Promotional poster for the IDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE anime

bamco announced a few days ago that the million live anime is going to be broadcast during nichiasa at 10 AM on sunday. nichi asa kids time, if you’re not already familiar, is a sunday morning block on TV asahi that has long carried a slate of toei staples like super sentai, kamen rider, and precure. while nichiasa no longer formally exists, as it shed that branding about a decade back, the longevity of its kids programming means people still call it nichiasa even though it only held on to that name for a few years. it’s also enduringly popular in the way that you might think about the traditional primetime. what do these shows really have in common, though, besides coming from toei and preaching an unflinching sense of justice? they’re all sponsored and brought to life in plastic by bandai, the cross-pollinator between toei and asahi that flowers these properties into mix media powerhouses. the partnership between all these players is fairly longstanding with some shared corporate ownership, so it at least explains the corporate machinations involved in how idolmaster can show up in a daytime slot.

million live is, otherwise, unquestionably out of place here. in its original GREE incarnation, where app store rules prevented showing underwear to satisfy fanservice, all card art instead made it look like they were wearing none at all. for some additional perspective, the U149 anime aired earlier this year on wednesday in a late night slot, as have all other idolmaster adaptations up to this point. million live instead seems determined to escape to a new audience by breaking every unstated rule for a one cour show in its demo, as it’s also beginning to broadcast now only after having its entire run shown in advanced screenings at theaters. limited advanced screenings are not all that new as a way to drum up anticipation, looking back as recently as oshi no ko and lycrorico, but by the time million live does make it to screens at home, most devoted fans that were itching to watch it will have probably seen it in its entirety already. if it’s not for these otaku, the ones that realize an advanced screening is happening at all, then maybe it can make sense for it to air outside of the late night to net a potentially younger crowd for what is probably the 2D franchise most threatened by its core fanbase aging out altogether. there’s enough aikatsu staff crossover here, both director and scriptwripter, that maybe it really was imagined for kids.

across an ocean that bamco has only recently acknowledged exists with this franchise, watching impressions from those screenings stream in over SNS has started to feel a bit like I’m experiencing the show through the lens of a casual observer rather than a fan, where each authentic vouch only fuels a curiosity to see something for yourself to clarify if it can really be that good. even as someone that has gone to bat for miriani through a drip of questionable PVs over the last three years, and coped for about as long that it would still be adapted at all, the buzz hasn’t done all that much to shake me from the feeling that million live operates more like a pet project rather than a franchise with serious ambitions that are more obviously evident in the other branches. shirogumi is a fascinating studio to have helm here, and they satisfy my own thirst for more full-throated attempts at 3DCG, but no one would seriously ask for them to take up the mantle in what should really be someone like goripon’s or okamoto’s place. maybe I should be glad it gets to be something at all rather than suffer as the unwanted stepchild.