The IdolM@ster series needs no introduction...if you live in Japan. Basically, for the uninitiated, it's a series of video games where you raise and train idols to become famous. It's now a multimedia franchise that continues to rake in money to this very day. If you want for information on the franchise as a whole, I recommend the Project Im@s wiki, as it pretty much has everything you could ever need, from game info to translations of all the songs and their lyrics. I haven't seen any of the anime that were made for it...except for this one, The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls U149, which was touted to be focusing only on the youngest members of the franchise. Mainly because two other Idolmaster anime that are coming out later are going to be made in all CGI for some reason, and I have no interest in the other two that came before, the original 2011 anime and Cinderella Girls. I'm not really sure why I decided to put myself through watching U149, which is what I'll be calling this iteration, but I kinda regret doing so. There's really no denying it, U149 is just another corporate vehicle to bring in more money for a multimedia franchise.

The story itself is pretty barebones. A young producer is put in charge of the Third Entertainment Division, where he tries to help a bunch of elementary school girls debut as idols, mainly because nobody else wants to deal with them. The producer, who goes completely unnamed, as is the case for other Idolmaster properties, does what he can to help them, get to know them, and bring out their strengths and talents. If you're expecting this to be a Toddlers & Tiaras or Honey Boo Boo style show, don't worry, it doesn't stoop that low...though even in its present state, U149 doesn't really go beyond being just another generic and mediocre idol anime with cheesy, saccharine songs about making your dreams come true and twinkling and so on. A lot of its episodes are just barebones "idol girl of the week" that try to flesh out the characters to varying degrees of success. I don't know how the previous Idolmaster anime did it, but the creators' attempts at writing characters here quite plainly suck.

Seriously, I found myself much more annoyed with the idol girls than endeared, and not just because of their shrill, ear-bleeding voices screeching every single line in the most overacted ways possible. Hi again, Misaki Kuno and your nails on a chalkboard chipmunk voice. Though ironically, Kuno's character isn't even the worst one in this show. The kids constantly complain about the producer treating them like kids, with Arisu and Risa being the biggest offenders, but they continually act like selfish brats, so what right do they have to demand to be waited on hand and foot? The writers for this anime cannot write kids, because they either act too mature for their age or way too childish to the point where they behave more like toddlers than school-aged kids. The worst offenders of this are Risa and Koharu, with Risa in particular being absolutely repugnant in that not only does she threaten to accuse the producer of being a pedo at one point for an extremely petty reason, the creators decided to make her have a really, really creepy obsession with her father. And by that I mean Yuri Briar levels of obsession. Like, Risa flat-out says that she wants to become Prime Minister for the sole reason of changing the laws so kids can marry their fathers, which is what she wants to do with her own father. The fuck?! I'm not the only one who sees what's wrong with this whole thing, right? Koharu isn't anywhere near as bratty, but her problem is that in her focus episode, the whole conflict starts because she wandered away from her job and got lost...all because she let her imagination get away from her, like a toddler who saw a butterfly and wandered away from her parents. Seriously, Koharu is so annoyingly, cloyingly saccharine and sweet, her songs included, that she acts like a toddler who hasn't gotten over her Disney princess phase. She may as well have come straight out of the G3 My Little Pony Newborn Cuties specials. None of the other characters develop beyond their main archetype because the creators think having cute girls be moe is better than actually making them three-dimensional and relatable human beings.

The writing in and of itself also doesn't really make an effort to do the characters or the story justice, and often times, the show never seemed to know what it wanted to do with itself. In one episode, Momoka is called in to do a segment on bungee jumping, and everyone expects her to be scared when doing said bungee jumping, thinking that's her true self, but Momoka goes through with the bungee jump in her usual prim and proper manner...and for some reason, at the end, she goes on a diatribe about now realizing what love is. The hell?! Where did that come from?! It was completely out of nowhere, didn't fit with the rest of the episode, and I had to question just what the writers for that episode were even going for. There are also several conflicts that are unnecessarily dragged out to fill out the episode when they could have easily been resolved in five minutes if the characters just...y'know, talked things out. The show's attempts at writing drama come off as extremely shallow because it wants us to care about these kids, but what little they show of their backgrounds and motivations don't do anything to really make them anything more than, yet again, rote moe archetypes. Considering the anime juggles a large cast in 12 episodes, it doesn't have the wiggle room to really flesh out the characters as much as it could have if it had 24-26 episodes, like previous Idolmaster series had. Though...it kinda says a lot that my two favorite characters, and the ones who wound up having the best episodes, are Haru and Chie. And I gotta say, I am SO happy that Haru's episode didn't pull a 22/7 and force her to wear a skirt when she's stated she really doesn't like doing so and offered a solution that respected her autonomy. Seriously, if that episode tried to pull the whole "Tomboys have to wear skirts and be more feminine if they want to be accepted" moral, I would have thrown a shit-fit on the level of Soraya Montenegro.

I don't have as much to say about the soundtrack, as its your typical stock idol fare, with saccharine songs with shrill voices that have the same cookie-cutter lyrics. Honestly, the only characters whose insert songs didn't make me want to claw my ears out were Momoka, Chie, and Arisu. Even the background music was just completely unmemorable to me whatsoever. I mean, it's not like I could really pay attention to it over the girls' shrill, squeaky voices. The only thing about this anime I can really praise is the animation, as it's pretty good and fluid and whatever bad CGI models they use are used pretty sparingly. Though I honestly have to question why they'd use CGI models at all, as there are plenty of scenes with the girls dancing drawn in 2D, and those look way better than the 3D CGI dancing they use for some concert scenes. But the mostly good animation cannot save a terribly executed premise.

So I honestly have to ask...was this spin-off entirely necessary? What is it even supposed to accomplish? What's the point of making an anime about the youngest members of the franchise if you don't even give a damn about doing anything with it? A lot of the series is just the producer trying to find work for the girls, resulting in a lot of putzing around. Which makes me realize that U149 was basically made just to rake in more money for the franchise. Yes, I know U149 started off as a manga, but the manga itself is another facet of the multimedia franchise as a whole, and U149 is just a cynical corporate product meant to both garner more brand synergy and pander to people who want to see insufferable lolis. So yeah, Idolmaster U149 is insufferable, lazy, has no idea what it wants to do with itself, and thinks shilling cutesy-poo moe girls is a good replacement for actual substance. If you're into watching this kind of stuff, you do you, but if you can't stand watching little kids screaming about how awesome idols are and the overall saccharineness of trying to shill the idol industry as being nicer than it actually is, give it a miss. You're not missing much.