Not Recommended
Pitch: While studying and getting bored, the 5 members of Poppin Party decide to take a change of pace, and to go to the sea. There, you will have all the stereotypes: swimsuits, playing in the ocean, beach volley. And coincidentally, the beach holds some kind of concert and asks Poppin to play for them... How convenient. We will get to know Roselia, too, the band who failed the audition in first season. I kind of expect to see them again later on. Totally uninteresting OVA only meant to promote a couple singles Bushiroad tries to force down the throat of easy to fool japaneses. Whatis even the point? It's not that the music is that bad, but it's a shame it wasn't used to support an actually ambitious and well written series. "Hibike Euphonium", "Sakamichi no Apollon" or "BECK" have great music, very subtle variations in the various recordings, and they actually tell us a very interesting story. "Bang Dream" never tries. Because it's nothing more than a marketing concept.
However many seasons of "Bang Dream" there will be, there are two things i am almost certain of after watching season 1:
1) Poppin Party (talk about a lame name...) will never go anywhere. They will probably struggle in a nonsensical way, while promoting a few more singles for Bushiroad, then disband for whatever shallow reason the writters will come up with ("Love Live"?). Don't expect to see them at Budokan after they graduate, or to follow their career step by step. This probably will never happen.
2) The reason that will never happen, is that Bushiroad, to prevent erosion of the marketing concept, will throw at us many spin-off related to different groups with different styles of music and characters. And if they are not spin-off, these groups will probably steal the spotlight from Poppin Party, which would be the perfect excuse to prevent Poppin from getting anywhere and taking more importance than the other "products" Bushiroad hopes to sell. But no problem here, they will all be friends anyway. A good hint for this is that the series do not use the actual name of the band.
Story 2: Even though there is hardly any story, it just falls apart because of how forced and convenient it is
Art 6: Nothing special here. Well, the CGI during the 2 minutes concert is pretty well done compared to other shows. But that's it. It doesn't beat the full hand drawn stages we had in "Wake Up Girls!" first season.
Sound 6: I don't particularly like J-Pop. But the title played here is not too bad. Even though i can't imagine any of the characters coming up with that kind of lyrics. Why do i even speak of J-Pop when it's meant to be a show about rock? Obviously, because "Bang Dream" has always been an idol show in disguise. There is hardly anything rockin' in the series. For good old rock, watch "BECK"
Characters 3: Easy to notice that the characters from Roselia are completely different stereotypes compared to Poppin. I already explained why. None of them are interesting. The original characters of the series do not get better, either. They only serve as a face for the CDs.
Enjoyment 2: Boring as hell. Only the 2 minute concert grabbed my attention. That probably means that i'm weak and fell for the stinky marketing method used there.
Overall 3: It's watchable. But be aware that what you'll see is filler with advertisement.
Side note: forgive my english mistakes if possible, since i'm french, after all.
