July 27, 2024

If you're looking to get into the Bandori franchise, or just see what it's about, this is a pretty good starting point, imo. The band featured, Poppin' Party are the main characters of the game's storyline, and this serves as a prequel to it. It's nothing particularly special - just a generic cute girls form a band storyline with some mild drama (if you could even call it that) - and there's some places where it's rough around the edges, or a bit cringe, but overall I enjoyed it. Everyone's nice and supportive of each other. It's fluffy, but not at the cost of an actual plot. The language is also really simple (definitely much easier than MyGO).

If you'd prefer a story with (I guess) more depth and a darker/more depressive tone, tho still a (mostly) happy ending, then you can try MyGO (which is basically a reboot of this in 3D). Some of the characters and locations from here do make cameos there. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but watching this helped me understand it a bit better (since I got where it was coming from), and it certainly has its following.

Anyway it got me interested enough to check out the game (basically visual novel + rhythm game) and music a bit. So it pretty much served its purpose, while being a nice, easy watch. I was torn between giving this 3 or 4 stars, but I gave it a 3... which feels a bit weird, since I gave MyGO a 3, and I enjoyed this much more. Objectively MyGO is probably a better show, but I found it much harder to get through. Ymmv

Gradings:11
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