If one idol series were to be released in the UK...

Which would you want it to be?

  • Aikatsu!

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • AKB0048

    Votes: 1 5.0%

  • Love Live! School Idol Project

    Votes: 5 25.0%

  • Pretty Rhythm

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The iDOLM@STER

    Votes: 5 25.0%

  • Uta no Prince-sama

    Votes: 3 15.0%

  • Wake Up, Girls!

    Votes: 1 5.0%

  • Other (Key the Metal Idol, Idol Densetsu Eriko, Lovedol, or Symphogear or Miss Monochrome if you rea

    Votes: 1 5.0%

  • I have never enjoyed any idol series

    Votes: 4 20.0%
  • Total voters
    20
K

kuuderes_shadow

Thousand Master
We've heard many times that idol series would never sell well in this country, and to be honest I think this is probably true. However, we've never actually had one come out over here (the closest thing is K-On! which hardly counts).
So just supposing that one of the UK distributors decided to take the risk of giving one of these series a trial run, which would you want them to go for? Is this different from the one you think would be most likely to prove a success (or which would be the least bad failure if you don't think it would succeed)?
 
"I have never enjoyed any idol series"

if that's the same as never seen one... Then yeah, that.

Love K-On though, and Beck... I suppose Gravitation is as close to an idol series that I have seen, and I never enjoyed that.

If you're going to try one, I suppose short-run and cheap licence. Give it a shot, see if it sells. MVM are in the likeliest position to try, Hanabee have a couple of Idol titles. The problem is that they aren't ever going to be cheap. Idol shows are about the music, and music licensing is a nightmare.
 
If you haven't seen anything then either:
- you're not interested in it (in which case the last option is probably appropriate)
- you are interested in it, in which case you could say the thing you would most want to watch
- you've never looked into it
 
I've never seen one so I voted for the one I've heard of the id the Idolmaster one. I would like to watch that but I'm not even sure if it's dubbed. This is where I realise my dub preference could be a smallish niche :p hehe.
 
I voted for UtaPri too. I'd buy WUG (and if cheap, a second copy of iM@s) though.

I think the more clean-cut titles would have the best chance over here (sorry, WUG). AKB48 occasionally showing up in pop culture news in the mainstream press (as one of those 'crazy Japanese things') might help AKB0048 and its setting is cool, too.

Given the lack of competition in the market and the fact that titles like Ouran and Fruits Basket seem to sell in droves in the west, I think UtaPri could potentially do better than any of the others in the UK, except it would depend heavily on the marketing strategy. Manga UK don't seem to know how to sell female-orientated titles and it would obviously flop catastrophically if it was just rolled out like one of their regular releases.

R
 
Would have to be iM@S or UtaPri I think, obviously depends where you think your biggest potential audience lies.

Love Live! is where you go next if iM@S is a success, and AKB0048 is where you go if you think enough people will realize that it really, really is a Kawamori Shouji series since it's the best "anime" out of the lot rather than being the best idol show.
 
The only idol anime I've seen is WUG, which was okay but didn't leave me wanting to watch more idol shows. To be honest I don't actually know how these anime are different from each other, I always thought that when you've seen one idol show you've seen them all. I suppose if I were to want one released in the UK I would probably want idolmaster just because it's the only one I've heard anything about (other than WUG, obviously), and I like what I've seen of the character designs, so that's where my vote has gone.
 
Voted for Wake Up Girls on the strength of Rui's testimonial that it's not clean cut. I like my idol shows gritty. I also didn't vote for AKB47 due to the fact I youtubed them a few months back on the promise they were totally craaaazy. But they aint even. Just standard boring pop fare, not even a hologram robot singer slave in sight.

These guys though, these guys are idols for real:


Please make a show on these guys!
 
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Here's a question, what exactly is an idol series?

I'm assuming it's when they step things up from just promoting a few bands/groups with the opening and end credits and instead centre a show around as much music as possible from a specific idol/group?
 
Any series I gave its own option in the poll meets the following requirements, which in my mind are the requisites for something to be considered an idol series

1. The majority of the central cast of the series either are or are aiming to be idols or in some way a part of the idol industry.
2. The entire series, its fundamental concept and its storylines is built around the concept mentioned in point 1.
3. The concept of idols must be explicitly stated as such - just having the status of being/acting as one is insufficient.
4. There must be an actual idol unit that is directly connected to the anime, even if it doesn't have any stand-alone single releases (i.e. ones that are not a part of the anime/connected games etc.) as is the case with STAR☆ANIS from Aikatsu!
 
I voted for Idolm@ster, as I found it so fun to watch.

Edit: I just noticed Symphogear in the others option. Would love to see that too, as I really enjoyed both seasons
 
Hmmm... I have honestly been interested in watching an idol series, I just never got around to picking and watching one.

My problem is that if -let's say the most likely company to attempt an idol series- Anime Limited were to license one idol series they'd have to promise to release it all.
I really "hate" it when franchises/series switch distributors (Ah My Goddess), get dropped halfway through, etc.

So if there were a test I'd do it with something that has just about 26-ish episodes.
- Pretty Rhythm has over 150 episodes in the main storyline AFAIK. It is simply too long for a test, in my opinion.
- Aikatsu is about to reach 100 episodes in the series with a movie to come.
- Love Live has two 13 episode seasons, an upcoming movie, a bunch of music videos and an OVA.
- AKB0048 has two seasons of 13 episodes.
- Wake Up, Girls! has a prequel movie and a 12 episode series. (and a spin-off to come)
- Uta no Prince Sama has two 13 episode seasons with an additional special (and a third anime to come).

Idolm@ster is a special case, if MyAnimeList has the data correctly.
- You have the "main" (as in popular) series of 25 episodes, 1 special, 3 OVAs and a movie.
- Then you have the Puchim@s sideseries of 2 minute episodes which has 64 episodes in series 1 and 74 episodes in series 2.
- There's also "Idolm@ster Xenoglassia" which was the first to air and has 26 episodes.
- In 2008 a one-off OVA "Idolm@ster: Live For You" got released which is another alternative version.
- And "Idolm@ster: Cinderella Girls" is going to air next year, which seems to be yet another alternative version.

So with Idolm@ster you have a complete story if you license either of the "-" lines. And I think the best bet would be the popular take (first line).

Storywise "Love Live", "Wake Up, Girls" and "AKB0048" definitely pique my interest. (Story behind Idolm@ster isn't clear to me)
AKB0048 has a dub (by Sentai Filmworks), so it could work in favour of an UK release, though it might distort sales figures of the idol genre given most aren't dubbed.

So... I think I'd want Love Live to make it to the UK first. I'm not entirely sure, it's a tough decision. (I have not voted on the poll yet due to my indecisiveness)

-Danielle- said:
I've never seen one so I voted for the one I've heard of the id the Idolmaster one. I would like to watch that but I'm not even sure if it's dubbed. This is where I realise my dub preference could be a smallish niche :p hehe.
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The Idolm@ster hasn't been dubbed, or even released in any English speaking territory, yet.
AKB0048 is dubbed, though I imagine all the songs remain Japanese.

But yeah, in general idol anime don't get dubbed. I can imagine some idol anime would be extremely hard to dub as well.
Though the biggest reason idol anime don't get dubbed is probably because it's already expensive enough to probably clear music rights for something like Love Live.
And then the second reason would be the fact they're around Japanese music/culture, and that's in general hard to dub (you'd maybe have to dub the songs as well, but then they'd need songwriters), etc. etc. etc.

And we need to remember it's already quite complicated to license your regular anime like School Rumble, Steins;Gate, Angel Beats and A Certain ...
I imagine it being a lot worse for idol anime due to the music rights involved.

BanzaiJedi said:
To be honest I don't actually know how these anime are different from each other, I always thought that when you've seen one idol show you've seen them all.
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Reading the premises of the anime as I did earlier I notice at least the underlying story is different AND -I don't know- I assume the music is different. =P
That would be funny though, if all these idol anime had the same songs re-sung. xD
You could also argue if you saw one ecchi you've seen them all, or if you saw one mecha that you've seen them all. It's pretty much the same. xP

(No hate, just saying what I was thinking. ;P)
 
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