After a few relaxed seasons under my belt, anime is back into full swing this spring. I’m already struggling to stay on top of my shows so hopefully I can drop some productions before too long. One anime I never even intended to check out was Girls Band Cry. The concept is your classic group of young ladies coming together to form a band and make some bangers. Not exactly the most original concept in the world but it has a soft spot in my heart after the fun ride of Bocchi The Rock. However, after watching the PV trailer I immediately had second thoughts. 3D? Toei Animation? In my good Christian band anime? I think not. 

Then the season started up for real, and I saw the cover image for this article circulating around. I couldn’t lie the audacity of the middle fingers placed in a production in this genre… okay maybe this could be decent. Then people started talking about how they enjoyed the first installment. Then I said okay maybe I’ll peep the insert song from the episode. And dammit, I was hooked. While 3D rightfully has a bad rep for being a lazy alternative to 2D thanks to a slew of shitty idol show copycats dragging down the 3D name, I think Toei did a good job adding more life to the style than typically observed. Expression is often criticized in the 3D space but these characters felt much more emotive than many generic 2D protagonists. Obviously this is still a new show so I’m not giving it a full endorsement. Perhaps this was merely a case of “make the first episode look pretty good to draw in viewers then drop the budget off of a cliff”. Regardless, the first impression softened my view on what 3D anime can offer after such tarnishing productions like EX-Arm drove my opinion of 3D anime into the ground.

Perhaps I was too harsh on you.

Again it’s too early for any conclusions to be drawn about the overall quality of Girls Band Cry, but lord knows I’m sticking around for the three episode rule after seeing the care put into the first episode. Considering my original plan was to not even bother with a 3 PV rule for this project that’s a big step in the right direction. What do you think about utilizing 3D? Do you enjoy these band-type anime? What are you watching this season? Grab a guitar, pound on some drums, and reach the Budokan in the comments below!