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Well and that's ended. Given my sub-zero interest for the real band I doubt it has me moved in getting anything AKB-related. Let's go for a few bullet points to sum up my impressions:
The Good
- The premise is incredibly absurd but somewhat works very well;
- Decent technical level (more of that later);
- Decent pacing;
- Somewhat contained drama issues;
The Bad
- While the AKB members doing the voices certainly have improved over the course of all the series, most are still sub-par. Nagisa's VA is the worst offender as there was little improvement;
- The choice of using CG for dance parts is a stilistic choice so I'm not really complaining. What I am complaining about though was that certain parts of the songs that were not done in CG were really, really horribly animated, especially in the last episode;
- While the drama is mostly contained, sometimes when it gets blown out it results in ridicolous scenes, the exact opposite of what was intended (Okada did that with BRS as well, only it was much worse in that case);
- Certain successors are really not explored at all (I completely forgot Mayuyu existed till she appeared again in the last episode). The focus is in on the understudies so I can understand that, but aside Takamina and Yuuko we're talking about 1cm-deep characterization for the others.
- DGTO and DES stay too much in the background, so it's hard to understand their policy for the entertainment bans.
In the end I'm satisfied though. But I expect Satelight to tie up a lot of the loose ends in the second run (Center Nova issues aside, there's need to expand the role of DES, Tsubasa's real motives and Sensei-Sensei's goals).
An enjoyable series, considering the absurdity of the premise.
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