Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 298: Anime is Saved

Man I stayed up way too late to finish all that lol.

Overall take on the original series (Morfonica honestly makes the clean cut separation a bit easier than I expected, but I'd still say that's fair for now) is that Bang Dream is a very enjoyable time, bordering on great at some times, and that the vibe I've seen second hand for years that it was a wannabe Love Live simply isn't true. Season 1 can definitely drag, but I strongly disagree with the idea that it can be skipped. It's like telling a new FFXIV player to skip A Realm Reborn.

Season 2 is in a wierd place because I actually liked it quite a bit at the time, but it's basically an entire season of setup for S3, that sounds half it's time introducing new bands. This is stuff I enjoyed and is necessary, but it means that when I look back on all of it that it's just the weird middle child. I did like the Tae arc, and it did introduce a ton of characters to me though, so I have to give it it's kudos. It's easier to think of S2 and 3 and a single 2-cour season I guess.

S3 on it's own definitely comes out in top here for me. It shakes that Gacha feel because everyone is already established, has a strong througline arc from start to finish, and is the most we ever get focus on a single band that isn't PoPiPa in the whole original series. Some of my favorite characters get plenty of spotlight here, some characters I disliked a lot like Rock end up improving significantly, and even Chu2 became....tolerable! I went from wanting to punt her like a football from wanting to throw her in that pool...which they kind of do I guess, lol.

I'm general, some issues are innevitable with a gacha adaptation, a bunch of characters I want to see more of get their episode the are mostly gone. The Pastel episode only really focuses on 2 of them, and neither is the one I really want (Hina and Sayo have come out of this as surprise top rankers for me), Afterglow is practically a background character in their own episode and never gets a chance to shine the entire series from here on out (I feel like this was intentional, since it would get in the way of the narrative for another heavier band directly rivaling Roselia and RAS to be prominent, but still...), and Happy Smile World.....is a thing!

I don't think it's any surprise to anybody that, despite coming to enjoy it so much it's still not in the same league as MyGO for me even at it's best, but considering how I just put down $100 to preorder the 3 currently available hyper marketable plushies (JUST LET ME PREORDER ANON AND SAYO I DONT CARE IF THEY JUST HAVE PLACEHOLDER PICTURES) I don't think that a sleight against this other content at all. The ultimate sign of surrender to Bang Dream fever is that I might, one day, watch all those fake live stage performance movies.

As stated, gonna rewatch MyGO....right now! It's not like I haven't been pulling up clips every day all week anyways lol. Very curious to see what references I missed, but most of all I REALLY wanna know how I feel about that last episode now.