×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
REVIEW: BanG Dream! Episode of Roselia I: Promise




Note: this is the discussion thread for this article

Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2434
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Tue May 25, 2021 11:27 am Reply with quote
This captures a lot of how I felt about the Roselia movie, and maybe speaks to a bigger issue with the BanG Dream! franchise in that it needs to live in an “eternal present”. Like some sitcom from decades past, nothing significant can ever happen to change the basic scenario, because it’s important for things to stay the same. That way, events can come out in any order, new fans can come on to the scene and not be burdened with years of backstory, etc. But the downside is, this largely prevents any sort of development. Beyond the origin stories for each of the bands, they’re basically always in a state of stasis: Yukina will triumph at Future World Fes as soon as Sisyphus pushes the rock all the way up the hill.

For some of the bands in BanG Dream!, this works better than others: Afterglow, the loose collection of friends you’d be happy to just hang out with, are literally defined by the catchphrase “same as always”, so we don’t expect much character or plot development from them. And God help us if anyone decides the lunatics in Hello, Happy World would be well-suited to a long-running story arc (“nothing will be the same after Kokoro learns Michelle’s secret!”).

For Roselia, it seems like there’s a desire here to do something substantial, but the format makes it impossible. What’s really confounding is the thought that there’s a whole ‘nother movie coming. What’s the point? As insubstantial as Part I is, I’m just left wondering which events from mobile game will be in Part II. The MMO adventure? The trip to the waterpark? And if all they’re going to do is crib “greatest hits” (as Chris calls them) from the mobile game, doesn’t that just make the mobile game the defining text of this franchise, and the movies superfluous?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group