Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 298: Anime is Saved

Cleaned it all up. Just gonna briefly touch on this last chunk before I pass the fuck out and will talk more about my feelings on the series as a whole tomorrow.

Roselia 1 and 2 - These were pretty mediocre. It's clear it's meant more for existing fans of the game rather than anime onlys, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it leads to some frustrations. Despite being a combined 2 and a halfish hours, it feels like not a lot happened here, just some really basic and predictable plot beats (even if the core issue if the first movie wasn't just stated back in season 2, prequel problems). The worst thing of all is that the stuff that movie 1 covered in the montage about 20 minutes in seemed FAR more interesting than the moves themselves. Sayo is my favorite Roselia character, you think I don't wanna see the stuff with her and the Pastel scandal? Come ooooon. At least the performances were good.

Poppin'Dream - Literally the only issue I have with this is it was too short. This was an excellent movie, but it being shorter than either Roselia flick is a crime, since those really don't have much going on while this is stuffed. It's a strong setup that's wholey unique from anything in the show, great humor (it turns out I'm not too mature to laugh at English struggle jokes, Chu2 just oversaturates the market. Koko - Coco mixup, genius.) and excellent performances. This movie has both the best acoustic performance and the best full stage performance in the series up to this point, with the fireside song and RAS' last performance respectively.

5th Anniversary Special - There not really anything to say here, it's really just an excuse to have every character in the series show up for a little personality showcase over a 40 minute period. Why didn't they just bring the painted sign inside overnight?? Cinema Sin. Noteabley, though, I actual think the group performance here was better than the one at the end of S3!

Morfonica - OK. Wow. No surprise I guess that this would be the one that grabbed me the most. I saved this for last completely by chance, but what a way to go out. Just like MyGO this is entirely self contained, and you could watch it with no Bandori knowledge, even though these characters do show up promenentally in Poppin'Dream. This is easily the best LOOKING thing in the franchise until MyGO, which isn't surprising given it was just 1 years prior, but in some aspects it actually looks even better due to some of the fantastical imagery in Mashiro's mind. On a purely technical character level it's still not quite to MyGO, but just barely, but they're finally almost there with the hair which is the easiest way to tell the difference between older and newer Bandori CG.

This has a bit of a different tone from everything prior that feels like it's bridging the gap. It's the missing link! In just 2 episodes it made me fall in love with this group, even if Rui is noteabley flat, but she has a violen so I'll forgive her. That combined with the full band have midnight black instruments....good shit.

So yeah. Will say some stuff tomorrow....and will....also rewatch all of MyGO tomorrow with full context lol.