Introduction
Mature grade school student Arisu Tachibana is an aspiring idol who receives an invitation from her company president to participate in the Third Entertainment Section—a new idol project. Arisu and eight other young girls soon meet their producer before beginning idol-related activities.
To the girls' surprise, their producer appears to be a childlike adult and nothing like what they had imagined. The producer, who is taking on the position for the first time, also had no idea that he would be meeting a group of short, young idols. The awkward situation leaves Arisu disappointed, and she wishes for a producer change.
However, the producer, with his genuine love for idols and his desire to see them shine, will not let this opportunity pass and expresses that he is serious about working with the girls. Thankfully, the young idols accept the producer after seeing his unwavering passion for idols, serving as the start of their journey to the stage of dreams.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
Audience reviews
7 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
epicboss2020
The IDOLM@STER CInderella GIrls: U149, Labor violations in 30fps
The result of mixing together an idol group and a kindergarden, the whole premise follows the typical Idol genre of 9 girls + guy producer. The wrench in the works is all of the girls are under 149cm, hence the name. Its produced by CygamesPictures which is Cygame's personal animation studio that made shows like Princess Connect and the non-main Umamusume seasons. Cygames being Cygames means it had a very high animation standard that falls just short of the top tier studios like UFOtable and MAPPA.
As for the show itself, if you've seen any idol series disregarding outliers like Oshi No Ko, it plays out pretty similarly. All of the girls are made with a focus on each of them being unique in some sort of way that makes them…
Read at the sourceanonyymio
Watched this enticed by the memes. I expected some generic cheerful loli/moe with fan service, but was surprised how deep experience this was.
Especially Tatchibana hit hard. Such a young girl burdened by so much responsibility. To me this anime illustrated the darker sides of the Japanese culture. Pressure to perform, corporate hierarchies, using young girls for profit, everything seemingly very sterile, but hiding the pain. The series felt thus very conflicting and absurd to me, as does the whole idol bussiness:
Lone men are marketted imaginary girls that supposedly care about you. - On the other hand, isn't all anime this and I am watching with gluttony?
Girls are marketted a specific image which to become, and everything is laced with shining make-up, fashionable outfits, youthful…
Read at the sourceAsuken
If you got to know this anime through the memes, I beseech you to look a little deeper, because this is one of the best directed shows in the past year. And if you're an idol anime or im@s fan, there's plenty of cute girls to root for to warrant a watch.
But firstly, the animation is really good. Considering it's done by Cygames Pictures, whose parent company is a mobile game producer, it was a pleasant surprise. Honestly, it looks better than what A-1 did in the other im@s installments. However, the dance scenes specifically, of which there are only 3, are done with a bit of CG. It doesn't look horrible, but I wished they took a page out of A-1's book and did it completely hand-drawn.
The anime enhances its already great animation with excellent shot compositions. Episode 1 is a good ex…
Read at the sourceBroccolijamjam
This show is so fun and cute! I am a big idolmaster fan, but I usually don’t particularly care for the idolmaster shows. U149 is a bit interesting because it’s definitely aimed at a much younger demographic, given that in every episode the characters learn a lesson about friendship, growing up, and learning to love yourself. But however, there are a couple inappropriate jokes that kind of go too far for a kids show so honestly it made me a bit confused. Other than a couple strange jokes though, it is a very kiddy show. Now what I was not expecting, is that it made me cry on 2 different occasions. It’s very effective at getting you to relate to the character's struggles and I think it does a much better job at dividing screen time to all the characters than other idolmaster shows.
The visu…
Read at the sourceFirechick12012
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 in…
Read at the sourceSilverTsundere
TL;DR:
A great introduction to the IDOLM@STER franchise and idol genre at large, and a treat for long time fans alike.
U149 is a passion project and you can tell by the love poured into it, noticeable right from EP1 with all it's beautiful, creative and striking shots to all the small character details sprinkled throughout the rest of the series, culminating in the beautifully directed EP11. Everything else is at the same level of quality and only serves to make the experience more enjoyable.
Don't be put off by it being about children, this anime is more mature than you'd expect.
Now, let me preface this by saying that I'm a big IM@S fan, and have been for like a decade. I said what I did above there, but I still think the original 2011 IM@S anime is the best introduction, albeit I can…
Read at the sourceSanaeK10
Idolmaster is a goddamned masterpiece and you can see it right from the very start. As someone who up to this point has been completely oblivious to the franchise and gotten into it on a whim, I can tell you that this show converted me into a fan. As episode 1 opens, the sheer creativity of the framing and cinematic angles shows the team behind this are clearly passionate on their craft. I did not expect a Slice of Life to wow me visually, but U149 exceeds my expectations episode after episode, making each week an event I truly look forward to.
Indeed, even without any prior knowledge on the series, U149's strength is that it ironically doesn't focus on the idol aspect too much. Each episode is dedicated to a character spotlight that thoroughly (surprisingly, given the short runtime) expl…
Read at the source
