New Idolmaster Anime Announced

During a New Year's Idolmaster event held today in Yokohama, a new Idolmaster anime project based on Namco Bandai's games franchise was announced, to be produced by Aniplex. An official website is already online, with a countdown to January 28/29 - when more details will be revealed in the March issue of Megami magazine. And for each day of the countdown, a new doodled message from one of the seiyuus will be added there.



Speaking of seiyuus - or voice actors, for those still unfamiliar with the term - all idols from the original game's fictional studio "765 Production" will return to voice the anime's heroines. Each of them is presented in a new trailer that came with today's announcement, although it's mostly artworks and no actual anime footage (the intro part was done using the lovely Idolm@ster 2 game engine - you can watch more of it here, here and here).

It's been suggested that the anime will be a directed adaptation of the original music (-management) game from 2005 (later ported to various consoles), rather than its spin-offs or the Idolm@aster 2 sequel. The difference being that the sequel is set two years later, and begins with the girls having already made their professional debut. But that's hardly of crucial importance.

By the way, with all this talk about Idolm@aster 2, I should mention that this new game is releasing for the Xbox 360 in Japan next month, on February 24. The franchise was previously adapted into two anime works: the 2007 TV anime series Idolmaster Xenoglossia, and the 2008 OVA Idolmaster: Live for You!. For now, the new anime project's format and release timeframe remains unknown.