BanG Dream! 2nd Season

First, let me get one thing straight: the first season was a goddamn masterpiece. The characters were awesome, the plot was heart-wrenching, and the art/sound design was beautiful in spite of its unfortunately low budget. I love the game too, but I'm only a fan of Popipa after playing for 2 years; the other bands are meh. Biases aside, season 2 is by far one of the worst shows I've ever seen. People who are fans of the franchise tend to say they love it, but I can't. For the most part, it's unoriginal and lazily produced. Let's start with the plot. The show starts offwith some vague exposition that doesn't really go anywhere, and the conflict ends up being dropped for the next 4 episodes or so, where instead the other bands get obligatory (and completely irrelevant) screen time. In the end, Popipa just keeps doing what they've been doing as if there wasn't a problem in the first place. Next arc. Time conflicts happen, questionable choices are made, and then easily avoidable drama occurs. Normally I'd be okay with this, but the motivations behind everything were so lackluster/unsubstantial that I couldn't possibly buy into any of it. Furthermore, the drama is gravely serious (the betrayal, friendship-ruining kind), yet it's grossly undermined when all is forgiven in an instant. It's nonsense. The characters? Oddly enough, Popipa sort of merged to become a single, incredibly dull character where whenever they have dialogue together, they just blurt out ideas one by one without really responding to each other; there isn't any sense of five unique individuals having a conversation. In fact, the entire cast can be easily described as gimmicky, soulless, and irrelevant, nothing more. PasuPare is an exception; their episode is a good example of what I expected from this season. As for RAS, they're rather uncomfortable to watch: we don't really know how and why its members chose each other to form a band, and they fill some kind of awkward, antagonistic role. Art-wise? Decent CGI, by anime standards. However, the fact that the show is in full CGI limits its potential for variety. As a result, everyone wears the same crap for every off-day and every performance. I can understand the limitations of creating models, but they could have at least made original costume designs (or even the newer, less exposed designs from the game!). Instead, we'll have to suffer watching everyone wear the same crap they've worn in the game for 2 years. Now, some nitpicking: everyone's eyes shine so bright that they glow in the dark. I'm not kidding, it's very unsettling. Also, RAS looks like a freakshow; they really don't fit with the minimalism that the rest of the designs adhere to. The sound can't be bad, right? Doesn't everyone like Bandori music? Thing is, most of the songs are copy-pasted from the game and onto the performances, and none of it was re-recorded live in a room. Consequently, everyone sounds like they're faking it; many of the songs aren't plot-relevant, and they feel obligatory. There are also performances of songs they've already performed before; it's ridiculous. The OPs and EDs are okay, nothing too special. The OST is disappointingly generic/nonexistent; it really lacks being emotionally-driven and thematically-consistent, like in season 1. Season 2 is really just a crappy game advertisement. Most of it isn't new, and the content that is new is simply absurd. I can kind of understand why people like it, but I can't just turn my brain off to something that's part of a franchise that I love (a lot less now). 1/10. Do yourself a favor and don't watch this; give season 1 a chance if you haven't. It's far more genuine, charming, and real than this crap.

With a multimedia franchise like BanG Dream, it can be difficult to figure out where to start. While this may be labeled as the second season, it’s also something of a soft reboot, and intended to be viewable even if you haven’t seen the first season. But at the same time, this season doesn’t include formal character introductions, even for characters who hadn’t been present in the first season, so new viewers may be a bit lost initially. If you want to consume some other material before jumping in, it probably wouldn’t hurt, but at the same time, if you’re interested in the franchise becauseyou saw some 4komas on Twitter or whatever, that’s probably enough. But if you are going in blind, be prepared to be overwhelmed by the size of the cast. Between the project’s five main bands, there are 25 characters, and this is key to the franchise’s success. At least one of them is likely to resonate with any given viewer, and there isn’t a one of them that isn’t someone’s favorite. Still, it’s a tall order to give each of them sufficient screen time across 13 episodes while still telling a coherent story, and to accomplish this, the first half of the season mostly has the main plot take place in the background while each band receives a dedicated episode. These episodes needed to balance establishing the identity of each band for those in the audience who weren’t familiar with the events of the mobile game with also delivering new content for more experienced viewers, and unfortunately some attempts were not as graceful as others. I think that by the end, every character had gotten at least a few good moments, but depending on your allegiances, you may walk away from this season a bit disappointed. Once all of the introductions out of the way, the story is able to move the main plot into the spotlight, and this is where the season really shined. The passage of time is glossed over in a lot of anime, but a year has passed in the world of BanG Dream, and the effects of this period are tangible. This means that each group has had sufficient time to settle into a comfortable dynamic and grow as a band, but it also means that the specter of graduation is looming. Some of the bands have members in different years, and while none of them have been separated yet, this threat sets the stage for the main conflict of the season. The time of a high school band is fleeting, and the characters are forced to consider what it means to treasure these bonds. Anyway, it’s probably worth mentioning that nearly the entirety of the season is animated with CG. A few years ago, this may have been a deal breaker, but by now anime has reached the point where this is a viable production method. If there’s one place where the animation falls short, it’s that facial expressions tend to be a bit stiff. But besides that, the CG is a step above what was featured in the previous season, so I’m considering it a success. It took me a while to warm up to BanG Dream, but I’m glad I did. I love the sense of community that exists across its cast, and it’s been interesting to see how the dynamics have shifted over time. A third season has already been confirmed for the beginning of next year, and I’m curious to see how the situation with RAS will be resolved, and whether graduation will be explored further. Whatever is on the horizon, I’m looking forward to it.

The first thing i want to say is that its a huge improvement if we compare it to the previous season even the animation is better. STORY/PLOT I actually discovered the game first and ended up loving it to the point where i decided to give the anime a try and im not going to lie, I was pretty disappointed with season 1 because it just wasn't good in any aspect, unless you just want the backstory on poppin party. Since the first season was bad i was pretty hesitant going into the second one but to my surprise it turned out better than i expected.The storyfinally contained more emotion(at least for me) and wasn't half bad. All the bands face their own challenges and they overcome them together. You could skip season 1 and get straight to this but even if it was bad it would help you know the backstory of poppin party. ART/SOUND The art was a big step up this season if we compare it to the first season which is a good thing. The CGI wasn't bad, instead it was quite good. As far as the music is concerned i loved it and it would've been better if they would've used more songs that were used in the game. OVERALL: 8 It was enjoyable and a big improvement, i would recommend watching this. It would be a good pass of time

So, as someone being a big fan of the Bang Dream franchise who plays the game, likes the songs, and somewhat enjoys the characters, I should be the perfect target audience for this anime, should I? Turns out that this wasn't turning out to be true. The story was all over the place and sometimes really dragged, which is surprising considering that this is only a 12-episode anime. You have six bands: Poppin' Party, Hello, Happy World!, Pastel*Palettes, Roselia, Afterglow and Raise A Suilen (RAS). This makes it 30 characters to be placed in a coherent story, which already sounds like a task destinied to fallflat. Sure, every band (except RAS) is introduced with a small gig at ep. 1 but you don't actually learn backstory about the charaters and the band respectively. It is assumed you play the game to learn all these things, which is just... lazy and cheap. The story proceeds with some feature episodes of the band and their drama, which sometimes really felt superficial and annoying to watch. After that the anime producers probably said to themselves "screw every band and made the second half of Bang Dream S2 about Poppin' Party drama (which again, felt superficial and painful to watch, especially when they all act angry at first but suddenly become friends to force story progress.) Overall the story was a 2/10 because some moments could be actually funny. Truth be told, when it was first announced, the 2nd Season of Bang Dream! already looked weird to me because of the usage of mainly 3DCG. Now this for tiself wouldnt be an issue if they didn't decide to merge the main (3D-rendered) characters with classic 2D-animated side characters. At least for me it was very obnoxious and made me wish the anime actually was full 2D. The low framerate (probably to stick with classic animation speed) also kind of hurts the experience in my book. The only light was the fully 3D-rendered MV scenes which looked actually quite good. 4/10 for artstyle. This leads me to the soundtrack. Now this is kind of a two-faced medal: On the one hand, the OST was forgettable. It was not particularly bad, but also didn't stand out at all. The full songs however are really really good, but also depend heavily on your taste as we are talking six bands with widely varying music genres. 6/10 for sound. The characters... quite frankly, they don't even deserve this title in this anime. I'd much rather call them "walking tropes". We have a classic tsundere, the classic genki girl, the classic rival band, the classic shy girl. You could basically multiply it by six and you have the full cast of Bang Dream S2 with very little exceptions such as Ako, the classic chuunibyou. 1/10 for characters. With that said: I don't hate Bang Dream as a franchise, even thoough this anime felt cheap, one-sided and like a extended advert for the mobile gacha game "Bang Dream! Girls Band Party!". But I am really disappointed on what they did with season 2 and since the third season will be from the same studio I don't have high expectations for the next season. If you want a working story and a less cluttered cast, but don't want to miss out on Bang Dream at all, I recommend watching Season 1 of the series. Otherwise, there are other moe-type idol/band shows like K-On, Love Live! or Idolm@ster which are at least slightly better than this anime. My overall Rating is 3/10. PS: This is my first review on MyAnimeList, and actually the first full review I've written in English, so please understand that there might be some typos in the text as my native language is not English. Thank you!

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