UnhndredDescole posted...Wibo posted...
UnhndredDescole posted...
I know this might be blasphemy here but does anyone watch idolmaster?
Never heard of it.
Just kidding, I'm probably the biggest Idolm@ster fan here. So yeah, I play the games, read the anime, watch the manga, and my dream is to watch their live concert.
What's a good starting point for a complete beginner?
If you just want to watch the anime, go with the broadcast order: 2011 anime -> Idolm@ster Movie -> Cinderella Girls -> SideM. Xenoglossia is unrelated to the game at all and not canon. Puchimas is spinoff of first vision 765Pro Allstars and Cinderella Girls Gekijou/Theater is an adaptation of 5-panel manga from the Cinderella Girls game. Watch them if you really like the 2011 anime and/or Cinderella Girls respectively.
For the game, Starlight Stage and Theater Days are good entries to Idolm@ster. Both are free-to-play Android/iOS gacha rhythm games just like Love Live! School Idol Festival. The main difference is the idol selection. Starlight Stage featured 183 idols from Cinderella Girls branch (74 of them are voiced) and Theater Days featured 39 idols from Million Live branch plus 13 idols of 765Pro Allstars from main console games (all 52 of them are fully voiced). SS also has much more content than TD because TD is relatively new compared to SS (2.5 years vs 6 months old).
You should know that none of IM@S games are localized to English, so you need to know Japanese to fully understand the story. Actually 2 of them does (Viewing Revolution and iOS ports of Shiny Festa) but VR is only a glorified PSVR tech demo that doesn't tell any story and the iOS SF games have been unavailable since Bandai Namco stopped their service.
But don't worry, I know many people who don't understand Japanese able to enjoy SS or TD very much. The core gameplay of SS and TD is the rhythm part. And who cares about what they said when you can always see the idols singing and dancing to the music. Just watch it on YouTube if you really want to know the story, some people regularly translate commu of both games to YouTube.
Unless if you want to play the main console games. Early IM@S games (Arcade/Xbox 360) were originally a idol management/raising game and they're more like visual novel than rhythm game. That's also why IM@S games have lot of stories including the mobile games. If you understand Japanese, IM@S 2 or One For All is a good way to start. If you don't understand Japanese but really want to try the management aspect of the console games, try IM@S SP. Perfect Sun got fan-translated for all its routes, but Missing Moon and Wandering Star only partially translated.
Later IM@S console games, Platinum Stars and Stella Stage on PS4 took a different approach and play like a regular rhythm games, I'm not recommending them. You know something's wrong when the mobile counterparts are better then the full priced console games.
Actually there is a third F2P gacha rhythm games called Live on St@ge which featured 46 male idols from SideM branch. I love all of 4 current IM@S branches equally but this game is really bad and you should avoid this, just go play SS and TD.
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To the brilliant future!
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