The iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls is a follow-up to the 2011 iDOLM@STER anime that is set in the same universe, though with no returning characters. That said, I make frequent comparisons between the two. If you have no interest in seeing how Cinderella Girls measures up to its parent story, and want a review of it as a standalone work, read elsewhere. Story Cinderella Girls tells the story of the girls at 346 Productions, and the hurdles that they overcome on their paths to becoming professional idols. Every episode, some hurdle will appear, and one of the characters will have to grow as a person to overcome it.It goes a bit beyond that for the main trio, but for the most part, that's about as deep as the story gets. This is a character-driven show, and any plot that exists is just an excuse to put the characters into interesting situations. It accomplishes that just fine, but don't have any lofty narrative ambitions, because even with the introduction of an antagonist in the second season, the story remains largely inconsequential.

Art & Animation
The original iDOLM@STER anime had character designs drawn by Nishigori Atsushi, who also did character designs for Gainax shows like Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking. It's not easy to follow that up, but Cinderella Girls does a pretty good job. While definitely not on Nishigori's level, every design is distinct and appealing, which is impressive considering the massive size of the cast. Outfits are silly at times, but at this point, that comes with the territory. My gripe in this category is actually with regards to the animation. Coming back to Nishigori, the performance scenes in the original series were traditionally animated, and served as spectacles that still hold up today. In a few cases, Cinderella Girls captures this, but more often than not, these performances are reduced to series of stills. These scenes can be cathartic, and offer the characters a chance to really express themselves, so cutting out the animation was a huge disservice.

Sound
Cinderella Girls is an idol show, so there’s plenty of music, but none of it is particularly good. To rephrase that more objectively, I’ll say that none of it is memorable. Some of the songs from the original, such as Yakusoku and Nemurihime, were unforgettable moments, but for Cinderella Girls, these scenes are few and far between. Part of the problem is that song lyrics were mostly left untranslated by the official subs. They were covered when it was most important, such as Uzuki’s song during the penultimate episode (which is excellent), but for the most part, viewers were left in the dark. Some scenes had the potential to be memorable if the audience actually knew what they were singing about, but as most of the songs weren’t translated, the musical aspect of Cinderella Girls was largely a forgettable experience.

Characters
Cinderella Girls has an expansive cast of 14 girls, though with 25 episodes, you’d think there’d be plenty of time to develop all of them thoroughly. Unfortunately, the unit system makes this task near impossible. The group is broken down into six units, each with one to three members, and since episodes tend to put the spotlight on a unit as a whole, rather than its individual members, there’s less focus on each character’s personal growth. To make matters worse, the second season often tries to showcase several units in the same episode, further reducing the amount of screen time each character receives. In the original iM@S series, every idol got their own devoted character episode, which served to clearly establish their personality. Additionally, each girl acted differently depending on with whom they were interacting, so the diverse cast helped to further develop different sides of their characters. But in Cinderella Girls, characters are mostly restricted to interactions within their units. This means that the unit dynamics are well built, but any dynamics outside of them are largely unexplored. Lastly, there was a tendency to bring in other idols from the games as a sort of fanservice for fans of the series, and while they were intended to aid in the development of a member of the main cast, they would usually just end up taking up precious screen time.

Enjoyment
In case it wasn't made clear over the course of this review, I'm a huge fan of the original iDOLM@STER series. It's easily one of the best animes I've seen, and I still regularly revisit some of its scenes/episodes. I went in to Cinderella Girls hoping for a worthwhile successor, and it unfortunately fell short. As a standalone, Cinderella Girls is fine, but it's never anything more than that.