What's with all these anime about girls making rock bands? Did Bang Dream start this new trend? And what's this? Toei is putting their hat into this pile as well? Why the hell not?! Sure, one could argue that Bang Dream started the trend of companies making shows about girls starting up bands, but the runaway success of Bocchi The Rock was apparently enough to convince others to jump on the bandwagon. Yes, that pun was intended. So when a promo for a show called Girls Band Cry popped up, with Toei listed as the producer for it, many decried it as just a knock-off made to ride the coattails of Bocchi The Rock's success. Then it was revealed to be a 3D CGI anime, making people think it was just going to rip off Bang Dream. Many were quite dismissive of the show, me included...but then Girls Band Cry actually aired, and people's opinions on it did a complete 360, for damn good reason. Not only was the CGI surprisingly good, but the writing and characters were much better quality than even other shows airing in that exact same season (Three of which were also shows about girls focusing on music, Sound Euphonium season 3, Whisper Me a Love Song, and Jellyfish Can't Swim In The Night). I was late to the GBC party, only just now finishing it and...yeah, I agree, this show is awesome.

Life hasn't been going well for 17-year-old Nina Iseri. Bullying in school and being betrayed by her friends and family have left her so jaded that she decides to strike out on her own to prove to everyone else that she can live by herself and be independent. The only thing keeping her going is her favorite band Diamond Dust, mainly one particular song. But life in the big city is a new adventure for Nina, one she is woefully unprepared for. While struggling to find her apartment, she happens upon the very person who wrote her favorite DD song, Momoka Kashiwagi, an ex-DD member who left the band due to internal conflict. The two of them quickly bond of their shared love of music and troubled pasts, deciding to form their own band to use as an outlet to unleash all their pain, rage, and raw emotions into. Three other members join their band afterward, and with that, Togenashi Togeari is ready to take on the music scene! But forming a band isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as all of them face their own hardships and struggles on top of managing the band and trying to break into a scene that's already dominated by more popular competition.

First off, let's talk about the thing most fans of GBC tend to notice right away: the animation. As far as I know, this is the first time Toei has ever animated humans in entirely 3D CG, and most of the time, CG models of people made for TV are criticized for how stiff and uncanny it can feel compared to 2D animation. Even well-known studios like Sanzigen and Orange had their growing pains with it before they really hit their groove with their 3D animation. Surprisingly, Girls Band Cry doesn't have this problem at all. Every 3D model of whatever character they're animating is expressive, smooth, and buoyant, with none of the usual stiffness you see in most CGI models, and the animators really took care in animating everything from subtle gestures to facial expressions, so it never gives off that uncanny valley vibe. The few uses of 2D animation are pretty good too, even by Toei standards...though I do have to question why they chose to mix both as opposed to just going with one style over the other. There are times when both styles of animation are used for a scene, and the differences between them are so obvious that they're almost jarring. It does make me question why Toei didn't just choose one animation style and stick with that as opposed to blending the two of them together. Individually, the differing animation styles are fine, but together they go about as well as mint and chocolate, which is an acquired taste for anyone, really.

But in all honesty, GBC's clashing animation styles are but a minor bump in the road, as what really holds it up is its writing. GBC prides itself as being a girls band anime that's much more down-to-earth, grounded, and cynical than its more optimistic contemporaries like early Bang Dream, or even idol series such as Love Live, lacking a lot of the saccharine cheesiness and over-the-top positivity that they embrace. For one, the main characters actually struggle to start their own band, and said band's members are a mix of teenaged dropouts and adults in their early 20s trying to balance both the band and part-time jobs to pay the bills and put food on the table. They're only able to play short gigs at whatever small venue will give them the time of day, and one girl dropped out of her former band and had to sign away the rights to her original song as a result, and has to watch as her now successful former band flourishes off her work. GBC wants to explore the often unforgiving realities of being a professional musician and the constant friction between making art and making money, and unlike, say, Jellyfish Can't Swim In The Night, which would either resolve everything with a neat little bow or not at all, GBC more than succeeded on that front. I'm gonna be comparing these two shows a lot because they share the same premise and themes, but have completely different approaches in regards to their execution, and GBC succeeds in how it manages to pull it off whereas Jellyfish didn't. This really shows what good execution can mean for the overall quality of a story.

One aspect in which GBC succeeds over Jellyfish is how it writes its characters. Now, I admit, I only watched one episode of Jellyfish and read blog posts and reviews of the other episodes. But just watching the first episode was enough for me to see its flaws and knowing how they persist throughout the entire show, I'm not surprised. Jellyfish's characters never felt to me like three-dimensional characters or flawed, awkward human beings with their own unique strengths or weaknesses; rather, they felt more like a combination of what adults writing kids THINK kids are like and mouthpieces/props that just spout moralizing, melodramatic speeches about the show's messages without even an ounce of subtlety and trust in its audience, only acting on whatever the writers feel is convenient to make drama in the plot happen. GBC's cast of characters actually felt well-rounded and true to life, with all the drama and conflict mainly being fueled by angst and optimism being at odds with one another. It helps that any angst is nicely balanced with some fun physical comedy and absurd slapstick that manages to keep the show from being a slog to go through. It also helps that unlike Jellyfish Can't Swim In The Night, the characters' actions and motivations are actually consistent and feel natural, and GBC actually understands the concept of "show, don't tell." These kids are flawed, awkward, and aren't afraid to riff on each other if someone deserves it, but their interactions felt believable and grounded, and most of them are well-realized and wonderfully layered.

I say most of them because while Nina, Momoka, and Subaru have strong character arcs, Rupa and Tomo admittedly got the short end of the stick, Rupa especially. The latter two don't get as much screen time or development in comparison to the other band members, and while we're given snippets of their backgrounds, they're not given any proper exploration of their pasts, nor do we see their journeys to come to terms with and overcome their personal traumas. Considering how open-ended the series is, with quite a few plot threads left unresolved, this isn't much of a surprise. Hell, even the creators of the show have said that since Nina's whole arc takes up so much time that the other characters don't get to do much. I also would have liked more background on Diamond Dust and their newest member Hina, who is the source of most of Nina's problems. For what it's worth, the show's creators have said that they do want to continue GBC's story, though there's no concrete info on what form that'll take. It was announced to be getting a cellphone game, but as of now, there's little information on it. Other, smaller nitpicks are the band's songs having a bass sound to it even though early on, Togenashi Togeari doesn't have a bassist, and Rupa's bass producing a sound it really shouldn't. Also, I liked the songs, but I admit I'm not really a huge fan of hard rock songs, even though that's Togenashi Togeari's whole schtick. That's not to say the soundtrack is bad, it's more personal preference for me than anything.

I'm not gonna go into the whole spiel about Toei refusing to put GBC on a streaming site and putting it up on Amazon to purchase, because everyone and their mother has done that already. For anyone who has an Amazon Prime account, you can buy the series digitally on Prime Video or the Microsoft Store for $8-10. I wound up buying it at its first price, around $30, on Amazon, but that's fine with me, because Girls Band Cry is absolutely worth the cost. While I admittedly like Bocchi The Rock a little more, Girls Band Cry is an excellent anime showing Toei at their best, sporting a great cast of characters, uniquely strong animation, stellar writing, and some head-banging songs. Is it any wonder it became so popular? Yeah, I think Girls Band Cry earned its popularity, and I really hope this isn't the last we see of these dumb chaos children.