What’s it about ?
In the future, entertainment has been banned. An underground concert by guerilla idol group (sic) AKB0048 encourages a group of kids to apply to become new members.
This is, of course, a glorified advertisement for real-life idol group AKB48.
Characters
Nagisa, head of the kids’ group. She’s a big fan of AKB0048, but Daddy has recently been promoted in the Anti-Entertainment Agency and doesn’t want his daughter anywhere near this, for fear of scandal.
Yuuko, the bratty one, has a boyfriend. Who doesn’t approve either.
Orine is an orphan who works at the generic factory instead of going to school.
There’s a 4th girl shown in the beginning who seems to have completely disappeared in the “4 years later” segment. Presumably there’s a story there.
AKB0048 themselves are “the 5th generation”, “in homage to the originals”, and don’t a single personality to share between the 10 or so of them.
Production Values
Pretty good. There’s a lot of CG elements, especially in the choreography sequences (Precure-ED style), and it doesn’t look half bad.
Obviously, the whole soundtrack comes from AKB48. It’s not very good, generic J-pop.
Overall Impression
At face value, this is reasonably competent. The plot is ludicrous, but this is decently-written enough for the stakes to be clear and the main characters to be somewhat fleshed out. And that “guerilla idol group” sequence at the beginning is quite fun to watch.
On the other hand… this unashamedly promotes generic soulless mass-produced entertainment, with a degree of white-washing that I’m really not comfortable with (three seconds of research into AKB48 made the “boyfriend” issue even less tasteful). This requires completely buying into the idol marketing machine to be any fun to watch… and sorry, no dice.
And really, it’s not like the plot is likely to go anywhere interesting, or the characters to develop a personality beyond their archetypes. I’ll pass.
