Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 12 (Completed)

Where there's blame there's a claim, but no amount of compensation is going to help Yoppi overcome the ankle injury which looks all set to ruin both her and her group's chance in the Idol Festival final.

Naturally, Yoppi herself tries to put on a brave face and hide her injury from her colleagues, but it quickly becomes clear that something is wrong during the group's rehearsal, and there's nothing for it but to reveal the truth to them as they're about to cotton onto the problem anyhow.  The only question from there seems to be whether the group should pull out entirely or soldier on without Yoppi, but of all people it's a member of I-1 Club that comes to the rescue, bringing with her members of the group's medical staff to patch up and strap up Yoppi so that she might at least be able to survive her performance.

So, the day is saved, and with a little tweaking to their routine it's time for the Wake Up Girls to strut their stuff... something which they find themselves doing in front of a decidedly hostile audience filled with disapproving murmurs based mostly upon Mayu's appearance as part of their unit.  This soon starts to dissolve as their performance goes on however, winning over the crowd to an unbelievable extent to leave them with a standing ovation come the end of their routine, even if standing seems to be beyond Yoppi at this point.  It isn't enough to lift the Idol Festival trophy, but in the eyes of some at least it's an utter victory, and a performance that looks set to propel them on to greater things.

Given its starting point as a demonstration of everything that's wrong with the idol industry, it's been decidedly odd to watch Wake Up Girls morph into what it initially seemed determined to avoid, and come this final episode the show was effectively just another idol series geared to provide a feel-good ending and a drive to buy copious amounts of merchandise.  This isn't a terrible thing in itself - a good idol anime can be a lot of fun to watch - but between its rickety animation, lack of any defining characters and inability to follow up on some of its initial promise the result is a forgettable one.  For a show that seemed dead set on being anything but forgettable, that's the biggest disappointment of all.

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 11

They've made it to the final of the Idol Festival in Tokyo to stake their claim as an official rival of I-1 Club, but now the Wake Up Girls have to face up to the fact that none other than I-1 Club themselves have effectively pinched their best song.

Just as both group and management are pondering the ways they can detach the devious Hayasaku limb from limb, up pops the man himself to declare what he's been up to, which effectively comprises of making an even better song for Wake Up Girls to perform in the final to blow everybody away, and what's more this track will feature Yoppi as the group's centre.  With just one month to prepare, it's time for another hard slog learning the song and its choreography to the point where Hayasaku is as happy with it as he's ever likely to be with anything.

With preparations complete, off we go to Tokyo alongside a decidedly nervous group of girls, none more so than Yoppi herself as they face up to the magnitude of both the city itself and their task at the I-1 Arena.  It's clear who calls the shots here as I-1 Club get preferential treatment throughout, but the girls remain determined not to lose their focus - they might be about to lose something else however, as an accidental trip by Yoppi could put all of their hard work in jeopardy.

These recent episodes of Wake Up Girls certainly seem like a far cry from its early reckoning, with its cynical take on the idol market largely (although admittedly not completely) replaced with happy faces and near instant success for its titular group.  It feels like an odd decision in one sense, although perhaps a narratively necessary one, but it has left the last couple of instalments of the series feeling like "just another idol show", albeit one without any decent production values to crow about.  Perhaps its ending will have something insightful to say, but at the moment it looks like it might just be another "victory against the odds" fare to square the circle on the forced drama introduced in this episode.

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 10

After all of the recent tensions, it seems that everything has been resolved between the various members of Wake Up Girls, and not a moment too soon with the Idol Festival organised by I-1 Club's head honcho looming.

As a result, much of this week's episode deals with the preparation for the Tohoku region's preliminary round of the contest, as the group practice doggedly, organise their outfit for the big day, and fret over exactly what it is that makes them appealing to fans, while of course, the fans themselves also have preparations to make.  In the midst of all this, Mayu decides that it's time to sit down and try and explain things to her mother, even inviting her to the concert in the hope that she can finally understand why she left I-1 Club.

Away from all of this, the group also have to worry about their rivals for this round, perhaps the most eye-catching of which are the Demons of Oga, who seemingly mix their song and dance routine with comedy.  Oh, and big demon masks too... maybe they just want to be Super Sonico's manager?  Anyway, Yoppi isn't one to be cowed by this rival group's beligerence, and come the event itself everything goes surprisingly well for the Wake Up Girls - heck, even Mayu's mother turns up to watch her daughter perform.  The stage is all set for the group to head to the grand final in Tokyo, but before all of that there's another fly in the ointment to sour any positivity in the group's mood...

Ignoring some really ropy moments of animation, this was an okay but unspectacular episode of Wake Up, Girls that seems to have decided to do away with any real hardships for the group and suddenly turn them into a sufficiently accomplished unit to fend off their local rivals and look like pros at the festival - a decision that frankly isn't all that interesting and feels dangerously close to being a jarring shift in the group's abilities.  Beyond that, this sudden bout of success just doesn't feel all that interesting, but again this is probably down to my lack of investment in the characters at this point which I'm not sure the show can do anything to resolve.  Well, apart from creating a spin-off that follows the Demons of Oga, perhaps...

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 9

Given their current difficulties, it seems like an opportune moment for the Wake Up Girls to take part in a team-building training camp, and with Kaya offering up cheap accommodation (and lots of saury) on account of her aunt running a hotel in Kessennuma there are no real obstacles in the way of making this a reality.

Thus, it's off to this town we go, where we're faced with a striking reminder of just how devastated the location was by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011 - an event that destroyed lives as well as locations.

In fact, it's Kaya's experience of this that becomes the key to unlock the story of Mayu's time at I-1 Club, as Kaya begins by admitting that her proposal of this trip to her hometown was really a way of facing up to returning having left for Sendai three years previously to escape from the horrors and the persona cost of the aforementioned tsunami.  Having spilled the beans about this in private to Mayu, she looks for reciprocation and duly receives it, as Shimada talks of her history with the formative days of I-1 Club as they rose to stardom, and as the sense of fun which came from breaking new ground turned into a depressing chore as the idols were increasingly dehumanised and treated merely as numbers rather than people.  With this out in the open (and the other girls in the group secretly listening in on her telling her story, perhaps its time for the Wake Up Girls to step up and move on - it suddenly helps Nanami to make a decision on her future, if nothing else.

Although Mayu's story was hardly a shock given how it had been set up from the start, it's certainly nice to have that tale out in the open at last - even if it does try a little too hard to depict I-1 Club's manager as a moustache-twirling villain), it does hit some of the major problems with the idol industry head-on, and in an episode that also deals somewhat frankly with the suffering born from 2011's earthquake it makes for a relatively powerful instalment that certainly stands out from a lot of what the series has done to this point.  It'll be interesting to see where the story will head now that this major hurdle has been overcome, and although I doubt it can make Wake Up, Girls a memorable effort as a whole it does at least deliver some moments and ideas that can be appreciated.

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 8

Now that their group is whole again following their tough times revolving around Airi, the pressure is quickly piled on the Wake Up Girls once again as not only are they entered into a competitive idol festival, but also asked to learn a brand new song and dance routine for the event.

With Hayasaku's work with the unit now common knowledge, even amongst all and sundry within I-1 Club (who are themselves working hard to ensure they aren't bested even if they aren't explicitly competing at the festival), that pressure is only intensified.  In fact, this state of affairs is only ramped up further because of the continued interest in Mayu's place as the group's centre, leading the media to speculate that the Wake Up Girls may be the festival's dark horse while I-1 Club's current centre sees fit to meet Mayu personally to give her some needle about the need for her to compete against what I-1 has to offer.

All of this pressure inevitably builds as the girls rehearse and get their hopes up, only to have them dashed by Hayasaku who suggests that they are neither working hard nor long enough, echoing Mayu's own suggestions that they aren't putting in anywhere near as much effort as she's used to from her time at I-1 Club.  These constant references to her former group eventually irks some of the others, and leader Yoppi in particular, bringing about more rows and retributions - not the best festival preparation, particularly considering that one of their number is already all set to leave to take a different career path.

Its characters are still bland and its animation on a downwards slide, but it is at least still somewhat refreshing to see an idol group having to suffer for their art rather than everything being easy peasy from the outset.  This state of affairs does threaten to become both repetitive and frustrating thanks to a lack of traction in terms of the group's ability, but perhaps the festival will be a turning point that will make it all worthwhile in terms of character and story-building.  Then again, I've been hoping for that for a while now with no real improvement in sight, so maybe it's merely wishful thinking on my part.

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 7

At the end of last week's episode, new temporary manager Hayasaku left the girls with a simple choice - cut Airi from the group, or they'll all be fired.  So what will their decision be?

In exactly the kind of display of uncertainty that Hayasaku was expecting, the girls find themselves pondering what to do, with some seriously considering that perhaps Airi should be let go while others are willing to quit.  Eventually, after some heated moments, some semblance of common sense prevails and the group decides to do the right thing - go and persuade Airi to rejoin their number, while similarly persuading Hayasaku that she should be allowed to do so.

While Mayu and Yoppi head to Airi's house, some of the other girls take up their case first with Tange and then with Hayasaku himself, finding him at a local arcade where he sets up a rather strange goal - to win him three toys at said arcade's crane game before he'll reconsider his position on Airi.  Put simply then, the word of the week is "perseverance", as that trio's crane game challenge comes to fruition after numerous attempts while Airi is finally persuaded to rejoin the group largely after Yoppi finally comes clean about her own self-doubt and worries and these are issues that they all need to face together.  Thus, the Wake Up Girls are whole once again... just in time to face another new challenge!

For all of its attempts at drama and emotion, there really wasn't anything surprising about this week's Wake Up, Girls - crane game as metaphor for perseverance aside, there were no surprises in store during the episode and as a result the whole thing felt decidedly flat without anything to really punctuate its narrative or message.  For a show that promised to dare to be a little different in its early running, this felt like pretty typical stuff that even the likes of AKB0048 managed better, if only through sheer force of personality - that being that it actually had some.  As long as it struggles to make anything of its cast - and its character-building drama seems to be failing to do much of exactly that - Wake Up, Girls continues to descend into the realms of "just another middling idol anime".

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 6

Following that disastrous live event, it could be argued that the Wake Up Girls need a lucky break... and whaddya know, they might just have one.

The name of the lucky break in question is renowned composer Hayasaku Tasuku, who works for I-1 Club amongst others.  It seems that Tasuku is a little bored of life at the top and wants to test his skills with some "potatoes", as he calls them, to see if he can refine the Wake Up Girls into a success in their own right.  In light of this, Tange is really in no place to argue with the idea of him taking on the group, especially seeing as he's willing to dump money into them with no return beyond a few conditions surrounding his complete control of the unit for a limited time.

So it goes that Tasuku takes charge of the girls, putting them through a grueling schedule of physical training and days of three back-to-back concerts in an effort to shape them up both physically and mentally.  After a period of this back-breaking regime, despite the complaints of the girls it seems that Hayasaku has a pretty positive feeling about most of them as potential successes, with one exception - Airi.  He isn't afraid to tell her to her face either, at a time when even Airi herself is beginning to see a gulf between her own abilities and those of her group-mates.  In the face of news that she might be cut from the group however, she crumbles under the pressure, making an even bigger error in a live concert as what seems to be the final straw.  When she doesn't turn up to the group's next training session, it's up to the other girls to choose - to abandon Airi and continue without her, or for the whole group to be fired.

As a whole, this was probably the most solid episode of Wake Up, Girls in a little while - unbelievable though Tasuku's entrance on the scene is, and as laughable as I-1 Club's depiction as some kind of villainous sweat shop might be, the episode as a whole worked pretty well at delivering what was required of it.  Once again though, the big gap in the story came from a lack of character - we really know nothing about Airi, her real motivations or anything beyond vague monologues about her intentions or feelings, and this drains much of the interest out of her story; it's hard to care to any extent about a character we barely know.  It's the same old story which continues to undermine Wake Up, Girls, which is a shame given that its offer of something beyond your typical, fluffy idol anime could have made for a far stronger selling point.

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 5

The Wake Up Girls have themselves a second song, and now they have themselves a second concert.  There is one slight problem with this however - it takes place on the same day as one of I-1 Club's events in Sendai.

Still, the group's members aren't to be deterred by this, and set about working hard on learning the song, choreography and ensuring that they do the best they can with the opportunity that's been presented to them, while also figuring out ways to bolster their set list and the like.  While all of this goes on, Mayu's past with I-1 Club continues to be the elephant in the room that everybody skirts around; indeed, she even seems reluctant to engage with it herself when she meets a former I-1 Club colleague.

Of course, hard work will only get you so far, and on the day of the concert the Wake Up Girls learn two things - one, that they're still a long, long way from being a polished idol unit; and two, that any thoughts they might have had around giving I-1 Club a proverbial black eye were downright delusion.  When Tange invites them to see I-1 Club in action at their purpose built Sendai theatre, the girls get to see for themselves how wide that gulf really is.

So ends another episode of Wake Up, Girls! that doesn't really do anything wrong, but doesn't do anything particularly notable either.  I still can't remember any of the girls' names apart from Mayu, which says a lot as to how disposable they all are, and Mayu's I-1 Club controversy continues to be danced around more and more clumsily - just like the girls on stage, as it happens.  While it's nice to see an idol unit not becoming instantly successful and proficient with little effort, it feels disjointed to see the group regress from the competent performance in the show's movie outing to the bumbling routines depicted here, and there isn't really enough on show here to lend weight to any broader narrative.  As Twinkle suggested to the girls, perhaps they need to start arguing a bit more?  It might make things a little more interesting...

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 4

Mayu's return to the idol business may be a cause of celebration for some, but to most - or at least those participating in online discussion - her departure from I-1 Club, and perhaps more importantly the stories behind it, is unforgivable.

While things continue to progress for the Wake Up Girls themselves with the offer of a regular, named slot on a radio show (albeit at midnight), others have taken notice of the confirmation of Mayu's return to idol work - namely a journalist who spies a clear opportunity to dish the dirt on the truth behind her departure.  On top of the attitude of her mother towards her return to being an idol, life clearly isn't easy for the Wake Up Girls' star player.

As we gain a glimpse into the reality of the I-1 Club's dream machine - hard training, no right of reply for idols, and girls being dropped and replaced with fresh-faced young talent on a weekly basis as they prepare for their tour of Japan - so Tange's fervour grows markedly as she receives a call from a journalist in Tokyo looking to feature the group in a documentary.  Of course, unbeknownst to her, his real goal is an opportunity to press Mayu on the truth behind her quitting I-1 Club, which in turn only raises more questions amongst her friends as to what the real deal is here.

It's certainly nice to see Wake Up, Girls pressing this particular line of its narrative, as it's clearly one that's easy to relate to in regards to the actual idol industry and it seems to have a lot of potential to go places.  That said, there wasn't a whole lot to make this effort stand out - the episode perhaps tried a little too hard to demonise I-1 Club's leadership, and the show as a whole still suffers from a complete lack of any strong characters to speak of.  Mayu's secrets can only push the series forward so far, and if they aren't revealed soon then I fear it may turn into an exercise in flogging a dead horse - we shall see what transpires next week, of course.

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 3

With their original management team now fully restored and not a swimsuit in sight (well, apart from the bit where, y'know, they have to wear swimsuits), it's onward and upwards for the Wake Up, Girls as they make their local television debut.

For this task, the group are split into two - one who have to do a piece on local food and gourmet in the area, while the others have to report on weather while immersed in scalding water.  Needless to say, only one of the two gigs appeal to the girls, and thankfully for those who draw the short straw a little persuasion changes the format of the weather report to involve wearing animal outfits rather than being tortured live on television.

Understandably, the early going for both of these segments is strewn with errors and dead air, but as time goes on and the group gain experience so their pieces to camera become more slick, and Minami even manages to bag herself a catchphrase while getting to enjoy her favourite past-time of eating a lot.  While her grandmother and her friends watch on with pride, Minami is carving out a place as a bit of a star within the group, and when the opportunity of a spot on a televised concert comes up the plan is to allow her to take a prime role in proceedings.  No prizes for guessing what happens next - Minami's grandmother is taken ill, and suddenly her appearance at the event is put into jeopardy.

As a follow-on from that uncomfortable previous episode, this felt like far more of an episode from a stock idol series - there are more suggestions of troubled times ahead for Mayu, but for the most part this was a dull "by the numbers affair", not helped by the fact that you could have dressed a bunch of bricks in animal costumes and I wouldn't have been able to tell them apart from the group here.  No, that wasn't me making a dig at the episode's animation quality either - all of the burgeoning idols remain as dull as dishwater, and no amount of associating them with cool animals is going to change that.  Again, perhaps this is in itself a commentary on the vacuous nature of the industry, but it doesn't help make things interesting, and I'd actually rather the girls just lean heavily on tropes rather than be complete non-entities as almost all of them currently are.

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 2

The Wake Up, Girls have themselves a new producer, and it seems that there are going to be some fundamental changes as a result.

And by that, I mean fundamental clothing changes.  It seems that Sudo operates a strict "swimsuits only" policy when it comes to idols in his charge, and before we know it the group are booked to perform at a health club in the kind of getup that only Super Sonico would wear without shame.  Inevitably, the customers at this live performance are less interesting in the music and more interested in the... visual aspects of the performance, in perhaps some of the most creepy exploitation of an idol since Perfect Blue.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if this was the end of things but no, Sudo seems to have signed the group into a whole chain of ever-more cringe-inducing performances at the club, all of which involve swimsuits and leering men.  Once it comes time to play the King's Game, things quickly boil over to the point where Miyu ups and walks out on both the event and the group.  With company president Tange returning out of the blue, this phase of the Wake Up, Girls' career seems to be over as quickly as it's become, but it's still uncertain whether Miyu will return until her fans back at the Maid Cafe help her to come to a decision.

Having tried to walk the line between fan service and admonishing the viewer for taking any interest in said fan service in an unconvincing way, this week's Wake Up Girls perhaps did a better (although equally forced) job of making its point.  Watching the girls performing, posing, getting groped and generally treated like pieces of meat in swimsuits was hugely uncomfortable viewing, and Sudo's point that this is effectively no different to a gravure photo shoot drove the point that the episode was trying to make home unquestionably.  The biggest hole in the show's efforts (ignoring some moments of terrible animation) along these lines are still its flat, bland characters that don't evoke empathy aside from in the broadest terms - again, perhaps this is one of the points the show is trying to make about idol culture, but it still deadens some of the impact that the events shown here could have had when you can't even remember most of the cast's names.  Perhaps this will come in time, but having absolutely nailed its colours to the wall this week, there's no doubt that I'm very interested to see where Wake Up, Girls intends to take its story next.

Wake Up, Girls! - Episode 1

Their first live concert was a success - well, as much of a success as you could hope for at a student metal band event - but what does the future hold for Wake Up, Girls as the New Year begins?

Given that there are bills piling up and manager Matsuda really isn't even sure what he's doing without the company president to demean him and boss him around, things aren't looking all that great, and some of the girls are already starting to think about moving on with their lives in the assumption that this could be the end of the road for their very short-lived idol careers.  But maybe, just maybe, there's some hope just around the corner, as it's revealed that another manager named Sudo wants to take on the group to relieve Green Leaf of some of the burden and take the group to new heights.

With this announcement comes renewed hope and excitement from all involved, with even the more skeptical parties ultimately being swept along in the hope of more work and a bright future as talk turns to on-stage introductions and the like.  An announcement from I-1 Club that they'll be coming to Sendai and building a stadium for a concert there reminds them of how far they still have to go, however, and as the episode ends it becomes immediately clear that Sudo's plans for the group might not be quite what they wanted for themselves.

Having done a decent enough job of setting up the group and premise of Wake Up, Girls in its initial movie, I'm just going to come out and say it - this first episode of the series proper was as dull as dishwater.  We're still no closer to seeing any kind of personality or character to speak of from any of the girls, and the major story points could be written on a Post-It and delivered in about five minutes of an episode at most.  With little of note to hold those moments together, this series needs to get into gear and fast if it's going to avoid becoming a long slog to watch.

Wake Up, Girls! - Seven Idols

While an idol group known as I-1 Club blaze new trails in the Japanese entertainment industry, a small and struggling talent agency in Sentai looks on with envious eyes.  If you can't beat them, join them, and thus the Green Leaf agency begins the unlikely task of creating an idol group of their own.

The result is a ragtag group of girls - everything from a waitress at a maid cafe through to a model, creating an uneasy mix of talented individuals and less talented girls who nonetheless have a fire in their belly when it comes to be an idol.  Understandably, the early weeks of the group - unfortunately named after a local love hotel as they seem to be - are decidedly scruffy, but more importantly something is missing... someone to take centre stage and stand out from this crowd.

It seems that the answer to this missing link is right on the group's doorstep too, as it becomes apparent that a former "centre" for I-1 Club who has since left the group is now living in the area; what's more, she's even a friend of a member of Wake Up, Girls!  However, Mayu Shimada is adamant that she wants nothing to do with the world of idols ever again, and no amount of asking or trying to persuade her will change that fact.  When the agency's president seemingly does a runner, taking with her the company's money and leaving the group's first CD and concert unpaid for, it appears that the group's brief foray into show-business is over - the cause of much anguish and upset for all concerned.  Having witnessed this first-hand, and with her own frustrations brought back into her mind as a result, this is the impetus that Mayu needs to join the group and lead them to their first, and perhaps only, concert, panties on show and all.

So, there you have it - a fifty minute movie chronicling the formative steps of this idol group as a lead-in to the TV series proper.  As such things go, it's definitely a competent effort, but little more - none of the idol group themselves has any kind of discernible personality at this stage (although hopefully the series will handle that), and even Mayu's past is too vague to really gain any apathy or understanding from the viewer.  On the plus side, this does feel like a franchise that can sit between the likes of iDOLM@STER (where being an idol is fluff, happiness and success almost all the time) and AKB0048 (where being an idol involves... well, flying through space blowing shit up) - it at least alludes to some of the less pleasant aspects of both the entertainment and idol industries, and it resides in a place where gravity is indeed in full effect when you're jumping around in a skirt, which is perhaps to be commended in some weird way.  Onwards to the series proper though... more on that in an hour or two!