Looking at the credits, the most direct connection is girl band cry yes Love life! Franchise. Main writer Toki Hanada Serving the same role and director for three of the series’ four major animated projects Kazuo Sakai I have cooperated with Huatian before Love life! Sunlight!. The show’s synopsis—a group of girls form a musical project and end their emotional journey through an in-universe musical performance—is perfectly aligned with the world of School Idol. However, once one has watched even one episode, these similarities pale into insignificance because GBC Immediately establishing themselves as a different beast.
A lot depends on tone and context. ladies Love life! Through their struggles, they ultimately embrace an almost supernatural positivity in their stories. GBC Immediately more down to earth, more cynical, and closer to what it was like to be in a band as a teenager. The band’s members include high school dropouts and musicians in their 20s who work part-time jobs while raising their own funds to keep the band afloat. They play small shows at any music venue that allows them to make time. There’s a minor plot point involving music rights, with Peach signing over the rights to her original songs after leaving her previous band and now having to watch them flourish due to the success of her work. GBC Wants to explore the reality of being a professional musician and the constant friction between making art and making money.
Likewise, character drama is heightened by the constant conflict of anxiety and optimism. Nina and Momoka’s dueling characters take up much of the season’s plot, constantly clashing and bickering as only extremely passionate band members can. Nina’s need to justify moving out on her own and taking this difficult path shows that it’s better to maintain a sense of justice than to give in to the bullies and adults who brought her down. Peach finds herself caught up in the angry apprentice’s energy, but can’t shake the guilt of her past choices – she’s personally familiar with the sting of failure that comes with standing up for one’s beliefs in the cutthroat world of entertainment. They pull each other closer and push each other away at the same time. As Nina urges Momoka to embrace the misguided wrath she faces, Momoka attempts to protect them from an indifferent and uncompromising music industry.
This might make the show sound like a heartless drama, but the real point is GBCThe charm of is how it blends all that angst with clever humor. Each episode is a smorgasbord of physical comedy, from Nina attacking passersby with a lamp to bassist Lupa catching a beer can thrown at her head and gleefully drinking it down within seconds. Drummer and actor Subaru provides a seemingly endless array of weird, goofy, and downright wonderful faces, about half of them laced with pointed irony. Nina and Momoka bicker every other episode – and the choice to do so in a crowded restaurant adds to the perfect level of awkward absurdity, with countless strangers witnessing the two girls throwing drinks and acting dramatic statement, while their bandmates groaned awkwardly or tried to slip out of the frame. There’s so much grade-A slapstick in this show that perfectly complements the heavy plot.
The show’s approach to 3D animation is a bit of an acquired taste in terms of its slapstick themes, but it achieves its dramatic, comedic and musical goals perfectly. The characters are infinitely expressive and their movements are full of infinite energy. Yet they’re equally capable of making small, subtle acting choices that are rare even for better-known CG work. orange studio or Sanziyuan. The biggest criticism of TV-grade CG animation is how stiff and weird it feels compared to traditional 2D, but girl band cry When it comes to character animation, it’s snappy, punchy, and awesome. But there are some drawbacks – backgrounds and environments are often flooded with monochrome or color filters to make the composition more believable, but this in turn ruins the picture. Peach’s unnaturally smooth cat is the most obvious rough edge—most of the background characters aren’t much better. But overall, Sakai’s direction keeps things light and easy, making you completely forget you’re watching a 3D series until the camera makes crazy moves that no 2D production could do. With a powerful, rocking soundtrack, GBC Effortlessly switch between comedy, drama, tragedy, and all the other emotions you’d expect in the life of an amateur musician.
The real aesthetic highlight of the play is its musical performances. While there are no new songs in each episode, the ensemble’s performances are frequent and almost always serve as spectacular punctuation to the characters’ current conflicts, in the style of a full musical. No knife, no knife‘s music is imbued with the same angst and rebellion as its members, elegantly expressing the characters’ pain and loneliness while stubbornly resisting it all. This energy is perfectly matched with polished modern rock production that draws on the quintessential J rock and a more independent online music scene – especially in terms of the direction these acts are taking. There’s a good reason why the show is official Youtube The account hosts all of these songs as individual music videos, which make for exciting and dynamic displays even when taken out of context. For context, they’re some of the most satisfying moments in anime you’re likely to see all year. They’re great spectacles deployed with laser precision that will make you cheer and cry – and probably both at the same time.
While the show is viscerally and emotionally satisfying, there’s still something glaringly unfinished after the final credits roll. Nina and her story are brilliant – portraying the emotions of a lovely yet insufferable young woman. She’s a gnarly ball of repressed emotions, which makes her a perfect rocker, but also a massive (and hilarious) pain in the ass, only gradually growing out of her worst instincts. Her story is well-realized and well-layered, but the creator admits it took so much time that the rest of the cast was left in pieces. Momoka was well-served as she was an integral part of Nina’s story, but the others only got at most one episode to develop their stories before falling by the wayside – and Lupa didn’t even get that much. Likewise, there’s a lot that hasn’t been said about the group’s rival Diamond Dust, especially Hina, a former friend of Nina’s with whom she had a complicated falling out. There’s still a lot of story to tell, but there’s just no room for it by the final episode. Maybe that’s a good question—it’s a sign that the show’s characterization is strong enough that it needs more. But as of this writing, it feels more like lost potential without an announcement to continue.
There’s also the question of how to watch. At the time of writing this article, girl band cry Not legally available on any English streaming service. The only way to get it in North America is to purchase it digitally through a handful of online storefronts—mostly Amazon Prime and microsoft store— Prices range from $8-$10 for the entire season. While that’s not a huge expense compared to a month of a more standard streaming service, it’s still an unnecessary barrier to entry. One has to imagine that this cumbersome, half-baked attempt to promote it internationally will make sense to some. Toei. Still, it’s a strange sight for the average anime viewer.
That said, the show is ultimately worth it—or worth checking out individual episodes on your library card. hope. Whether you’re a fan of the emerging “girl band” subgenre or just a general music lover, girl band cry is an exciting show with a great cast, uniquely powerful animation and uplifting songs. Missing it means missing out on one of the best animes of the year.
