While The Idolm@ster gaming franchise from Namco Bandai wouldn't truly make its mark in the world of anime until A-1 Pictures  full-length series in 2011, two previous attempts at bringing the girls to television screens were made prior to that. Although 2008's The Idolm@ster Live for You! was only a 17-minute short bundled with the game of the same name, 2007's Idom@ster: Xenglossia was a very different story. Produced by prolific studio Sunrise and directed by Tatsuyuki Nagai (who would later go on to direct AnoHana ), Idolmaster: Xenglossia discards the original premise of a production studio and in favour of exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from Sunrise: giant robots.

Idols , idols, idols. Whether it's music, television, films or video games you can't get away from them when it comes to Japan. And anime is absolutely no exception, going all the way back to the 80s with the likes of Macross or Magical Angel Creamy Mami. These days among the plethora of idol-based anime available there are arguably two franchises that constantly battle it out of the top spot - ASCII Media Works' Love Live and Namco Bandai's The Idolm@ster . While personally I couldn't tell you the first thing about Love Live outside of the fact it's popular, The Idolm@ster has gone on to become quite a favourite of mine after the 2011 series took me completely by surprise. These days A-1 Pictures have moved on with a series covering the Cinderella Girls spin-off game, at the beginning of 2014 they brought the original cast back for a feature length film entitled The Idolm@ster Movie: Beyond the Brilliant Future! (or Kagayaki no Mukōgawa e! ). Time to dust o...

Idols feel very much an Asian concept. Sure the West has pop stars and the like, but Japan's huge idol culture takes things to a whole different level.  The Idolm@ster is a 25 (plus one recently released OVA) episode series based on the Namco game series of the same name, which sees you raise prospective idols to the height of fame. It's not the first Idolm@ster anime to be produced, but one that's far more faithful to the games (the first series, Idolmaster: Xenoglossia , was about mecha pilots...something I may need to investigate in the future!) and includes their original voice cast. It was made by A-1 pictures (responsible for the likes of Black Butler , Fairy Tail and AnoHana ) and aired between July and December 2011. The Idolm@ster main cast The Idolm@ster follows the day to day life of production company 765 Pro and their twelve wannabe idols. With a brand new Producer in tow and the help of former-idol-turned producer Ritsuko, office clerk Kotori and ...