I did not expect to love this show!! I watched it purely because of that gif (you know the one). The gif is a little strange looking, funny, and cute so I half-seriously decided to put the show on with no prior expectations. Turns out, the memes don't lie, this show has personality in spades. I'm still not sure exactly what made it click with me so much, but at its core this is just a very solidly done show in the genre (music....idols??) and the entire time I was waiting for it to fuck up and it just, never did! Just a wonderful example of the genre done right, all the way through, a fun and engaging experience that kept me looking forward to each next episode.

More specifically, a lot of elements I really love went into this. For one, I love the characters. The designs are nice and distinctive across the main and secondary cast (very important for a show like this with lots of "teams", as it were) and each character's personality is unique and likable, in part due to some excellent animation (more on that later). One interesting choice is that immediately after slowly introducing the main 4, there's an episode where the last two recruits have to interact with each other and bond at a sleepover. It's a little detail, but things like that are what a great slice of life show thrives on. When I watch one of these shows, I want to know how every character interacts with every other character, and this show put in the work to make that happen so that the chemistry within the group just pops by the time we get to the performances. There's also absolutely no stupid fucking drama! The main 4 are all good friends, and though there is a little conflict here and there, for the most part they are just hanging out, which is great. The story gives us plenty of interesting and fun scenarios with the characters, but the important thing is that from the beginning, it's fun to spend time with them.

Next, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I loved the animation. Yes, it's fully 3D. I am usually pretty averse to that, but the character animation is just so vibrant, colorful, and expressive. There are some super impressive cuts in here, and little tricks like motion lines and smears add this cartoonish quality that really works. And this is something that I think this show deserves a lot of credit for. Like everyone else, I like Dorohedoro and Beastars and Houseki no Kuni etc etc. But the thing is, those shows all had pretty idiosyncratic character designs and the animation took advantage of them in unique ways. D4DJ is "just" a slice of life anime about cute girls doing cute things. I can see a lot of anime in the future taking inspiration from this sort of animation, and honestly I would not mind that at all. It's obviously not perfect, and I think full CG has a long way to go before it even comes close to matching the charm of digital animation let alone cel-based, but a huge part of my enjoyment of this show was just sitting back there and being impressed by just how fun this looked. Special props go to the dance choreography which improves with every episode (and there's tons of musical numbers, probably an average of at least one per episode! ) and the slick lighting work happening on stage. Presentation wise this is a very strong series that made me very hopeful for the future of anime, and you can't bottle a feeling like that.

And then there's the music! Look, if a music anime has good music, that's really enough for me to enjoy it. I don't think I've seen another anime with this vibe specifically, somewhere between hip-hop, EDM, and what I like to call "idol music". I love that shit, like a lot. From Photon Maiden's futuristic flow to Peaky P-Key's effortless hip hop panache to Happy Around's earnest sugary electropop, I thought the music in this show was pretty uniformly excellent. The show as a whole feels in tune with what popular music is right now and what it might look like in a near future in a way that I don't think any other anime has been able to capture except for maybe Carole & Tuesday. Almost every performance was a pure hit of dopamine, and always new enough to be interesting.

Familiar and yet altogether unique, this is a show bursting with personality. Pure, uncomplicated fun is all it needed to be, and to me it was that and more. D4DJ is the experience of going to a great show and dancing all night, only to get home and crash on the couch, staring at the ceiling as the endorphins swirl.