Anime Reviews
Girls Band Cry (Toei Animation, 2024)
ガールズバンドクライ (ガルクラ)
After getting fed up of her strict family and being bullied at school, 17 year old Nina Iseri has finally made the decision to move to Tokyo (or close to it, in Kawasaki) from Kumamoto after getting an extra push by her favourite band, Diamond Dust. After a rough night with everything not working out, she runs into the vocalist Momoka who was just about to give up music but Nina convinces her to keep at it. And so together with Momoka, they start to form a new band while each new member must overcome their own personal issues to stay.
I saw a lot of fun clips on TwitterX including the literal "pinky swear" so ended up watching this. Nice to see a show using something else besides McDonalds or Starbucks. Also Momoka isn't your usual drunken or oh my kind of big sis character. Rupa seems to be a different kind of big sis character too.
At least or so I thought... Show starts as if the characters shifted away from your usual trope but it's not quite the case as you get know them more and the show goes on. Bit of a twist too.
First episode was full of non-stop jokes. It's fairly much another girl band show with cute characters doing silly things, not unlike K-ON or Bocchi The Rock. However, much like the "big sis" characters, Nina doesn't have a social anxiety disorder the way Bocchi does as it first seems. I find she's not a very likeable character because how pushy she is despite the ordeal she went through.
It has your fan service scenes like visiting a bath house but very brief. While Agehasprings was responsible for the music I'm not a fan of the OP and vocal tracks by Kenji Tamai the band sings but the background music by Yuusuke Tanaka is good. Animation's pretty stiff apart from the motion-captured characters although a lot of full 3D shows are like this. Nice to see Kami-suwa, Nagano that was used as a model for Ito Lake gets a feature here.
There's a fair bit of stuttering when it comes to performance scenes which can be a bit annoying. I like how they place the time passed text though. Ending's got a nice comic panel look to it.
It's a fun show overall just like the clips I had seen despite the brief retrospect moments and had me laughing every episode.
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