The iDOLM@STER Shiny Colors

An ambitious producer who works for 283 Production aims to guide his idol units to fame and victory at the Wonder Idol Nova Grand Prix (WING)—a prestigious competition for rookie idols. Although he is already in charge of multiple units, a fateful encounter with the skilled songstress Mano Sakuragi leads him to create a new promising group: illumination STARS.

Now an aspiring idol, Mano pursues her dream with the support of her fellow members Hiori Kazano and Meguru Hachimiya. At the same time, the producer seeks to increase the visibility of his other units, aligning with his true goal of helping them grow as professionals and understand what makes them shine the most. Indeed, only those who know themselves have a chance to become the new rising stars of the industry.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sakuragi, Mano Main

Sekine, Hitomi Japanese

Producer Main

Natsume, Kyouhei Japanese

Shirase, Sakuya Supporting

Yamaki, Anna Japanese

Kazano, Hiori Supporting

Kondou, Reina Japanese

Morino, Rinze Supporting

Maruoka, Wakana Japanese

Tanaka, Mamimi Supporting

Suganuma, Chisa Japanese

Kuwayama, Chiyuki Supporting

Shibasaki, Noriko Japanese

Arisugawa, Natsuha Supporting

Suzumoto, Akiho Japanese

Tsukioka, Kogane Supporting

Isobe, Karin Japanese

Yukoku, Kiriko Supporting

Yuina, Mizuki Japanese

Mankyuu Director

Yagihashi, Masazumi Sound Director

Iwata, Takeshi Episode Director, Storyboard, Assistant Director

Katou, Youichi Script, Series Composition

Reviews

Aug 22, 2024

Ranka-Nyan

Recommended

Shiny colors, probably the least known of idolmaster but actually the best one with the most fleshed out characters.
Developed as a browser idol sim game and released in 2018. Yet thanks to the community it's one of the few iM@S games to be able to play in english via it's fan patched web version.

The series is a stand alone and doesn't need any knowledge of previous iM@S series and can be a good starting point for the franchise. It takes all the aspects of the game and puts them nicely into motion. As an early fan of shiny, I can tell that it's a faithful ... adaptation of the game.
While the previous iM@S entries are more similar to each other and be bright, lively and even dramatic, shiny colors takes quite a different approach and is more laid back, slow and plays like a slice of life series.
The presented agency is smaller and less strict and tries to build newcomer idols. We have a laid back president who basically is kaiba by voice, us as producer and the cute easy-going secretary hazuki.
Unlike million live with 39 idols, we only have 16 idols, which makes it easier to remember the idols by face, voice and personality.
The focus here is more on the units and their interaction between each other and overall more on the daily lives of the idols. This always was the biggest appeal of shiny and combined with the slow progression, the idols are the most fleshed out of the entire franchise.

It may be a 3D CGI animation but the graphics are actually really nice, soft and clean and very faithful to the original design. It still retains a good 2D look. The characters look beautiful and they show unusually lots of small details in their expressions like eye movements, which is nice to see. Environments look good and the lighting often is very beautiful too, especially during sunset scenes or similar ones.
Animation can be sometimes slow with low fps, but with the slow tone, it's fitting and after a while you get used to it. Even with the fps in mind, the concert scenes still look amazing and well done. Here the 3D animation plays out it's pros too with nice close ups, fancy camera movements and good dance mocap, making the entire thing more lively and realistic as watching a real concert.
Overall shiny colors looks even better than million live too, as the film grain in ML was often too heavy, visuals too blurry and it somehow even had visible aliasing around the hair too unlike in shiny.

Story in shiny progresses slowly and it takes some time for things to develop. It's basically a slice of life series with idol as a theme. But it's cute and relaxing and sets up a nice atmosphere and mood in exchange for being slow, giving time for development. Scenes are often deep and thoughtful by the way it's presented, especially if you already know the idols. It sometimes plays out as a drama series as it focuses on the idols emotion. Yet it has less forced drama than the other entries and less annoying characters too, making it more enjoyable and easier to follow and pick a favorite character.

Sound is also good and has a beautiful calm and relaxing ost with slow tones and many piano sounds, fitting for it's slice of life style. Tracks may not be that recognizable and iconic, but they add much emotion and are a good accompany to the scenes and visuals. As for the idol songs, we have different genre for each unit. Ranging from classic idol pop, to more high energy music and even metal. An overall good range, which the game even expands on more. All the unit songs are actually from the game.
While the series has a sweet original opening, it actually lacks on an ending song and mostly uses the various unit songs as off vocal track or a piano outro. This could be because the series originally got a cinema release and rather has a more cinematic tone too. I personally liked the off vocal and piano outros as it gave more meaning and chance of reflecting to the watched scenes while the credits roll. A unique and nice change from the usual setup.

As a fan of iM@S and slice of life, shiny colors was really enjoyable thanks to it's deviation from the usual idol series formular, making it more unique and fresh. It's more calm and laid back, making it easier to jump in and follow and it has a nice touch of other healing series.
Visuals are beautiful and sound is a nice accompany. The characters are cute, individual, recognizable and there are no annoying characters either. While the game may go more in depth with the characters, the anime still represents them how they are in the game and even had various easter eggs from the game.
Overall it may be more of a treat for the already existing fans, but it's still worth for newcomers too, especially if you like slice of life and idols.

The series ratings honestly are unusually low in comparison to the other iM@S entries. It definitely deserves better than that. It could be because of the different setting and expectations though and especially the very different visuals, namely the 3D CGI. Yet shiny sure is a great example of very good 3D CGI animation. Even with that in mind, shiny deserves a watch and I enjoyed every aspect of it, especially as a fan of idolmaster and slice of life series.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Dec 27, 2024

MidniteAndBeyond

Mixed Feelings

Despite my undying love for THE iDOLM@STER, I don't know if I can sugar coat this one.... this show was rough. Its been very disappointing to see the iDOLM@STER anime series become progressively lower and lower in quality. The 765Pro anime is near perfection and I'll always stand by that. But as time went on, the shows became shorter and more rushed and the other branches are just too big to get any actual screen time or character development. And this one was by far the worst offender of that. I was a bit hopeful since this branch is rather small in comparison to the ... others, but it was honestly SO unbelievably rushed. So much time just felt wasted. I felt like I was watching the same episode 4 different times, 12 times in a row, because they'd just have everyone in their own respective units having the same conversations on the exact same topic, only in different locations. They spent almost no time together or with characters outside of their units and that was incredibly disappointing. The song choices were very underwhelming, as every single one of them was one that was used for the debut of Song For Prism. Which, I know, this show is meant to be a big advertisement for that game. But iM@S anime series used to be MORE than that and could stand on their own, so its frustrating to see them backpedal so badly, all for the sake of saving money.

I wasn't crazy about the Million Live anime using 3D animation, and somehow this show looks even worse than that. The art cards of Shiny Colors have some of the most unbelievably breathtaking illustrations I've ever seen in my life. Which only makes it that much more apparent how bad this show looks, in comparison. This branch deserved SO much better. Everything about this show just screams "cheap". From the constant montage shots of every single character for the sake of filling the time slot, to the fact that the credits of every episode have no new songs or illustrations like all the other shows did. It was just... rough... They did announce a second season for this one, which is shocking. And odd, considering how it doesn't seem like it'll be adding ALL of the missing idols from this branch. Will there be a third season, afterwards!? Why would they spend so much time on this anime when they very clearly didn't care about putting any effort into the first season? I don't have much hope for it, but of course I'll be tuning in. I love these characters and liked getting to spend time with them, as I always do. But Shiny Colors is one of the richest branches in terms of story and visuals. And this show just absolutely failed in both of those departments. I absolutely can't recommend it as your gateway to Shiny Colors or to iM@S as a whole.

5/10, and thats being incredibly generous.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Nov 10, 2024

voxSpec

Not Recommended

The anime adaptation of Shiny Colors is, to put, a glorified advertisement for their rhythm game spinoff Song for Prism. Except, it's pretty much nothing when it comes to story pacing and progression, their choice of music, and so forth.

The primary gripe of this anime is how they rely heavily on Song for Prism's NOMAKE commus. For each IDOLM@STER anime there is at least a supplementary nomake commu which can be found in respective games (mainly mobile game ones). They are usually extras, adding additonal (and somehow optional) story elements that enhance each main episode's storyline. Shiny Colors? The audacity to make plotlines confusing and ... incomplete, yet they put PIVOTAL, IMPORTANT story elements in a REGION-LOCKED rhythm game is baffling; wanna know Mano's motivation to join the production? Go read the commu, Episode 1 doesn't even explain anything about it. They should really have been part of the anime in the first place. The slideshows in each ending? Those became an entire commu in the game.

Bamco's decision to pivot im@s anime into 3d takes a further downward spiral, the CGI is somewhat worse than Million Live's. Some cutscenes are also laughable like one in illumination STARS' recording of their song "Hikari no Destination" while L'Antica is watching them; the later's members have this freeze frame with dull facial expressions for uncomfortable seconds LOL

Instead of making dedicated new songs for this season (bar its OP), they thought it's a good idea to rehash already released songs before the anime's inception (being BRILLI@NT WING songs). And they have the ball to repeat them all over again across the episodes. It hurts to see that each ending is either instrumental versions of respective BRILLI@NT WING songs, or that one borring ahh piano tune that is so out of place for an anime based on the game that champions good storywriting.

In short, even a ShinyP is doubtful about this one. This new era of ANiM@S is a tragedy; we got an amazing retelling of U149, a somehow average Million Live, and then this. Shiny Colors as a brand right now is struggling with Bandai Namco attempting to push them into the number 1 im@s brand (by baiting people to play their badly received Song for Prism game, only to be overthown by gakuen im@s), and this anime is an insult to injury to bamco's nepo baby. Go watch any other im@s anime instead, hell even gundam-laden Xenoglossia too.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	The CGI in this is much worse than the CGI in Million Live. wildsmoking - Nov 29, 2024	3 replies	by bukanmuzza »» Dec 4, 2024 5:53 AM
	Poll: The iDOLM@STER Shiny Colors Episode 12 Discussion AkeZZZ - Jun 21, 2024	7 replies	by Magito »» Aug 19, 2024 7:44 AM
	Something about this adaptation..... BonBonToro - Jul 11, 2024	2 replies	by amlg »» Jul 20, 2024 3:04 PM
	Poll: The iDOLM@STER Shiny Colors Episode 11 Discussion CocoaGalaxy - Jun 14, 2024	5 replies	by davidralph »» Jun 21, 2024 3:37 PM
	Poll: The iDOLM@STER Shiny Colors Episode 10 Discussion AkeZZZ - Jun 8, 2024	1 replies	by CocoaGalaxy »» Jun 8, 2024 10:54 AM