Now that the anime is over (possible OVA doesn't count), I can give my final impressions. Just a fiar warning, this is gonna be a lengthy post, but please hear me out.
I am possibly gonna get crucified for saying this, but I think this was slightly better than the 765 anime back in 2011. A-1 improved some things such as the art style, despite the still frames and QUALITY moments (Episode 3....), the story was more of a forefront, and the characters were represented better here than with 2011.
HOWEVER, what I find to be the very thing that hurts Cinderella Girls is that A-1 learned from some mistakes, but not from others, especially the major ones. For one thing, while the characters as a whole were represented better, there was still an issue with screentime. Chieri didn't get too much outside her episodes with Candy Island and Ranko became a background character in Season 2. Also, while the anime made me enjoy and respect characters I previously didn't care much for (Kirari, Miku, Miria, and Uzuki), it also made some characters worse for me. I'm looking more at Rin and Mio, who I felt were kinda........ snobbish in the anime. Season 1 had Mio storm off and quick over her own overestimation and Season 2 had Rin just go on to Project Krone without discussing it with New Generations. Both moves I felt were really bad moments for those characters and made me like them less than what I originally had.
That's another thing I want to get into, the drama. In some weird ways, this was handled better and worse than last time. Better as in some characters took their situations well and I applaud how CG's issues lied withing internal company decisions rather than "KONO KUROI DA!" or what have you. It shows how in reality there are moments where your company will pull shit you disagree with. However, it handled it worse because when the really big moments hit, they drove it too damn far. Need I remind everybody on the overuse of rain? Because, you know, we can't just let the situation speak for itself so let's just make it rain so we can make it obvious to the audience that "this is the part where you're supposed to be sad". It felt so over the top and forced, kinda like Kana's drama in the movie with everyone running in the rain with looks of despair in slow motion (that was so fucking stupid, btw).
I'm also not a fan of this one thing I figured out: A-1 has a formula. Think about it, the first few episodes are never really bad whenever iM@S is done by A-1. They have fairly good beginnings. However, once you get to the middle it starts to go downhill quite a bit, to the point where it CAN get legitimately bad, and then at the end it fixes itself slightly so that it ends up being.... alright. 2011 did that for me, the movie did that for me, and CG was no different.
Overall, I thought the Cinderella Girls anime was okay. It wasn't terrible like what some people would like to preach to you (do not go on /@/ during an anime's run, it gets nasty) but it still feels boggling how A-1 didn't fix the most jarring errors that they had four years ago. I recommend this to anyone as a starting point for Cinderella Girls to get to know the characters, settings, and overall tone and then move to the music and manga and eventually the games (if you have access) and Drama Tracks. But for a veteran CG fan...... you'll probably enjoy it more than a veteran 765 fan would with 2011 but I still say watch at your own risk.
Whew, that was a long one. @_@
