughts from Mana's heart to her still beating heart. The layers, the symbolism... and that still wasn't the best part of the episode.

We finally started to see Kohei crack under it all. I suspected it before but only Mana was allowed to see it. He started to talk about the day Mana died being the same day Sakura had her surgery... but before he could remember more of that day, it was Mana who broke him out of his painful recollection...

Yes, I did wonder why Kohei wasn't planning on being there in person or why he wasn't traveling with Mana but I didn't expect trauma on his behalf would make him an unreliable narrator.... and there would seem to be more to that three year time gap than just Mana's death....

We know what Kotono was doing... and we know what happened to Sakura... we're going to have to have Haruko chime in to hear what really happened that day... the plotting of this show is quite excellent, I hope it manages to keep this quality going to the end.

Why didn't they save Mana's song for the finale of the competition though? I guess the point would be for the two groups to come up with some new songs, their own songs but they already did that, didn't they?

"Embrace the courage you've been given." The Tin Woodsman got the heart, it was the Lion who got courage. It could have been "Chance" or "Life" so why go with Courage? Plus, the real Courage moment was when Sakura said that she was no longer going to sing in Mana's voice so her true test was to reject the things given to her.

And, yes, I agree the lack of interest in this show is really disheartening.

Someone's been writing week to week reviews of the show. The latest for Episode 11: https://butwhythopodcast.com/2021/03/23/review-idoly-pride-episode-11-a-place-that-cannot-be-reached-alone/

Glad to see they share my opinion of the show.

Episode 12 (finale)

I wish that I liked this show more than I do, I just kind of became lost from its large cast of characters that did not stick out enough, where by the time they split into two groups, I really could not care too much about a particular character. The last part that made me feel real invested was when he saw the girl out in public and brought her into the group to mix up the group dynamic, because at that point there was an element to make the characters feel different. But in the end it just failed to keep me invested in the different characters. There is like 10 of them.

Maybe not a great example since the later seasons I don't think were as successful with me, but I would say that Love Live was one of the few idol shows that managed to make me care about a fairly large cast. The show did also have a bit of a gimmick, with its idol that died and kind of follows things as a ghost, and did have a bit of a nice climax in the last episode, but generally did not feel like it played enough of a part, although some of the parts that did were okay, like the other girl that could see her. I am just not sure what else it added.

My rating is going to be So-so (5/10), it just might be that I have seen so many idol anime at this point that I pretty jaded to them, and I will admit some stuff was okay, it just in the end kind of failed to keep my attention. Perhaps if there was a version of me that was super fresh to stuff, and maybe cared enough to have some level of investment to the cast, I would have thought better. My expectations are probably just high now.

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