Now before anyone comes at me with their pitch forks, let me clarify something: I NEVER go into something wanting to hate it. I admit that I haven't seen the Bang Dream anime beyond the first episode of season one, nor have I played the game. I did read one of the spin-off mangas (The one centered around Roselia) and liked it. Seeing that Bang Dream has become a popular franchise since its initial failed launch, it's inevitable that it would eventually get a movie. Then I heard what the movie actually turned out to be. Curious, I decided to check it out for myself since HIDIVE started streaming it. And...seriously, I can't fathom just why this movie was even made and why the creators were even serious about making a movie like this. I'm talking about this purely from the perspective of someone who has seen very little of Bang Dream. But even with that, I don't know if this is meant to be fanservice for the fans, or some kind of promotional vehicle for the series. Usually movies are given leeway to tell bigger or more experimental stories with their franchise. But you won't find an actual story here. Want to know what this movie is? It's literally an animated concert showing the main bands from the series performing various songs, with a little bit of banter in between.

That is literally it. No, really. The whole anime is just a 3D animated concert sequence. I'm not even kidding. The characters literally just show up, sing a bunch of songs, have some banter between themselves, rinse and repeat for every band. I'm normally fine with movies wanting to do something different from their original source material, but the way Bang Dream's first movie did it just reeks of laziness and making a quick buck with minimal effort. For one, the 3D CGI animation is just awful. Whose bright idea was it to animate not only this, but Bang Dream's second and third seasons in this herky-jerky Barbie doll style? I know the first season's animation wasn't great, but it looked a hell of a lot better than this! Everyone has creepy-looking plastic faces that have little to no expression whatsoever, and while the character movement is okay at best, the 3D models have this weird glossy look that just makes them all look doll-like. All of the animation just feels uninspired and mediocre.

For what it's worth, most of the music in this series isn't bad. But most of the good songs, I feel, only consisted of the ones by Afterglow and Roselia, and a little bit of Poppin Party's songs. Everything else just sounds like rip-offs of other songs. Also, Hello Happy World's music is just painful to listen to, trying too hard to be as aggressively cute and saccharine as possible and nothing else. I wanted to rip my eardrums out every time spaghetti hair marching band girl opened her mouth and belted out her screechy voice. In all honesty though, the music is pretty much the only thing this movie has going for it, and even that can't save it from just how bland and lazy this movie feels. I honestly have to question why Bushiroad felt the need to pour so much money into what is literally a one and a half hour long animated concert, possibly to rake in more money, when the same effect could be achieved by going to the bands' actual, real life concerts. That is literally what concerts are for! Because of this, the movie feels unnecessarily padded out, and nothing happens in between songs. I can't comment on the characters because, again, all they do is perform and chat amongst each other, nothing else. They don't change, they don't do anything noteworthy, they're just kind of there, and their dialogue is just so boring that I couldn't bring myself to care about these people.

I don't know. Maybe I'd like this movie better if I was a fan of Bang Dream as a whole. But seriously, this whole movie feels like a waste of time and money. They really could have done something different with Bang Dream's first movie. They could have expanded on the stories told in the first three seasons in some way, or focused on the bands that the anime didn't get to cover, like the new one called Morfonica. Hell, it could have even been one of those compilation movies that animation companies love to shell out! But even for a movie like this, Bang Dream Film Live is incredibly cheap and feels wholly lazy and uninspired. I honestly wouldn't recommend this even to fans of Bang Dream. But if you like a time killer that won't make you use your brain too much, feel free to check it out. Otherwise, give it a miss.