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The iDOLM@STER YMMV index
General | 765 Continuity (2, Million Live!) | Dearly Stars | Cinderella Girls | SideM | Shiny Colors | Xenoglossia

The franchise in general:

  • Archive Panic: As of 2020, with a lot of Games, lots of Soundtracks and some television adaptations and counting, newcomers to the franchise will have trouble catching up.
  • Awesome Music: Has its own page.
  • Broken Base: Fans of the Raising Sim gameplay (such as the original arcade/console games and Shiny Colors) vs fans of the Rhythm Game style gameplay (such as Starlight Stage, Theater Days, and Growing Stars). The raising sims are what the series was originally built around on consoles, but the mobile rhythm games caused a huge Newbie Boom that caused the franchise to truly go mainstream due to their accessibility. Original fans of the raising sims often feel alienated at the increased focus on rhythm gameplay, not helped by even the console 765AS games toning down or removing the raising sim gameplay in favor of rhythm game elements up until Starlit Season.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Makoto Kikuchi is this of the main characters.
    • During the arcade game's location tests, Yukiho was the most produced character during both tests.
    • In terms of costumes, My Dear Vampire and Wired Marionette are insanely popular for cosplay. There's also Gothic Princess, which is merely a Cute & Girly recolor, only has simple solid colors, and has low stats, but became rather popular among players for the Elegant Gothic Lolita vibe it gives off, and is featured very prominently in merch.
    • Cinderella Girls has its fair share of them, found in its own YMMV page.
    • Million Live ain't no slouch in the darkhorse department either. From that game, there is:
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • It might not be reciprocated, but Berserk fans have been shown to dislike this series because Kentaro Miura was known to be a huge fan of it, with said fans erroneously blaming this series for a ton of schedule slipping; it isn't unusual to find comments in Idolmaster-related YouTube videos or webpage articles commenting on Berserk potentially being delayed again and/or general reactions of "He put Berserk on hiatus for THIS?!". After Miura's death, blaming Idolmaster is seen as a tasteless joke; it's generally understood that it was, at the time, a fandom in-joke taken way too seriously.
    • Naturally, the franchise also has a rivalry with fellow idol franchises such as Love Live!. LL in particular draws snark from iM@S fans due to what they perceive as lower-quality CG animation, the smaller cast of characters (though one could argue that a larger cast doesn't always mean a better cast), and the comparatively loud fanbase.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • "Broducer" for the anime version of the Producer.
    • Ozaki gets Madao, in her case meaning "good-for-nothing Ozaki" (まるでダメな尾崎 Maru de Dame na Ozaki).
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Yukiho/Makoto seems to be for a major part of the (mostly female) fanbase (or at least based on what you see on Comiket and other amateur publication events)
  • Friendly Fandoms: With Vocaloid. *The "P names" for Vocaloid producers was derived from iM@S, there is a large Vocaloid convention called "The Voc@loid M@ster", Project Diva 2nd had iDOLM@STER costumes as DLC, and Hatsune Miku herself appeared as a guest idol in 2.
    • A lot of iM@S fans are also into other 2D idol franchises such as "Love Live!!" and Idoly Pride.
  • Growing the Beard: Million Live. During its first year, it felt rather generic and only existed as a sort of Cinderella Girls clone. As time went on, the events became more extravagant, the card art got better, the music CDs associated with the game have greatly improved, and the new characters have gotten enough depth to match up with some of the original 13 765Pro idols, causing the sub-series to stand out in its own right.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Ryou getting new card sets in both SideM in his F-LAGS persona and Cinderella Girls in his Dearly Stars persona on the same week (Valentine's 2017) led to some fans jokingly accusing him of working two idol careers at once.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • While Jupiter wasn't well received during their debut due to the series consisting of female idols up until that point (except for Ryo), fans have somewhat warmed up to them in the anime version; while they're still high-and-mighty jackasses (especially Touma), they clearly show disgust when they realize Kuroi has been skipping past the Moral Event Horizon behind their ears. Their non-business moments with the cast in the OVAs also helped. Eventually, they turn over a new leaf as idols under 315 in SideM, and act significantly nicer than they did in 2. In fact, when Starlit Season didn't include them or any SideM idols as playable characters, there was an enormous backlash.
    • Some may say all of Million Live is this. At first it was considered to be an unnecessary cash grab of a mobile game when the older Cinderella Girls already exists. Once the characters began to show more depth, the music attributed to the game started to improve, and the event themes became more interesting, Million Live is starting to show a decent-sized (not to the extent of CG) and loyal fanbase. It helps that it's the easier game to access for a western audience than its spiritual older sibling.

The 765 Production games and anime:

  • Alternate Character Interpretation: "Black Haruka". She wields a katana!
    • Home Haruka, a skin for Playstation Home gone wrong and then subsequently satirized in a manner similar to Black Haruka.
    • Some fans jokingly theorize that Haruka had deliberately set up the situation in Episode 23 to cause the Producer to fall.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The anime's end credits are typically a montage of the idols relaxing after the episode's events. Then there's Ami & Mami's ED, which features them riding dinosaurs and doing a tandem spacewalk with no context whatsoever.
  • Critical Dissonance: Platinum Stars was hated by fans, due to the fact that it was a grindy rhythm game with tons of microtransactions and having non-existent idol raising. However, it has the highest Famitsu review scores of any game in the series.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In the series, Azusa becomes an idol just to get more attention to find her destined man. But in real life, a female idol who looks for a man as her love life only causes more ruckus for idol fans.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The two fake trailer movies that star the entire idol group now that there is an official movie.
    • Iori has covered Nadeko Sengoku's Image Song, "Ren'ai Circulation", with Eri Mizutani having Nadeko's Japanese voice actress. It turns out that, like Iori, Nadeko isn't as cutesy or innocent as she appears to be.
    • Asami Shimoda wasn't quite done with playing two different idols in the same series. Her next biggest role was lending her vocals to Len and Rin Kagamine, who are used from everything to music to PVs to live 3D concerts. And of course, fans love to play them off as Half-Identical Twins.
    • Kentaro Miura, the creator of Berserk, is an admitted fan of the franchise. Toshiyuki Kubōka, who made the original character designs, would go on to direct the Golden Age Arc movies.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Again, Makoto.
  • Memetic Loser: Chihaya's bust size of 72cm made her a complete Butt-Monkey to bust-related memes.
  • Memetic Mutation: のヮの
    • There is the てってってー (Te Te Tee) meme from Nico Video, where remixes of all different sorts are done with a BGM song from THE IDOLM@STER, as well as the popular trend of putting the choreography of the dances (Usually the most popular ones.) to different songs.
    • Due to the popularity of iDOLM@STER in Japan, Sony offered a Haruka "skin" for avatars in PlayStation Home. The resultant skin, really intended like a plastic mask for the avatar, fell so forcefully into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley that "Home Haruka-san" (as she's been dubbed) has become a minor meme on Nico Nico, particularly in the Vocaloid fandom where the 3D choreography program "Miku Miku Dance" is readily available. Home Haruka-san should be treated with the same amount of fear and respect as you would give Michael Myers.
    • "Are you ready? I'm LADY!"
    • Yukiho's Catchphrase ("I'll go bury myself!") soon became a meme about Yukiho's extraordinary ability to dig holes on every surface, as well as the ability to summon shovels from Hammerspace. Somehow ascended in episode 15 of the anime, where she (as a super robot) has drills and an obsession to dig through stuff.
    • Kuroi also got one thanks to his nonsensical sense of board game: "CHECKMATE!"
    • Chihaya's robotic-sounding delivery of "Ohayou!!Asagohan" in the first game caused fans to come up with the memetic character Mecha-Chihaya. This is sometimes paired with a Shout-Out to Armored Core, where one of the megacorporations is the Kisaragi Corp. Mecha-Chihaya became an Ascended Meme in the anime, in the form of Mujin Gattai Kisaragi.
  • Moe: The foundation on which the game is built. Downplayed in the original arcade game, while the characters still acted moe, the developers deliberately avoided going for an art style that was too moe looking for fear of people being too embarrassed to be seen playing it.
  • Narm: In the anime, Kuroi seems to have a fetish for chess, Go, etc and likes making up things to make Check Mate (and says it out loud)... until you realize that he's just arranging the pieces into some shapes he likes rather than making an actual check mate situation... Clearly the man knows nothing about the board games he plays.
  • Self-Fanservice: Some artists like to draw Takane with a sizable rear end.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Makoto is most commonly paired with either Miki or Yukiho. They are depicted as rivals in many MADs.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Crossover: In One for All, some fans noticed that Million Live got better representation than Cinderella Girls. The choreography for the ML characters tended to be superior to those from CG, and the ML characters have original skill names while CG characters have their song titles for skill names. Then there's Starlit Season, which was meant to celebrate all branches of the franchise, but reduced Dearly Stars and SideM to mere cameos.
  • Stock Footage Failure:
    • How can Azusa and Takane be dancing on the floor in front of the stairs and in the next take they're still descending said stairs?
    • In a less obvious example, the animators themselves got confused over Ami and Mami's costumes. Ami starts off wearing yellow and Mami with pink, then during the CHANGE!!!! segment, both of them are wearing pink. Mami's costume then changes to yellow during the last bits of the READY!! segment with the close-up of her and Iori, before they revert back to the original costumes they were in.
  • Sweet Dreams Fuel: The anime of the 765 idols is often considered this.
  • That One Level: The VESPERIA Festival. Also counts as Brutal Bonus Level. Without some serious aid and preparation, there's no way to beat it.
    • The lyrics lesson in SP is notoriously difficult for people that can't read kanji.
  • Ugly Cute: Harukasan. With her constant wide mouth and eyes, she like the pug of the Petit Idol gang.
  • Values Dissonance: The push for Makoto to act more feminine may come across as odd to Western fans.
  • Vanilla Protagonist: Haruka (and the characters following her archetype in the other branches) occasionally gets accusations of this.
  • Win Back the Crowd: Stella Stage was meant to be this after the disaster that was Platinum Stars. The dreaded P drop system was removed, the simulation gameplay returned (albeit rather watered-down like One For All), DLC from Platinum Stars carries over so you don't have to buy it again (the first time this has ever happened in the series), and the game features the largest list of standard songs to date, whopping in at about 40 songs, and this is all without DLC. The costumes are all still identical no matter who wears it, though... Seems like no big deal, but when a good chunk of the costumes are Palette Swaps, the lack of individuality really stands out compared to previous games, making the wardrobe options seem very limited.
  • The Woobie:
    • Poor, poor Chihaya-chan. Not only her past is that dark and troubled (for this kind of series' standards anyway), the last moments of anime episode 19 will make you want to hug her... while cursing at Kuroi and scream for his death for what he did to her.
    • Haruka becomes this in episode 23, since all of her friends are busy and have no time for her, a show that was suppose to happen gets canceled, and Miki starts viewing Haruka as a rival. The ending makes it worse.
    • Momoko Suou from Million Live has had a pretty crappy life too. Ever since she became a child star, her family grew more and more dysfunctional as a result of her parents constantly getting into arguments, causing her to at first separate herself from the others. One card has Momoko crying herself to sleep at the thought of her family life hopefully improving. Keep in mind, she's only 11 years old.

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