PriPara – 01

Was a pretty entertaining first episode.

So there’s a Aira Mia and Naru in the PriPara universe and they did an idol group together called Saints. That’s a pretty high and mighty name. They deserve it though. Their hit song is also the OP, Make It. I wonder if they’ll do a cameo again, Laala’s sister Non said they stopped three years ago. Even if they do appear again they probably won’t play any real part in the story or it’ll be really really weird.

Answering back to your mom isn’t something you should do. Comparing her voice to a speaker or a firetruck’s siren, even less. That was super rude of Laala wow. She’s a bad child.

Kyaaaaaaaa it’s Cosmo! Since they revealed she’s Sophie’s sister it was kinda obvious she’d be in the show. She’s so beautiful, I hope she appears soon.

The three characters they showed the silhouettes of some time ago. They’ll be voiced by the other 3 i☆Ris girls, and will probably be rivals. Seems like the two on the left actually aren’t twins and just like dressing&hairstyling the same. They look a bit bland, kinda like I imagined them. I didn’t think the sidetail one on the right would look like this though. Not sure if it’s a good or bad thing.

Sophie looks so cool. Akaii Meganee too.
Seems like Akaii Meganii is pretty much the only kinda recurrent male character they’ll have in the show. The producer kinda implied during the PriPara school thing there won’t be any main male character.  I wonder if one of the girls will fall for him.
In any case I hope he’s at least a quarter as great as Jun or Hiro. All my hopes of PriPara continuing the legacy of having great male characters rests on his sharp shoulders. At least in terms of voice it should be ok, cuz ATOBE! ATOBE! ATOBE!, KIRIGA ZA SHOOTING SUTA, or that guy in I dunno about in Utapri(sorry fans), among others.

One of my favorite shots in the OP. It got that kinda old school? feel to it. Like, if they do a Creamy Mami remake she’d kinda look like this. That’s also the only time I thought Laala was actually cute. While I like her design, I don’t find her herself cute much, if that makes sense.

That’s Nodoka Nagisa Niina and Laala’s friend called Nao. They look super generic so didn’t think they’d actually be in the anime. It seems they’ll be side siiiide characters so their generic-ity is justified.

Sophie got groupies. They actually put a fat girl character, and yet there’s still no guy main/side character…

That’s their school’s name.

Seems there’s actually just a little bit of CG there when she grabs the mic.

The music note on the middle of the chest or back area is something loved by the persons who do the design for the clothes. A lot of costumes in Pretty Rhythm has it too.

Mireille’s personality summed up by her face.

I’m not a fan of super fast animation like that with lot of camera changes etc. In general, I hate it whether in live or anime shows when the point of view of a scene changes/shakes too much. Regardless of whether it was objectively well animated or not, (I’m not a specialist in animation after all) I actually like what they did here though. It’s not too long or confusing.

Sophie’s the best.

They should have copied the gangsta handshake Ichigo and Aoi do instead.
I’m joking. I honestly think it’s just a coincidence. And it’s not like Aikatsu invented this.

Sophie’s cool.

Maybe Laala’s hair would have been cooler if it was entirely dark purple. Or maybe they should have acknowledged YuGiOh’s massive impact on (hobby) anime and make her hair always double tone like that. Also thank you persons in charge of the OP for showing us Laala’s ribbon is actually the PriPara logo. I gotta admit back when they announced the show I didn’t notice at first.

This OP animation sequence is really good for a first OP. Even though it’s only the first OP it shows a lot, it’s really dynamic and doesn’t just introduce the characters. Of course, it’s still a modern era OP with no story of it’s own. What I mean by the OP shows a lot is that it makes me guess they’ll focus on Laala and Mireille first then add Sophie.
Plus since they’re totally idols now they’re using it to their advantages by showing them doing  super cool transformations scenes and singing, instead of doing the usual daily life showing thing.
It has no CG part in it.  The second OP sequence will certainly have some CG in it. This follows my theory on Pretty Rhythm and now PriPara OPs: the odd numbered OPs don’t have CG, the even numbered OPs have CG. This has been true except for DMF’s and RL first OPs which both features a tiny bit of CG, and RL’s 4th OP who only has a tiny bit instead of a whole sequence.
In any case this is better than every 1st OP of Pretty Rhythm.

Wow clones.

 

In the trailer(right pic) you could only see a part of it, so you didn’t see everyone. In the actual scene they actually put every single previous heroine. They actually do their own dance too, not random movements. It’s CG  so they just had to copypaste it and silhouette it.

That was funny. PriPara should be funnier than RL (Except for the scarce funny focused episodes of RL)

I didn’t know from watching the trailers that was actually Mireille. Yes this is Mireille. That’s what she looks like when doing her job as public morals committee chairmwoman or whatever it was called. She’s actually not a blue eyes white dragon blond girl. I guess she can change her hair&eyes colors when doing PriPara. Either she doesn’t want people to recognize her or it’s just part of  how she’s a GAP character(I explain this later). Laala actually doesn’t know it’s her too since Mireille only introduced herself as “Mireille” to her later in the ep, omitting her family name Minami. I guess Laala will figure it out in episode 2. Maybe she’ll abuse her power to make Laala be able to bypass the school rules so she can PriPara with her.

Laala’s mom is cute. And that’s the guy Hamaguchi Masaru voiced.

Laala chan don’t answer back and help your mom without complaining.

Parajuku

Background silhouettes characters like always.
In Pretty Rhythm, Akaii Meganee never ever went out of the Prism World. In AD when she taught Aira and Rizumu english, they did it in the Prism World. in DMF she never left as far as I remember. In RL too. Also in RL they showed her getting angry for the first time ever. I think this first episode of PriPara is the time she talked the most ever. Itou Kanae herself is used to voicing a lot in Pretty Rhythm though, as she also used to do Kaname, Hye In etc. I wonder if she’ll say “PriPara no sekai he youkoso” in the show. Or show off her newtype powers, figuring out what people are thinking.

Also, gonna sound perverted, but it’s the first time ever Akaii Meganee wore a skirt. She wore pants in AD and RL, and shorts in DMF.

OH MY GOD THERE’S TWO AKAII MEGANEE SHE’S MULTIPLYING
AKAII MEGANEE=PRISM DECADE TIME TRAVELER UMINEKO WITCH THEORY CONFIRMED
She says that it’s not her and that they just look alike.

Notice how they upgraded the usual shining border effect present since Aurora Dream with colored sparkles now.

Kuma seems funny. He’s nearly not as funny as Onsokumaru in terms of weird animal suddenly changing faces character stereotype, but still funny.

Seems more like she was training to get into Cat’s Eye than for a live.

They didn’t forget to draw the hole in the tree from the earlier scene.

ANOTHER ONE!! Also, BEEF OR CHICKEN!!!
The announcer too got Itou Kanae’s voice so it seems the PriPara magic idol world is managed by an army of Akaii Meganees. That’s pretty funny. How could there be more than one Akaii Meganee in one world though? Won’t it explode because of too much perfectness awesome newtype prism powers? Anyway I should finish that post instead of saying stupid things.
I gotta say this really is one of the most interesting thing in the episode for me though.

CG director and his team really did make the glowsticks movement as independent and realistic as possible as he implied some time ago on Twitter.

They still make funny faces if you pose when they blink.

And wow, I really was right about Laala’s voice being her Solar Hands equivalent. Green Juné drill hair lookalike Mysterious girl X and Kuma called it the Prism Voice.
Greenjunédrillhair Mysterious girl X is voiced by Akasaki Chinatsu.

The mechanic replacing Prism Jumps in PriPara is called Making Drama. The one I saw in a game video, Tokimeki Present For You, got a bit more stuff happening in it compared to the one they did in the ep, so maybe some awesome ones will show up later. Also it feels like those radios were recycled radios from Prizmmy’s Miracle Wake Up Prism Act. I don’t think the statue at the top is anyone in particular.

The Sairum Change thing looks super weird in the arcade game because it gets too dark. Thankfully they fixed the light and it looked okay in the anime. I wonder how they got that idea to make clothes out of sairums/glowsticks. I guess that’s a good idea and it’ll get popular.
The CG was really really good as expected. CG Director didn’t lie.

A Pripass?? Why didn’t they call the phone an Idolink, like the ones they’re planning to sell IRL? Weird.

I don’t like Mireille but at least she actually doesn’t use french words like I predicted. Also that’s what Serizawa Yuu meant about her being a GAP character. I didn’t get what she meant at first. Maybe I’ll learn to like her if she manages to stay imaginative like that and does cool plans all the time. If there’s also an actual reason as to why she looks so different when playing her chairwoman role at school then it’ll be even better.

That first episode was surprisingly entertaining. And I’m happy that it was different. It’s definitely not an Aikatsu clone, for now. Among the three Pretty Rhythm seasons, seems the one most close to PriPara is Aurora Dream.
Now we have to see how the story goes and if it actually gets interesting and more than just entertaining.

Laala’s family looks okay. However I don’t think her parents will play an important role like in Pretty Rhythm. They didn’t even bother naming them in the credits, so unless they’re planning to pull off a Hiroko(see the after party event post), they won’t do anything important. I think it’ll be the same for all the parents, if others appear. Laala’s little sister Non should appear a lot though. Non is voiced by Tanaka Miu, some new seiyuu whose first role was in Wake Up, Girls!. I didn’t watch that show.

Nagasaki Yukio san, who was Sound Director of all Pretty Rhythm, is doing it again for PriPara. CG Director is the same person too, Otobe Yoshihiro san. He twitted the picture above this Friday, saying to look forward to the powered up CG in PriPara.
Pretty Rhythm director once mentioned that Nagasaki san is the one responsible for the fact that almost every seiyuu who voiced main characters in AD/DMF voice side characters in RL.
I think he’ll do the same for the side characters in PriPara. In fact he already started. Laala’s dad is Kusao Takeshi, who didn’t do a Pretty Rhythm character.
However Laala’s mom is voiced by Onee Sama, Sakuma Rei, who was Mion’s mom.

What I mean by PriPara being close to Aurora Dream (or Aikatsu), is how it seems like it’ll follow their starting pattern. I thought they would do the currently most used in kids show pattern of 1 character introduction= 1 episode. Instead, it seems like they’ll focus on Laala and Mireille first and add Sophie a few episodes later. They even show only Mireille and Laala together then Sophie alone in the OP. Sophie is Mion/Ran. I like that type of character so just like Mion in AD and Ran in Aikatsu!, she’s becoming my favorite.  I didn’t think Sophie’s personality and character background would reflect on the way the story would flow like that.

Possible early character developments would be:

• Mireille warming up to Laala and considering her as a friend instead of an idol cash cow partner.
• Sophie being lonely and annoyed by her groupies and finding her first true friends in Laala and Mireille.
• Mireille getting identity disorders and saying stuff like 本当の私
• Then a love story involving Sophie.

Whether these happen or not I’ll be happy as they’ll manage to surprise me.

Anyway, to sum up, I hope they’ll be able to keep it up till they introduce Sophie. Maybe I’m wrong and she’ll come around in episode 3. I hope it won’t suffer of lack of content like Aurora Dream did before they introduced Mion. I gotta admit AD first episodes are pretty bad. One of the things that kept me watching is Aira’s family being pretty well done. They had the guts to make Aira’s mom fat, like how a mom taking care of a pâtisserie with 4 children would normally look like. Laala’s mom is super slim, even though she works at a pizzeria and they eat pizza for breakfast. I guess she workout a lot.
Back to my Aurora Dream story, the other reason I kept watching at the start is Jun. To sum up Jun quickly, he is the best Tuxedo Kamen like character since Tuxedo Kamen himself. Then super hilarious episodes like episode 8 came(The one I mentioned earlier with Akaii Meganee and Jun teaching Aira and Mion), and then there was the first tournament, the slap, and Mion’s entrance and then everything was awesome.
PriPara need to keep it up until the episode where they introduce Sophie and when the show will really start.