Sometimes the first post of the season is one of the big shows, but this time it’s one from the bottom reaches of the Season Preview. In case you don’t know me I don’t care for idol-related- well, anything. I don’t like anything about the industry at all, including most of the anime tie-ins. It’s bad songs at best performed to a soundtrack (if not lip-synched altogether). The people who run the industry (many yakuza-related) are among the sleaziest around, and generally speaking the fandom’s relationship with the idols themselves ranges from dysfunctional to downright dangerous.
So why bother to preview Kami Kuzu ☆ Idol at all? Well, I’ve liked some of Studio Gokumi’s work, for starters. And the premise seemed to at least suggest the possibility of genuine satire. That premise finds a hard-core slacker idol named Niyodo Yuuya who’s part of a duo called “ZING”, about to be fired because he has no interest in being an idol at all, and doesn’t try to hide it. His neurotic partner Yoshino Kazuki has to carry him as dead weight but has a phobia about working alone. One day the ghost of a deceased 17 year-old idol named Mogami Asahi appears next to him and I think you can see where this is going…
The good news is that I didn’t hate the premiere at all. But that said, it’s pretty clear this is not a series interested in seriously critiquing the industry. The word that pops to mind is “affable” – this was pleasant and nice, with some amusing moments. I kind of like the idea of Niyodo’s fans eventually turning on him for acting (with Asahi’s control) like he cares – which I suspect will happen. I also suspect that he’ll end up seeing the good side of being an idol and act the part without her help, which would be the pat and predictable way to go.
You have to pretend you don’t know how creepy and awful the idol industry is to enjoy this fully, and also overlook the unhealthy impact idol shows are having on the anime industry. That’s way too much work for me, frankly, but it has an easy likability to it that should serve it well, and for someone who doesn’t have my reflexive disgust at anything idol-related I think Kami Kuzu ☆ Idol could be a perfectly pleasant diversion.
Joshua
July 2, 2022 at 9:40 pmYeah this was unfortunate, especially the very unfortunate CG during the performance. The sad part about this recent trend of idol anime is how because CyGames is making *all* of the money with their horse girl idol franchise (especially since s2 inexplicably became the best-selling anime of all time in Japan), is that the industry’s going to double down even harder because they’re all chasing after their money. So we had an idol series revolving around hockey last fall, a new idol-sports hybrid from the creator of Nanoha/Dog Days, the male version of UmaMusu but with trains, idol elements shoved in regular shows because they please the production committees and promote brand synergy with the music labels/divisions, the Witches franchise being malformed into an idol series, doubling down harder on Love Live to the point of saturation (seriously? two shows in a single year?), and there’s sadly more on the way for both the boy groups and the girl groups. It would be funny it wasn’t so breathtakingly cynical.
I am going to reserve all my bile for Shine Post next week since it’s probably the most cynical idol series of them all this season, if not this year. A desperate attempt to chase those UmaMusu/Love Live bucks from a company that’s been slowly losing relevance in gaming (Konami), by hiring the very creator of UmaMusu and contracting both the studio and director behind UmaMusu s2 to make the anime adaptation because that show made all of the money and Konami is desperate for some of that. It looks like one of the most viciously soulless pieces of work to come out of this late era of the industry, and yet it’ll probably get all of the praise solely due to all of the money thrown at the production (like Princess Connect before it earlier this year).