YMMV / THE iDOLM@STER: Shiny Colors

The iDOLM@STER YMMV index
General | 765 Continuity (2, Million Live!) | Dearly Stars | Cinderella Girls | SideM | Shiny Colors | Xenoglossia

• Best Known for the Fanservice: Most know the game due to the often sexy fanart and doujinshi of Sakuya, Chiyuki, and Kogane. It's to the point where most self-proclaimed fans are Fanwork-Only Fans with very little idea of how the game actually plays.
• Broken Base: Much like SideM, the whole concept of pre-defined units that you have to use together in order to get the best performance. Some think this gives the characters more synergy and allows for there to be more focus on the relationships between idols, but some find that part of the fun of iM@S is creating your own units. Unlike SideM, idols very rarely interact with idols outside of their unit, aside from small things like home screen conversations and supplementary material and a tiny minority of support cards.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Tenka exhibits many symptoms of Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD), including difficulty making even basic decisions without input from her sister Amana or the producer, a severe lack of self-confidence, a belief that she is incapable of performing tasks on her own, a lack of independent goals aside from staying with her sister or the producer, and needing said sister's approval and her company so badly that she's willing to do things that are unpleasant for her in order to get it (such as strenuous idol training and performing in front of crowds). On top of that, many people who have DPD live the Hikikomori lifestyle just like she did before becoming an idol.
  • Asahi exhibits several signs of being neurodivergent in some way, most likely having ADHD. The way she is able to memorize and perfectly mimic others' dance steps, her inability to pick up on social cues or follow social norms, and her constant swinging between hyperfocus and getting distracted easily are the most telling signs. She also tends to show thinking patterns that differ wildly from those of her unit mates and the producer, which is another sign that she is neurodivergent in some way.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • 助けて…真乃…めぐる… ^explanation "Help.. Mano... Meguru..." Comes from this 4koma, where a stressed Hiori seeks help from Mano and Meguru before an audition. The meme originated from Reina Kondo's tweet (Hiori's seiyuu) and is regularly parodied.
  • ス゛ゴ゛イ゛で゛す゛！ ^explanation Kaho's habit to put the emphasis on all syllables when excited. Often used by fans when talking about other Houkago Climax members.
  • "Thanks for not saying [X] in front of my parents. I know that took restraint." ^explanation A snowclone meme that originated in 2021, consisting of a fanart of Sakuya, portrayed as the viewer's imagined girlfriend, thanking her partner for not saying whatever is being discredited on a date or in front of her parents.
  • Madoka eating ramen/AI drawings of anime girls eating ramen^ExplanationIn the earlier stages of AI image generation, the AI still had difficulty conveying certain prompts, resulting in several unintentionally hilarious results. One such result is pictures of anime girls eating ramen or similar looking noodles in an outlandish manner either by using their bare hands or just sucking it straight from the bowl, and it just so happens that Madoka Higuchi is one of the most prominent targets for the prompt. It took no time for several artists to poke fun of it.
• Shipping:
  • Juri x Natsuha, the Tsundere Tomboy with the Amazonian Beauty Ojou. Not unlike the Miku x Riina pairing in Cinderella Girls, they often bicker with each other, but they still manage to get along. Not helped by Bamco putting them together very often in both cards and 4komas.
  • Toru x Madoka is incredibly popular for the Childhood Friend Romance aspect along with them having a lot of content together and lots of stories that have a focus on their relationship.
  • Fuyuko x Mei is also an incredibly popular pairing, particularly among Western audiences. A large portion of the Japanese fanbase ships Fuyuko x Asahi instead, but Western audiences find the age gap and general gap in maturity to be No Yay material and rather see their relationship as Fire-Forged Friends or a sisterly one, preferring the aforementioned Fuyu/Mei.
  • Almost every shipping combination within L'Antica has a sizable fanbase, but content in the game seems to favor Yuika x Kiriko and Sakuya x Mamimi.
  • Another example of Values Dissonance can be found in Mikoto x Nichika, a pairing that's popular in Japan due to the focus on their duo unit and their development as foils to each other. Among Western audiences, though, this is No Yay material as Nichika is 16 while Mikoto is 24, giving them an 8-year age difference. Western audiences do, however, enjoy their development as a unit and the interactions between their characters as a Senpai-Kohai dynamic that's merely platonic.
• Tear Jerker: The end result if you fail Nichika's W.I.N.G. route (especially if you got to the preliminaries or finals) is unusually heartwrenching: because she failed the auditions, Nichika has to follow through on her promise to Hazuki to quit being an idol for good, which leaves her devastated and lamenting that no matter what, she'll never be good enough. Ouch.

---