I'll come straight out with my overall verdict: Season 2 was pretty damn great. But not only was it not for the reasons I expected, I reckon it could have been even better yet.
I don't wanna bang on too much about characters, else I'll be here for months and so will you, reading it. But I'll say most of the Cinderella Project girls are fine. Rin, Mio, Rika, Kanako, Anastasia, Minami and Kirari all acquitted themselves very well. Miria went and got some character and ended up with the series' cutest moment. Anzu didn't start well, but defied my expectations in S2. There's a hidden genius in that slacker, I tell you. Chieri had her funny moments. Even Miku became a passable character. But poor Ranko hardly got a look in edgeways. And as for Uzuki... She didn't just let her group down, she nearly let the whole anime down. Episodes 23 and 24 were all about her absolutely losing her mind and she just looked utterly mental throughout. She just seemed like a total and utter child. Less sane even than the actual kids. Who knew saying 'Ganbarimasu' constant wouldn't get you to the top of the idol world, eh? Thank God she got herself together before she turned the entire ending into a damp squib. What is it with idol series' main characters? Honestly...
'Course, most of them can't lay a finger on Mika. The Jougasakis episode was my favourite of that little arc. And of course, at the end of the day, Mika's still excellent.
The new characters were alright for the most part. Karen and Nao weren't nearly as bad as I reckoned, not least because they came to form Triad Primus with Rin and made a song that, no word of a lie, is nothing short of magnificent. The acapella intro in Tracing Pulse might just be the finest section of any song in the series. It's phenomenal. Kaede was cool as ever, despite her episode ultimately meaning little. Nana Abe somehow turned her episode into something quite good. But Natsuki was the best of the newbies. Her pairing with Riina was as good as I expected.
Of course, it's Mishiro who is the defining character of the whole season. Obviously, she is a terrible human being, and yet her actions and the response from each and every idols invoked something unusual from me. You see, right now, my job is the sort where the bosses on high call for all sorts of stupid, inane changes. The early plot of Cinderella Girls followed that to the letter, and as a result I felt I could relate to it very well, which made it all that much better. Maybe this goes some way to explaining just why I got into Idolmaster all along...it's not all a fantasy. This went and brought some reality to it. And some reality is what the idol genre might really need deep down.
Anyway, whilst Mishiro is a selfish bastard of a character, at least she knows how to pick an idol. Never mind the Cinderella Project, Project Krone is damn near flawless. And yet I think it was also an opportunity missed. See, whilst this is a busy anime from time to time, I think that if they were gonna make another project of 10 idols, they would let us know more than half its idols. I mean, if you wanted to create some rivalry, you should have let us know about all the rivals. Obviously there's Anya, Rin, Karen and Nao, but they're givens. Other than them, well... We got to know Fumika a bit, which was rather necessary given what she ends up doing. But what the hell was Yui doing with her? She did literally nothing of note afterwards. Arisu managed to get the slightest of screentime, simply by being in 'the moment' with Fumika. But the biggest screw-up was with arguably their three best idols. Now, iM@s likes hyping up its idols with some foreshadowing advertising. They did it with Kaede in the first season, and she got a big episode in the second. This time they did it with Syuko, Frederica and Kanade. Now, given the position they're in, you're obviously gonna think "Well, this lot must be important." Above all, this applied to Kanade, given that - looking at all the evidence we had - she was the face of the project. And yet the sum total of their hype was...well, Kanade got, like, 40 seconds of Hotel Moonside at the start of the Autumn Fest episode and...that was it. Like, why did you even bother? I mean, yes, Mishiro is a bitch, but if you're gonna make her so important, at least let us look properly into what she went and made. And what kind of anime makes a rivalry and then doesn't reveal its center? Come on. Not that I'm bitter in any way, you understand...
Otherwise, the whole anime was pretty good. As I said earlier, I found a relation with much of the first half of the season. Then the Project Krone tension came in and made for my favourite part of the anime. The Autumn Fest closed it off very nicely indeed. And while Uzuki threatened to ruin the final stretch of the anime, she got it back in time for a fantastic ending. So, on the whole, I'm satisfied with this. Not in the ways I expected, but satisfied nonetheless.
And the music is, overall, an unqualified success. I know I waxed lyrical about Triad Primus but theirs isn't the only good song here. I enjoyed the OP for this season greatly, including its music video. So much better than what just dancing on a stage would be. Some of the songs got a bit too J-poppy for my liking, but mostly it was all fine. And the animation is still fine.
So at the end of the day, I'm glad I watched this. That's the first big obstacle out of the way. Next stop, Starlight Stage...
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And not all of them are in my collection. Of the LoveLive planes from this series, I fly these:
