First Impressions / Idolmaster XENOGLOSSIA

Summary:

Amami Haruka attends an Idolmaster Project audition in January and receives a letter the following month notifying her that she passed. Included with the letter is a shiny key-like object, but she accidentally loses it in a train station on her way to Tokyo. Fortunately, another girl picks it up and returns it to her on the train. Coincidentally, this girl – named Hagiwara Yukiho – is also someone who passed an audition, has the same shiny object, and is going to live at the same company dormitory. When they arrive at Tokyo, they end up not waiting to get picked up and instead get lost. Haruka remains upbeat and then gets to witness the launch of an iDOL into space from the middle of the city. However, the strong wind that blows back causes one of the kids nearby to notice that Haruka is wearing penguin panties. She gets so embarrassed by this that she hides behind Yukiho until they manage to find their way closer to the dormitory. Meanwhile, in space, Kikuchi Makoto pilots the Nebula iDOL to punch and destroy a large meteoroid. Each of the small fragments then fall to Earth, causing a beautiful meteor shower that Haruka and Yukiho are able to view from the Tokyo waterfront.

Haruka then notices that the object she’s carrying is shining again, but she turns her attention back to how cool that iDOL was. Unbeknownst to her, everything she says is being monitored by an iDOL that suddenly springs to life on that last comment. At the same time, a young girl jumps onto the railing in front of the two girls. She claims to know where Haruka is going and insists that Haruka go with her. Before Haruka can react, this young girl grabs her and jumps down towards the water, but a large iDOL emerges from the ground and sends them flying back into the air. A long, dark-haired woman nearby recognizes this iDOL as the Imber. She also has one of the shiny objects and when she clutches it, another iDOL – the Nubilum – activates from underwater. While this is going on, the Imber’s eyes glow red, and it allows Haruka to fall into its cockpit where she sees video of herself played back on the many monitors in front of her. The Nubilum soon arrives, and after it knocks down the Imber, the woman named Chihaya who called it out gets on board.

ED Sequence:

ED: 「悠久の旅人~Dear boy」 (Yuukyuu no Tabibito~Dear boy) by Snow*
Watch the ED! Mirror 1
The ending feels rather plain to me in all respects (song and the animation that went with it), so my initial impression is that it’s nothing really special.

First things first: For those of you who may not know, The Idolm@ster is a popular game about raising a pop idol. What XENOGLOSSIA does it is that it takes those characters and makes them mecha pilots – the mecha are known as iDOLs and their pilots are Idolmasters. Add to that the fact that Sunrise’s Mai-HiME/Otome team is working on this, and I think you have a fairly good recipe for success. Or so I thought…

Officially, Idolmaster XENOGLOSSIA doesn’t start airing until April 2nd. However, the Japanese website @nifty is holding a special web preview of the first episode for 1000 lucky people, and that became available today. I could only find the low quality version, so that’s what’s reflected in the screenshots – in other words, the raw was pretty bad. If you download the ED I uploaded, you’ll notice that it’s a higher quality, and that’s because it was ripped by someone off 2ch.

As for the episode itself, I was a bit disappointed because it ended up being a bit on the boring side. We get introduced to several of the characters, including the ones voiced by Yukana (R.I.F.F.A.), Horie Yui (Yukiho), Tamura Yukari (Iori), Koshimizu Ami (Yayoi), and Noto Mamiko (Naze). The voice talent is thus top notch and I felt that they fit their respective characters very well, though I do admit that Iguchi Yuka voicing Haruka had to take a little getting used to.

But anyway, I think the problem was that the episode didn’t really get going until the final few minutes when the R.I.F.F.A and the iDOLs show up. In comparison to Sunrise’s other recent popular works, this was had relatively less action than both the first episode of CODE GEASS and the first episode of Mai-Otome. Still, I can see a lot of potential in the series, so it’s way too early to write this show off. Plus, it’s very possible that the low quality raw soured me on the other aspects like the story, meaning that my feelings might change when I see a higher quality version of the first episode come April 2nd when it officially starts airing.

43 Comments

  14. code geass+mai otome ? dont make me laugh. geass far better kind than this crap. this somethin like mai otome mobile suit edition. i hate girl heroes it makes me sick. idiotic girl pilots. go and save the world from bad guys. hah ! there is a line in my book:bleach+geass and the others.

    kaplan
    Reply

  17. Ah remembers me a bit of good old Suzumiya:
    https://randomc.net/image/Idolmaster%20XENOGLOSSIA/Idolmaster%20XENOGLOSSIA%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2014.jpg
    Don’t know if I’ll watch it. I’m a big Mai Otome fan but I had far enough from Mecha stuff. After Code Geass I don’t want to see mechas for at least 6 months..
    @Omni: Low quality version can do a huge difference. I remember myself watching Kanon on DVD yesterday and god, that’s a another dimension O_o.

    Mutio
    Reply

  18. Which ones the lesbian? ’cause every Sunrise show has at least one lesbian in it.
    Which is cool don’t get me wrong.

    kaplan
    “i hate girl heroes it makes me sick”

    I love girl heros, can’t get enough of them, would rather watch girls than some stick-like over-emoing bishounen any day.
    In fact if I ruled the world, I’d outlaw men and ugly people from appearing on any visual medium period, but that’s probably ’cause I’m a heterosexual man.

    Baka-Kun
    Reply

  21. so does this mean that I/we’ll have to wait till April 2nd when it officially airs? Not that I’m complaining or anything, but it looks interesting….
    I guess I’ll have to wait till then.

    Chiu^2
    Reply

  26. You know what was sorely missing in ep1? A good soundtrack. Extremely few pieces, and even them relatively low-key. Not remotely anything like the emotional impact when a Yuki Kajiura fires off something like “Mezame” or “Materialize”. For someone like me who WANTS to like this show, and who EXPECTS to like this show, this deficiency was very very tangible.

    As for the rest: Hellooooo, EVA. We have Gendo, we have NERV, we have Misato, we have EVA-1 on spirit link with Shinji – he only switched genders. Or did he? I was never completely sure in Evangelion…

    It’s exactly like Omni said. The first episode decided nothing. This can turn great or this can fall completely McFlat. We’ll have to see. But if I had to be honest, I’ve seen much better first episodes from Sunrise lately…

    Mentar
    Reply

  33. Definitely Mai-Otome if you ask me. I don’t know if you can see it(or perhaps I’m hallucinating), but the character faces are very similar to Mai-Otome characters.

    Nina on the right:
    https://randomc.net/image/Idolmaster%20XENOGLOSSIA/Idolmaster%20XENOGLOSSIA%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2028.jpg

    Arika:
    https://randomc.net/image/Idolmaster%20XENOGLOSSIA/Idolmaster%20XENOGLOSSIA%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2025.jpg

    Which makes sense for Sunrise anyway; it would be foolhardy to use human capital to develop new designs.

    El Even
    Reply

  38. Wow we managed to go a whole 37 comments without somebody bringing up that godforsaken myth about the “Sunrise Trainwreck”. Thank God, and good on everybody here for keeping that crap off this this blog entry.

    Kaioshin_Sama
    Reply

  39. Aww man, what the heck are Sunrise do with this series?
    I was interested in idolmaster from the community of akibakko (akibako.net) I searching for information and hope that anime version will be satisfying. But when I see that Sunrise making in to Robot-anime with Mai-hime chara-drawing eas disappointing me.

    But I will looking forward to watch some full episode , hoping that it should be good work.

    P.S. I like Makoto but look like she don’t appearance in first Ep.

    Jin , Masked Wizard
    Reply

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