Cinderella Girls End
Hmmm
not really sure what to make of the ending to this. I think the word unfocused would best describe it. I've said before but while this show is entertaining, it didn't quite reach the heights of the original iM@S and this ending slightly cemented that fact. I actually watched the final episode (not counting the extra episode) of the original to compare and that has a much better and
focused ending.
The show ends with the final performance of course, because that's the rule for every idol show ever animated and Cindy is no different. But funnily enough the concerts from Cindy and iM@S reflect my complaint of focus. In iM@S there was one stage with one performance; 765Pro. In Cindy there were multiple stages with multiple performances going on simultaneously made up of different units who sometimes even mixed themselves up. The show had to jump from one thing to another so we never really feel the story bringing everything we've experienced up to that point together.
Well, to be fair on them, they did try and bring things together by the end of the episode. In four different ways! First a where are they now scene, showing how they've grown, then a scene showing them all together with Producer-san, then a scene harking back to a scene at the beginning of episode one and then finally a scene where the main cast are the Cinderella Girls giving the Cinderella Girl performance seen in ep 1 to work as a kind of book end. Jump jump jump. It's like they couldn't decide how to end it so they just took all ideas on the table and put them together. That may have worked with DKC's
Island Swing (little trivia: that was three different music demos joined together) but it doesn't work here and like I said, comes off unfocused.
And since we're on the topic of focus, it didn't help that all focus was almost all on New Generation. Now I have joked that iM@S is the Haruka show, but honestly, I think it did a good job of handling the complete cast and the final episode gaves each girl their fair share of attention. Oh no not here. If your favourite wasn't New Generation (like me) then tough luck buddy cos they may as well have been just an extra that only appeared in one episode previous since they got about the same amount of screen time as the extras. This is the final to celebrate the journey of the cast, yet it failed so badly to show the whole cast. This I feel is the biggest failure of it. Some of the story elements should have been tied up in previous episodes (heck I though we dealt with the New Gen drama in the last one) so this episode could focus on what it needed to be, an ending.
Basically, this episode didn't really feel like a good send off.
Also, a general point to end. The colour palette in the original is much brighter, with bold colours, whereas Cindy is actually quite drab/down to Earth. It kind of reflects that iM@S is a more
fun show than Cindy and that's probably one of the reasons why I think it's overall the better of the two.
All in all, I was rather disappointed. I remember saying that if this was the only iDOM@STER anime Id likely not have become a fan of the series and I stick by that. Don't get me wrong, you can easily watch it and enjoy it even if you're not familiar with the property, I mean technically I wasn't familiar with the Cindy Gal side of things before watching this, but iM@S is the better of the two at drawing people in, which, in some ways, is the job of an anime.
Oh yeah and the music isnt as great, but I guess they naturally want to keep all the best tunes for the main series and not the spinoff. Though luckily they didnt include a lot of the image songs theyve released for some of the girls. Ive played the new Cindy Gal rhythm game and boy are
some of them bad.
Also I guess you want an idol ranking as thats kind of a tradition. First is Miku and then its the rest. Funny how after the first episode I thought, boy, a girl who says nya all the time, that sure wont get tiring after a while(!). Amazing what a varied personality and expressions can do to turn your opinion around.
So all in all, wheres my final episode that actually rounds things up?
And all in all, where was
Kate?