Forum - View topicBanG Dream! (TV) (all seasons).
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Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Season 1 - BanG Dream! (TV) Season 2 - BanG Dream! (TV 2) Season 3 - BanG Dream (TV 3) Spinoff - Argonavis from BanG Dream! (TV) Genres: comedy, drama Themes: bands, music, school Plot Summary: Since she was very young, Kasumi Toyama has always been searching for the "Star Beat", a sparkling and exciting sound she heard while looking up at the night sky. Just after getting into high school, Kasumi comes across a "star-shaped guitar" in the storage area of an old pawn shop. Feeling a rush and excitement she has never felt before, Kasumi teams up with four other girls and embarks on a journey to seek out the shiny place. We promise to perform a live here! |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15468 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 13 (finale)
Wow, this did not get much talking about, but I watched it. To give a straight answer to how the show was in a broad sense, it was not a very good show, which is not to say it was badly animated, acted, sounded, or in generally looked, all of those things I would call it normal, mediocre, serviceable but nothing really special. It has had a bit of a delay with its episodes, which makes me wonder if there was some sort of production issue in spite of that. But there was one big problem with this show that I think people must have picked up on early, it had an identity problem of not quite having a handle of what it wanted. I am not entirely sure if I expressed that problem in the right way, but it is really clear to see what this show was piggybacking off of: K-ON. It has been a few years since K-ON, but look at that and you can see that this show is trying to be that with the girl band, and problem I think is that they had no idea what made K-ON actually good. You can find some videos online that go into more detail in how K-ON was not really a case of just being moe with some music, you had a lot of talented people who knew artistic tricks of giving it an identity and all sorts of things beyond being a group of cute girls. BanG Dream largely just played all of the cliché of this sort of show and did it straight. And tonally, I think it actually took things from the idol genre such as Love Live, but only managed to be one of the mediocre ones without understanding why Love Live can be appealing. So to summarise that I would call it a rip-off Love Live inside of a ripoff K-ON. But before continuing with the complaints I will actually change gears and say the show actually had a part that it was doing well and did not feel like it was ripping off the shows I mentioned above. It happened fairly late in the show, and thus I was surprised when it actually grabbed my attention by doing something decent that was its own, that in itself makes me a little annoyed that it took that long. What happened was that the bubbly main character, Kasumi, comes to a realisation that she is the weakest member of the band, that she is making the most mistakes and that despite bringing all of the girls together she may have been holding them back. Kasumi starts to get hugely stressed and loses her voice after her baseless confidence washes away due to psychological reasons, and she starts to have a battle of the mind as she wants to practice to be a part of the group, but she does not want to because she does not want to let them down. It was the best part of the show and had me interested. But the arc ends as expected for the final arc and is back to being herself and we have a final performance of them on stage. And really it lost my interest with this towards the end with the last episode except for maybe a funny scene with them not being able to go into the dressing room and some chuni character. The last performance of the show was kind of bland, worst was probably that on Crunchyroll that the song was not subbed, which a song not be subbed is no unusual, it was just really weird and took from the impacted of whatever the song may have had for English viewers. It was really just another song, that I did not care about even as they started to have a slideshow of events up to this point. And next I want to point holes at small details of this show, and it was gender. It is not odd that moe shows like this might have almost no men appear in it, often they are in an all girls school and most of the people they will interact with will be other females. The last episode in the audience I can point out all of the males, which seemed to be a younger brother, and a couple guys that would probably be their fathers. I am used to kind of stretching my suspension of disbelief, but it just felt like it was too hard with this show where this venue that exclusively had female music bands would like never have any guys. It was not like it was just a bunch of girly songs, and yet it was weird that the audiences would be entirely teenage girls, especially considering that this is a show for males. The girls really were not that memorable at all, with the exception of Arisa, the blonde tsundere who had the majority of the first arc about her. Honestly she felt like the only character that did not just blend in with all the others. You had the main character who was bubbly and not very smart, a girl who was a little sister to someone in another band, a girl that I remember helped teach the main character and they were making bags for their guitars, another who worked at a bakery and despite not really agreeing to play was coerced to suddenly do so for the festival. And Arisa who I remembered for the main character managing to get past her prickly exterior, who wanted to be friendly though was embarrassed in a way not too common for this sort of show, and appreciated the main character practically forcing herself into her family life after being so closed. Giving a final rating feels a little hard, I lost interest so much in the first part of the show that I was getting pretty angry at the show being a failed mishmash of shows actually somewhat good, but appreciate the arc towards the end that added some complexity to the main character's type. The show was not really horrible, just largely bland that in general did not elicit much of a feeling otherwise. I think that I will go with Not really good (4/10), with the provision that in general it was not doing anything wrong, other shows just could do so much better that it would often feel like a waste, but with a story arc and or character that stops it from feeling like a total waste of time. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15468 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Season 2, Episode 13 (finale)
Here we go again, and by that it just me, who wasn't really a fan, critiquing the show solely in the thread. Kind of a surprise, because it looked the franchise might have picked up a bit of a fanbase of people who enjoyed the games, but I don't know the games, and only had the context of what I remembered of the first season. And reading what I wrote last time was maybe important for myself in putting things into context, because I said the show was largely forgettable, and through the second season I have felt like complaining about things that I don't think matched for the first season. First, especially, would be the other bands. I seemed to mention the chuuni character, but honestly I had like no memory of the other bands when coming into the second season, and from the start it was throwing them as being just as important as the main characters. I thought that I recalled that a lot of the first season were the main characters trying to be recognised as being good, that they would be worth listening to, and could be counted among the other bands, after some sort of story about saving the venue that the older lady ran. But it just all kicked off with like I was supposed to have a good idea of the other bands, after they must have been more forgettable than the main characters. There is like no adult mentor characters, which I thought was important in the first, the venue seeming to be run by a teenage girl that barely knew what was happening, and pretty much seemed to be always star struck by the main characters that had only just seemed to be able to get themselves noticed. There is such a lack of adult mentor figures that there was like another band that was run by a publisher who was also a teenage girl like them, but somehow a genius. The show got pretty weird too, like it has usually been pretty grounded, then all of a sudden an episode has one of the girl bands that has to perform in the okay sized venue, hire out an entire cruiser to perform, do a Scooby Doo like chase sequence, and then pull an even more ridiculous stunt, somehow singing with a giant (really big) hot air balloon, where they do a dangerous jump and somehow a mascot costume with all the power of an Iron-Man suit. It is not like I would call it necessarily a bad thing in itself, but it just feels like a total departure to what I remembered the first season was, that I was left kind of confused. Which I could perhaps segue into how the animation was changed from the first season to the second. To be honest I can't even remember much of the first, all I can say was that it was serviceable and not really any problems or interest. Second season now had all the characters replaced with 3DCG models. This in itself is not something I would normally criticise for, I think some interesting things can be done with such models, maybe giving off a certain feel, and can be an understandable cost cutting method. The show even had moments of mimicking standard anime eccentricities that I have found of interest in something like BBK BRNK. But I think that mostly works when things like the character model or how their move was specifically done with 3DCG in mind. I don't think it worked well here in the second season, for reason where it contrasts too much with the first season, and a fluidity they try to invoke by things like having a character's hair move, can be really jarring when there are so few frames so the head and hair kind of teleports around a bit. I won't bemoan an anime for trying the 3d models thing, but I just don't think it added anything. And maybe I would say that about the season plot, it just felt like there were no stakes in apparently their plan to do a sponsored event. Just felt like they were copying the other groups, and nothing really seemed convincing why they had to do it. Were they raising money? What was different from them all just deciding to do an evening of shows? Did it actually change anything for them? There was another plot running in the middle, where one of the members got scouted for a good band, and maybe have more opportunities, where of course it came down to friendship being important. Not really sure what to say about it, like if it could be a good path she follows as more likely to be professional after high school, because school was happening, but there was not any really such themes of what they wanted to do in the future or something. Again, I kind of feel like a problem coming from a lack of a mentor for maybe what comes next. K-ON and the Love Lives or maybe a sports anime like Free, all had characters faced with what future meant. BanG Dream just feels happy to have a bunch of concerts, with all the bands saying how great the main characters are. I am still not quite sure where they might have had an impact. Anyway, I have spent too much time talking down about something that I felt troubled keeping my attention on. It had some nice fun moments too, so I wouldn't say it was all bad. Even though I complained about some of the other band, the marching band was especially fun. To give a final rating for the second season of So-so (5/10), it may not have really got my attention, and all my other complaints, but it did have a leg up over the first season by having a more personality as itself, that I would say it stood out more than the first. |
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