Hiya o/

Quick note:
This is my first review so don't expect me to go too deep into stuff but I try my best.
Also this review will contain spoilers, so read with caution!
Alright, here it goes:

Meet Nagase Mana, a progidy idol who has an undefeated streak of winning one idol competition after the next. She fought her way all the way up to the Venux Grand Prix finals with nothing but her talent and passion to become a top idol! Will she be able to achieve her dream? The answer is shocking.

I originally started watching IDOLY PRIDE because I love my idol shows, so there was no way for me to not watch a freshly airing idol show. I didn't even need to read the synopsis, or look at the genres & tags etc. all it took for me was reading the word IDOL in the title. The first episode was a huge let-down for the most people as I can see in the forum discussions about this anime, and while it wasn't a huge let-down for me, I still thought "man, this episode could have been better". I didn't know what the show was going for, but I was ready to shed some tears, but I couldn't...

The problem with the first episode was (at least for me), I didn't know what to expect, so I thought "hm weird this is quite a fast progress", until she died of course. Normally seeing (who I thought was going to be the MC) die, the show becomes an instant tearjerker, however I wasn't able to fully empathize with her as I've only known her for the first episode and this is what kind of dissapointed me.
However it turns out that this first episode basically was just a story telling episode of what happened in the past and building the world of IDOLY PRIDE which was, having seen all of it now, a very important episode if we look at the whole picture.

As the show continues on, Nagase Mana re-appears in the form of a ghost, which again was a huge dissapointment for a lot of people (I've seen all the forum discussions and comments about it), but it appears that the ghost of Nagase Mana is a key character that led to that kind of end which we have seen just a couple hours ago (by the time writing this review)

I want to go a bit deeper into the ghost part of this show, as this seemed to be the main selling point of the show:
The ghost of Nagase Mana was the most important character in this whole show, because of her, the idol groups went the way they went. They wouldn't have made it into the finals, if not for her. The fact that only 2 chosen people can see her, the very person she loves, and one random girl out of nowhere is contributing a lot to the story. It might seem ironic, because not even her own sister, nor Sakura, who got her heart implanted were able to see her, but during the interpreter scenes between Nagase Mana and the others, I felt like the feelings that came accross have had a much greater impact on me. I finally was able to shed the tears that I was missing in episode 1, as I've finally got to emphasize with her as a ghost. And as it is with ghosts of a beloved person, the dissapearance, and the last words of that said ghost are always tearjerkers.

Another point that was made against this show was the introduction of new characters over and over again without even really getting to know the already existing characters, which is true for some characters, however, the introduction of a few certain characters were very important for the story (Such as Sakura, but also not to forget Mei who later on was a interpreter with Makino between Nagase Mana and the others), and as a whole, they form the perfect group of girls.

Another point I want to mention was the point that seemingly after the first half, there weren't enough songs. This paid off in the long run. Why? Because the more dialogue heavy episodes built up that relationship between the girls the grind of the girls of Hoshimi Productions. In exchange for that, during the Venux Grand Prix we've had many insert songs and all of them were good as well!

So why did this show flop?
I think there are 2 reasons why this show flopped:

1. While this show was one of the shows in this season that I really enjoyed, it really did flop compared to other bangers in this season. The expectations in this season were too high due to shows like attack on titan which seemed to even exceed the expectations, so the bar in this season was really high which leads to the second reason

1. Most people weren't ready to give it a try.

Many seemed to drop it after the very first episode with arguments like "I came for idols, not the background story of a dude". And dropping it for this reason isn't really trying come on. But other brave soliders who really tried to give it a shot, dropping the show halfway through dropped it basically just before this show turned into the idol show people expected.

The result
Looking at the whole piece, it is another great idol anime, with a good and engaging story. Everything that led to the ending we saw was just about the right amount of everything. I didn't feel like anything was missing, nor too much. In the end, it even made me cry (and not even just once) but for a whole different reason. In the end I cried because of the very same character, that I couldn't shed a tear in the beginning which proves this anime did everything right (for me at least).

This review turned out to be quite long and I thank you for reading it all through. I hope that I was somewhat able to get my point accross, emphasizing the good sides about this show that others criticized, and who knows, maybe someone will give it another shot after reading this (that's my wish at least).

Yeah... you can see the rating I gave it. (Might as well take that rating with a grain of salt because my ratings are scuffed anyways. I still genuinely enjoyed this show, so much in fact, that I decided to write this review.)