I'm not sure who decided "This Idol game needs a mecha series!", but I do hope they were fired after, because this was terrible. I'm not really into idols, but I came into this thinking it would be similar to Macross or AKB0048, instead it was some weird convoluted plot that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The robots are weirdly sentient and seemingly have a sexual attraction to their pilots? But on the inverse, the girls are weirdly sexually attracted to their robots as well, leading to some....interesting scenes in an otherwise mediocre anime.
The character designs are nothing special, one of our bad guys is a knockoff version of Misato from Evangelion,while the other is a loli who dresses in classic lolita, while she's taunting the good guys. Our main girls are cute, but that's about it, Haruka has the personality of wet cardboard, Makoto is the angsty one who thinks the robots are just robots, while Iori at least develops a personality as it goes on, compared to the others who stay about the same. The story doesn't really make any sense, asteroids threaten earth and instead of using missiles, Japan uses robots, but these iDOLs and their IdolMasters are somehow special, which creates conflict with another secret evil organization.
As for the robot designs, they're pretty generic, there's nothing special about them at all. They all fight using their fists, but even that looks boring, because of how little attention is paid to this. It's more of a character drama with robots thrown in and not a very good drama either. It feels like early in development they couldn't decide as to whether this would be an idol anime or a robot anime and when the coin landed on its side they decided to make it a robot idol anime. I know the budget was slashed midway through, but any semblance of a plot is just not there and I want to know what the writers were smoking at the time. Have I mentioned how horny this show is? Because that's a big thing. Haruka is attracted to her robot Imber, but so is Chiaya who is Imber's ex and still horny for him, but Imber still has a thing for his ex, while having a roboner for Haruka. Essentially this devolves into relationship drama, but with giant robots instead of people. And it's fucking weird as a result. This is by far the horniest robot show I've seen and I've watched Darling in the Franxx!
I'm really not sure who this was made for, because I can't see how it appeals to the otaku who love idols, or the otaku who buy the model kits, this appeals to no one and as a result it's just bad. Not even worth a watch out of curiosity honestly, just skip this one all together and be done with it. If you're an Idolmaster fan, this is not the show for you, it takes the characters you already know and probably love and just kind of gives them new personalities and makes them point weapons at each other. There's no real sense of competency in this writing and if you really need that Mecha Idol itch scratched for some reason, you're better off watching AKB0048, which manages to deliver good action and a gateway into idols.
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