The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls U149 Anime's Video Reveals Opening Song, April 5 Debut

The official website for the the television anime of Kyowno's The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls U149 manga unveiled a new promotional video and visual for the anime on Wednesday. The video reveals and previews the film's opening theme song "Shine In The Sky☆" by the titular in-story U149 idol unit, and reveals the anime's April 5 premiere date.

© Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. / Project U149

The anime will premiere on TV Tokyo on April 5, and on BS11 on April 10.

© Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. / Project U149

The cast members are:

• Amina Satō as Arisu Tachibana
• Haruka Terui as Momoka Sakurai
• Tomoyo Kurosawa as Miria Akagi
• Hana Tamegai as Risa Matoba
• Makoto Koichi as Haru Yūki
• Asaka Imai as Chie Sasaki
• Natsumi Haruse as Kaoru Ryuzaki
• Misaki Kuno as Nina Ichihara
• ???? as Koharu Koga (performer is not listed yet)
• Yūki Yonai as Producer

Manabu Okamoto (The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls episode director, Gamers!, Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation) is directing the anime at Cygames Pictures with assistant director Hiroyuki Takashima. Oki Murayama is supervising and writing the series scripts. Norie Igawa (Infinite Dendrogram sub-character designs, Pokémon: Twilight Wings character design collaboration) is designing the characters for animation.

The other staff members include:

• Concept Art: Kinichi Okubo
• Design Works: Takeshi Noda, Keiko Odasaki, Noriko Nakamura, Takahiro Watabe, Michiko Makita
• Art Setting: Yoshihiro Sono, Takeyuki Takahashi, Kazushige Kanehira
• Art Director: Kazuhiro Inoue
• Color Key Artist: Makiko Doi
• 3D CG: Hirotsugu Ishikawa, Masamune Sakaki
• Compositing Director of Photography: Yoshihiro Sekiya
• Editing: Akinori Mishima
• Sound Director: Manabu Okamoto
• Music: Nippon Columbia

The manga centers around girls under 149 centimeters tall (under about 4-feet, 11-inches) who aspire to be idols despite not having a producer or gigs. However, maybe with a marvelous dress, a marvelous stage, and a marvelous prince ... The new Cinderella story follows these small idols and their small rookie producer.

Kyowno launched the manga on Cygames' online Cycomi service in 2016, and Cygames published the fourth volume in October 2018.

The IDOLM@STER franchise began as an arcade game in 2005, with the player tasked with producing idols in a fledgling idol company, managing practice schedules, concerts, CD releases, and time off. The game was first ported to the Xbox 360 in 2007, and had a sequel game in 2011, which finalized the first 13 characters of the franchise. Later spinoffs include The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls social game, which introduced the story of a larger set of entirely new characters within the story of multimedia conglomerate; The IDOLM@STER: Million Live!, which includes the original 13 characters alongside new characters; The Idolm@ster SideM, which focused on male idols all of whom had "unique reasons" for becoing idols; and The IDOLM@STER Shiny Colors, a mobile game and the most recent entirely new entry in the franchise, with new female idols and a return to gameplay features from the first two games.

The first anime adaptation for the franchise was 2007's Idolmaster: Xenoglossia, a spinoff mecha anime. A-1 Pictures and Nishigori adapted the first two games in 2011's The IDOLM@STER anime, and also produced the 2014 anime film THE IDOLM@STER MOVIE: Kagayaki no Mukōgawa e!. The studio and some of the original staff returned for both 2015's The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls and 2017's The Idolm@ster SideM anime. The IDOLM@STER: Million Live! also has an upcoming television anime adaptation.

The first mobile phone social game for The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls launched in 2011 and ended in March 2022. However, The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage rhythm game launched for iOS and Android devices in 2015 and is still continuing.

The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls also received a 10th anniversary "celebration animation" that featured all 190 idols this summer. Cygames Pictures animated the video.

Source: The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls U149 anime's website and Twitter account via Otakomu