tl;dr: It's an "idol documentary" series through and through. As in, it straight up gives stories to each of the groups 1st album songs for promotion, rather than creating a superficial story to promote the group ARP known as Artists Republic Performers....or Augmented Reality Performers(?) are a group of AR idols, mainly known for their 'battle system' which essentially makes all performances like a competition. AR idols aren't necessarily a new innovation, you have some like vocaloids or VTuber idols who also use AR technology to generate a fictional 3D character and perform on stage. The main thing to note at the end of the day, isthat this is nothing more than a promotional show for this group

Story:

The main gist of the story is pretty much backstories towards the creation of some of the group's songs that were in their debut album, A'LIVE. In the beginning we get introduced to each of the characters and their persona's, and then we get insight into the "development" of how some of their songs came to life. At the end of each episode is a short little segment featuring the actual idols themselves, where they usually just talk about what happened in the ep (i.e., their 'opinions') and the preview for the next one

Now most of these episodes have similar formats to them, with some proposition, some endless drama and then it all resolves on the grand battle stage where they pour their hearts out or whatever. Some of the drama I will admit seemed rather silly and maybe even overstretched, but it still had a lot of the "overcoming challenges together" themes that are prevalent in idol shows

Art:

Art is a weird one in this show. Generally speaking the art and animation are absolute dogshit, but when it comes to their performances where they switch to 3D, it suddenly becomes amazing. I've seen a lot of CGI idol performances but these ones take the cake

Sound:

Mixed bag really. General voice acting was better in some characters (Shinji) than others (Rage). OST was pretty much nonexistent. The songs themselves though, they were amazing. It's actually the only idol group I've seen where I genuinely enjoyed listening to their songs, and even went ahead and got some of them. They have a wide range of genres too, ranging from more rock based to more funk/hip hop. The OP and ED's were absolutely great as well.

Characters:

Being idol persona's, you can expect each character to have their own attached personality to them. Well this show really sticks with those personalities

Shinji - The charming prince/white knight who will princess carry you wherever you want to go. He's usually the most mature out of the group and is generally regarded as the leader of it

Rage - A-grade tsundere. Honestly he's probably going to be the least liked character in the series only because he has quite a few moments where he's just an absolute dickhead. Still though, those tsun moments where he shows his nice side are pretty good

Daiya - The hip hop dude. Pretty much the controller of Rage,

Leon - The one foreign exchange dude who's there for muh diversity. In seriousness though, Leon is the "don't care just wanna dance" type of character, and his overall positivity can grow on you

Overall the characters I found to have some good and bad moments. There are times where they seem pretty awkward together, and times where they actually are pretty funny together

Enjoyment:

I won't say I really enjoyed this show if it wasn't for the songs. At the end of the day, this show was made to promote said songs and the group as a whole, so I'd say it worked pretty well towards me. Overall though, if you're looking for something with a serious story, or one of the many idol shows that copy-paste things like nakama power and whatnot, then you might not find this enjoyable