What They Say:
The era is the Idol Warring Era. This is the story of the the seven girls known as the “Wake Up, Girls,” and the hardships they face. A rather insignificant talent agency called Green Leaves Entertainment that’s located in Sendai, Japan, is about to go under. At one point, they represented magicians, gravure idols, and fortune tellers, but finally, their one remaining talent finally quits. Faced with having absolutely no one to represent, the agency president, Tange, thinks up a plan to produce an idol group.
Content: (please note that the content portion of a review may contain spoilers)
One thing to note, before you go into this episode — this is not the beginning of the story. The real introduction to the plot and characters happen in the movie, Seven Idols, so if continuity is important to you don’t make the mistake I did, watch the movie first.
That being said, episode one isn’t exactly a difficult jumping in point. Taking place on New Years day, the members of the fledgling idol group Wake Up, Girls! remember their concert from Christmastime, and wonder what will become of their group. After the president of their management company, Green Leaves, up and left with the money for mysterious reasons, there are no funds left to invest in their group, so while some of the seven are hopeful about their future, the rest don’t see much hope. There is a chance, however, if Matsuda, their manager and the remaining employee of the agency, can get a man, Sudo-san, to help with the management of the group.
Other than the above summary, not much happens in the episode, keeping the plot simple. That combined with the constant retrospection and flashbacks to the movie makes it easy to piece things together and figure things out, even if you never watched Seven Idols.
Aside from Mayu, the ex-member of the highly popular group I-9, the high school and middle school girls in this group didn’t really distinguish themselves in the movie. There’s not much improvement in this first episode, except that now we can see who are the optimists and who are the pessimists. We do get some cute moments when the girls go out to eat after the first meeting with Matsuda where they practice “introductions” and eat a bunch of waffles, but they still mainly fit inside each of their own moe personality type. The show relies on that to make them interesting more than anything else, so they still fall flat. Matsuda shows more personality, though he tends to the pathetic side, cutting himself down when the girls question how he’ll feel, having to share management with this Sudo-san. His determination makes him likable, though, and he may be the character that I cling most to in this show.
In Summary
Things are pretty slow in this episode, even if you don’t consider it the first one thanks to the movie. The biggest thing that happens is the arrival of Sudo-san at the end, who winds up being a rather sketchy-looking dude. This may bode ill for the girls in the upcoming episodes, if he turns out to be untrustworthy. If that’s the case, it may help to test the girls and help their personalities shine brighter. Or, it will push things to the creepier side of moe. We shall see.
Grade: C
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 13″ Apple Macbook set to 720p
