The original THE IDOLM@STER game series was long considered very difficult to adapt into anime, since the branching, player-driven storylines and the intimate relationship between the game and fan-made derivative works meant every fan had a different personal image of the series, and half-hearted adaptations risked failing with the demanding fanbase.

The previous 2007 anime adaptation, Idolmaster XENOGLOSSIA, dealt with this difficulty by becoming a completely different sci-fi robot anime that shared only character names with the games, using different voice actors and content described as 'a completely different thing' from the source game.

For this 2011 series, staff members who were self-professed fans of the original game were chosen, led by a director with deep knowledge of the source material, in order to faithfully capture the games' atmosphere, character relationships and speech patterns rather than reinventing the setting.

Unlike the original games, which focus on a one-on-one relationship between the player-producer and a chosen idol, the anime was designed as an ensemble drama centered on the '765 Production' talent agency itself, drawing on a school-life/club-activity style of storytelling.

The flashy stage dance sequences that are a highlight of the original games were deliberately held back and saved as structural high points of the series, with early episodes instead focusing on building up the characters' personalities to make the later performances more emotionally impactful for viewers.

In episode 10, three characters from the DS game THE IDOLM@STER Dearly Stars — Ai Hidaka, Eri Mizutani and Ryo Akizuki — appear as guest characters, voiced by Haruka Tomatsu, Kana Hanazawa and Yufu Sanpei respectively.

The movie sequel brought in seven idols from the mobile game THE IDOLM@STER Million Live! — Kana Yabuki, Shiho Kitazawa, Serika Hakozaki, Yuriko Nanao, Anna Mochizuki, Nao Yokoyama and Minako Satake — as guest characters serving as backup dancers, some with altered settings from their original game appearances.

The movie's ending features a single-shot cameo appearance of Rin Shibuya, the only character from THE IDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls to appear, serving as a nod confirming that the anime's world and the Cinderella Girls setting share the same continuity.

The company president Junjiro Takagi and rival agency president Takao Kuroi are both characters whose faces are never shown on screen in the anime, mirroring how Takagi's appearance was also never revealed in the original games.

For episode 15's in-story movie 'Mujin Gattai Kisaragi,' the song 'arcadia' was repurposed as its theme; in 2017 this same movie property crossed over into the mobile game Super Robot Wars X-Ω as a limited-time event, complete with newly voiced pilot characters and a remixed 'arcadia (X-Ω Ver.)' track.

The theatrical film 'THE IDOLM@STER MOVIE: Kagayaki no Mukou Gawa e!' opened on 39 screens and debuted at number 5 on the Japanese box office ranking, later expanding to screens in all 47 prefectures and finishing its run with over 460,000 admissions and box office revenue exceeding 678 million yen; combined with a later remastered re-release, total admissions reached about 526,000 and total revenue about 773 million yen.

As a promotional tie-in before the broadcast, a 'Real 765 Production' project had the voice cast perform in-character 'jobs' for outside clients, including narrating promotional videos, and even providing paddock announcements in character voices for a horse race event called the 'Banei Idolmaster Kinen' in November 2011, complete with a special fanfare arranged from the song 'READY!!'.

On July 7, 2011, a full-page newspaper ad announcing the anime's broadcast was placed in the Yomiuri Shimbun nationwide, with six different regional versions of the artwork that were not announced in advance, intentionally sparking fan discussion as they compared versions across regions.