D4DJ First Mix

Today I'll be giving my thoughts on Bushiroad's newest media project after BanG Dream!, D4DJ First Mix. This show is really great, and I'll get into why it's so great in this review. Let's get into specifics. Story: 6 Since MyAnimeList hasn't really done a proper synopsis of this show, I'll do it myself. The show follows a high school girl named Rinku, who has just recently moved back to Japan after living in Africa for years. The high school she attends, in a deviation from the standard music-centric anime, is big on DJs rather than idols. Rinku becomes enamored with DJing, meeting an unpopular DJ ather school named Maho, who begins to teach Rinku about DJing. Rinku and Maho eventually get together with 2 other girls at their high school, Muni and Rei, to form the idol group known as Happy Around!. The show follows the group of girls as they try to rise up the ranks of the school, along with their interactions with other school DJ groups Peaky P-Key and Photon Maiden. The story is pretty standard as far as music-centric shows go, as it doesn't too anything exceptional. However, what it does is still quite solid. It revolves around Rinku and the gang climbing up the ranks of DJ groups in their high school. It is a pretty straightforward plot, but it still manages to be engaging through the music and character interactions. It's pretty run-of-the-mill in terms of the plot, but there are some drama elements sprinkled in. These drama elements are pretty good and add some more flavor to the plot. The story manages to back in plot, character development, and music in each episode without feeling off in the slightest. The pacing is good, however, for some reason, the first few episodes would sometimes have moments of silence or lingering on the same shot for too long, which was pretty jarring. Luckily, the studio behind this show, SANZIGEN, seemed to have realized this early on, as that is really only in the first few episodes. The concept of a DJ anime intrigued me into watching it and it most certainly delivers on that interesting premise. The show gives actually good insight on DJing. I learned things about it that I never knew. I bet this show will get some viewers interested in DJing. Art: 9 I know what you all are thinking: "A CG anime having great animation? What is this guy on?" I'll admit, I too was originally concerned by the fact that this show is 3DCG animated, but all my doubts were put to rest by the very first episode. The CG is really great, probably the best I've ever seen in an anime. The characters move very fluidly, not looking janky at all, unlike many other 3DCG anime. The characters' faces are super expressive, perfectly displaying a wide range of emotions. The CG is especially impressive during the music sequences, as the animators go all out in making the dancing look authentic, the lip movement match with the lyrics, and the lighting look very visually appealing. The only gripe I have with the animation is the very little instances of traditional animation. They contrast quite a lot with the CG characters. Sound: 10 Now this is probably the most appealing aspect of this show. To be blunt, this show has some of the freshest and sickest beats I've ever heard in an anime. Unlike idol music, which often sounds somewhat rinse-and-repeat, every DJ group's music is uniquely crafted to their image. All the group's music is easily distinguishable from each other due to their defined styles. This also allows for viewers to more easily pick favorites, but honestly, all the music is so good that I can't decide what my favorite group is. All of the music is very catchy and just a great listen. I personally listen to music from this show very often because it's so good. Even the background music is good, having the same techno cues that the main songs do. As for the voice acting, it is also of high quality. All of the voices have a unique sound to them and are very expressive. As for the opening and ending songs, they are very good. The opening performed by Happy Around! themselves, Guru Guru DJ TURN!!, is a very catchy and upbeat tune. The same goes for the ending song by Airi Amano (Nana Mizuki) and Shano Himegami (Raychell), titled, and this is a long one, WOW WAR TONIGHT ~ Toko ni wa Okoseyo Movement. I found myself never skipping these great songs. Character: 8 The character development in this show is also quite good. All 4 of the main characters' personality and emotions are well explored. You really get a sense of how these characters feel and you begin to care about them. This show also includes 8 side characters, 4 from Peaky P-Key and 4 from Photon Maiden. While they obviously receive less development from the main cast, some of them are still well developed. Kyoko and Shinobu of Peaky P-Key and Saki of Photon Maiden have especially good characterization out of the 8 side characters. All the characters are filled with expressiveness, making their interactions with each other a blast to watch. Enjoyment: 10 This is some of the most fun I've had watching an anime in 2020 (and a bit of 2021). I often found myself with a smile on my face while watching it. I looked forward to each and every song and character interaction every week. Watching it was a fantastic part of each Friday it aired. Overall: 9 Even with a few small gripes, D4DJ First Mix manages to be an entertaining ride, jam-packed with great visuals, good characterization, and absolutely sublime music. Giving the music genre a fresh DJ twist, it keeps you entertained throughout the entirely of its 13-episode season. I highly recommend anyone to watch this show. This show is probably the most accessible one I've watched, as it's on a ton of different services. For North Americans such as myself, it's available on Crunchyroll, Funimation, HiDive, Anime Network, and even YouTube for viewers worldwide.

D4DJ is a multimedia project I have been following for a bit less than a year before the TV series started, my excitement towards the anime was huge, and I'm really happy to say that not only it was nice, but it also surpassed my expectations. This anime follows the cheerful Rinku and her new (and not that new) friends as they form a DJ unit in a school very heavily focused on that activity (the funds spent on that big-ass beautiful building and all the rooms with equipment to do DJ performances must have been crazy). As the episodes pass, they will meet new rivalsthat will both bring a bigger challenge to overcome, and also become friends that will help out each other to improve even further. One of the most important things to mention is that this is one of the rare music anime that is not really focused on drama, the characters do have problems and sad moments, but they all get resolved without being dragged out more than needed. I sure love a good drama, but I personally loved how D4DJ managed to have emotional moments while mostly just being an anime focused on sheer fun and good vibes. Now time to take on a part that is usually very controversial for the anime watchers but that really shouldn't be the case for this anime: CGI animation. SANZIGEN is a studio focused on anime of this type, and as someone who watched how Bang Dream from that same studio drastically improved between the second and third season in terms of CGI quality, I can say that D4DJ now took it not one but three steps further to become one of the best looking works using that style of animation. It makes me so happy to read so many people who are not a fan of CGI say that they found this anime to look great and not feel uncanny as they usually feel. With that said, I have to admit that the background chars suffer from generic face syndrome, but how well the main cast looks and expresses their emotions, and how great the performances are make up for it hard. As a music anime, one has to indeed give a lot of value to the music, and nothing to worry about, because this anime covers that section nicely as well! Nearly every episode has a new song (or two) that make you spam on loop on youtube after watching it due to how nice it sounded, and the normal soundtrack that plays during the series is also very solid and memorable. Not fully related, but since series about DJ performances are close to none, I really liked how D4DJ made sure to show the basics of how it works so one can make an idea about what the characters are doing and not just feel clueless with what the task of a DJ is. I have to give its own paragraph to the opening song of this anime because it not only sounds fantastic and shows how good the CGI of this anime is, it also fits so well with the theme of DJ performances this work focuses on. Guru Guru DJ TURN!! Really can be seen as three different songs transitioning one after the other, and this (groovy) mix delivers hard to make it one of the best openings from 2020. Make sure to check it out if you haven't yet! Sadly we're now reaching the end of this review, I hope I managed to convince you to give this series a chance! I glossed it over to not go full on detail, but while I really enjoy the music, what makes me truly love D4DJ is its lovable cast full of different personalities that just work greatly together (or become closer after struggling due to their ways to be), I'm sure that if you watch this anime you will end up feeling the same way and will want to see more of them. At the time of this review, we will be getting chibi shorts starting the week after to fix that, hopefully sequels will be coming soon as well!

To kinda keep some of my biases separate, this review is split into two parts. The first being my thoughts on the show as a show (the standard “review”, if you will). The second is my own personal thoughts, as someone who actively works with touring DJs in the EDM scene, on everything related to DJing, like what I think they did right/wrong, as well as what I would’ve liked to have seen. Okay, to start off with how this show is as a show. I went in not expecting too much at all, pretty much thinking that this would just be another “Love Live!” styleof show, but not as good. My heart sank a bit further when I found out it was a 3D animated series (althought I liked the first season of Beastars, so I had some hope). I wasn’t expecting myself to enjoy it to the extent that I did. To begin, the animation allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief. The 3D animation was actually really charming. Sure, it might have been a little jarring at first, but it grew on me pretty quickly. It helps that a lot of animation techniques for 2D animation were used when animating the 3D models (kind of like how “Into the Spider-Verse” manages to make it work). There were a few assets and characters that were traditional, 2D animated, but they worked nearly seamlessly and didn’t pull me out of the show at all (unlike the second season of Beastars, which had its 2D characters stand out a bit too much, in my opinion). Next, I want to say that the characters were fun. They certainly weren’t the most interesting characters ever conceived, but they played their parts well and did leave an imprint on me. There are many upbeat characters out there like Rinku, and many slightly awkward, posh characters like Rei, but not all of them work together as coherently as they do here. Lastly, the story itself is nothing super noteworthy. It’s just Love Live!, but DJing. That’s pretty much it. Okay, now to talk about the more personal biases I have. So, I work in the EDM scene professionally, and get to spend a lot of my time with touring DJs. Before I rip into this show a bit, I will say that there are a bunch of things they do get right about the whole thing! It was nice to see some basic explanations to what a DJ (and VJ) does, was cool to see varying subgenres of EDM used, and it was cool to see legitimate controllers being used. That’s kinda where it ends for me though. On the opposite end, I found it really weird to only have this weird concept of “DJ units”. Yes, groups exist, but I have never seen a group function as they do in this show. Typically, the VJ is never on stage, they work from a booth that’s usually somewhere behind the crowd, so that they’re able to actually see the stage. They also aren’t usually apart of the named musical group. You have a few exceptions like “DROELOE” prior to their split, but that’s still incredibly rare. Another thing you don’t really see is vocalists being a main staple of the group. Of course they exist, you have artists like “Koven” and even artists that are primarily/exclusively vocalists like “HALIENE”, but again it’s extremely rare, not to mention that they usually also are DJing alongside their partner(s). The last thing that really bothered me was their concept of a “remix”. They just kinda defined it as a song that uses the same melody but a different rhythm. It’s not exactly wrong, but it’s a far cry from a solid definition. They could have explained more about what a remix actually is, which brings me to what I wish they would’ve done in this show. I really wish they took some more time to explain some stuff a bit deeper, as well as introduce some of the concepts they missed. They barely explain remixes, don’t really touch the concept of music production or DAWs at all (which is like what half the show is, but they never address it), they never once mention any different subgenres by name, and they didn’t even go more into detail about DJing itself! There was a small crash course in the first episode, but it left out SO much. At least give us that, since it’s in the name of the show! Seeing more of these things would’ve been wonderful. Despite all that though, I’m still quite happy with this show! It was so cool for me to see representation of this thing that I love in this medium. It may have been a been uneducated, but it’s showing people that DJs don’t just pull up a playlist and stand there (which an unfortunate amount of people genuinely believe is how it works). TL;DR - Good show overall. Some inaccuracies and plenty of missed information, but good to see DJing represented in another medium! :)

DJD4 was the last season that came out in the Fall season of 2020, and arguably it was one of the better ones of the season itself. If I could rate it 7.5, I honestly would, though it deserves the rating I am giving it now, as D4DJ deserves a lot of love for a number of reasons, let me explain. Normally I'd put all these separate, but because sound is very important to the show, and the characters are main highlight, from Happy Around, to Photon Maiden, to Peaky P.Even minor supporting characters are good within this show. All of it all blends together tomake for a very entertaining watch, let me explain. The story follows a girl named Rinku, who has transferred to this school after moving back to Japan after spending time in Africa, and ends up meeting a girl named Maho, all because of music, wishing to create music together. They later bring Rinku's childhood friend in Mumi into the mix, along with another friend they meet in Rei and form the group Happy Around, with the goal of playing and creating music together, but also competing at Sunset stage. But of course it's not an easy ride, as there are many bumps along the way, but that is what makes it more fun. Though Happy ara aren't the only ones within the show. There is the members of Photon Maiden and Peaky P that we get to know as the series goes on. One that was pretty much the top group of the school, while the other is a more company backed group. Speaking of the characters, I should go into more detail about them. Rinku is a lovable bit air head like girl, who is just all loving for music and such. Maho is loving for music too, but she's a little more serious then Rinku, not too serious, but both are very passionate about music. Mumi is Rinku's childhood friend, and while she can come off as closed off, she is sweet in her own way, and does treat her friendship very seriously. Finally we have Rei, the more richer girl of the group, there are certain things that she isn't accustomed too, but she isn't a snob. She's willing to try things, a happy and open book, sometimes a little shy, but that just makes her oh so cute!! But that's just the tip of the characters, there are so many more that have a range of personalities that are just well shown and well done. Good stuff here. A major highlight and showcase of this show is of course the music. Honestly, you'd find yourself going on Yt, rewatching some episodes in case you can't find the music elsewhere, but you'll be sure to enjoy the songs over, and over, and over again. They really smashed it out the park with them. Think of it a mix of DJing, but also idol like singing, it's a great mesh, that is just really good. Just look at the OP for instance. It really is that good, you can't go wrong there. The art is of course colourful, and the character's looks in general don't put you off at all, but the overall colours are bright, flashy, and so welcoming. Hell a lot of the time, you feel like you're at a major concert, having the time of your life, and it's really reflected within the style of the show. It's great. DJD4 came late, but it certainly left it's mark for all the right reasons. Watch it if you haven't, and listen to all the amazing tracks afterwards!

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