Bang Dream, Anime Recommendation of the Week!

Article at a glance:
Bang Dream! starts slow but improves significantly by Seasons 2 and 3, offering a rewarding experience for those who stick with it.
The series boasts excellent character development and entertaining dynamics, particularly around the charismatic protagonist, Kasumi.
Despite lesser-known studios, the anime delivers good animations and soundtracks, enhancing the overall viewing experience.

I have wanted to watch Bang Dream for a while now. Shows like Sound Euphonium, Bocchi, K-On, etc. made me realize just how much potential band animes have. And this is one of the more popular band animes. I have finally gotten around to it. I am not fully caught up with Bandori yet, I am in the middle of Season 3 right now so I have a few movies and My Go left. But I can say with confidence that I had a lot of fun watching this anime.

Season 1 was alright, it was fun but nothing special Seasons 2 and 3 though, oh my god they’re really awesome. So you’ll have to give it a bit of time but I promise it’s worth it. So welcome back to another edition of our anime recommendation series, this week we are talking about Bang Dream! Let’s get started.

Introduction

The Bang Dream anime series is part of a multi-media project launched by Bushiroud in 2015. So while the anime doesn’t exactly have source material, it doesn’t qualify as an “original” anime because it is part of a mixed-media franchise. There is an awesome Bandori game for iOS and Android as well which I urge you to check out. But don’t worry, if you just want to watch the anime, you’ll be fine even if know nothing of the game. The game and the anime sometimes reference each other, that’s it.

The watch order is mostly straightforward, Season 1 through 3, Poppin’ Dream movie, Episode of Roselia movies, and then My Go.

Plot

The plot starts simple enough. Our protagonist, Toyama Kasumi wants to find “something”. Something that makes her excited and feel all giddy. She finds this “something” in music. After that, she is hellbent on wanting to form a band and learning to play guitar. Through coincidences and her talent to draw people, she manages to form a friend group that agrees to help her with the band. But that’s just the beginning. The path ahead is not so easy. The show follows Kasumi’s journey through all this.

Now this is just a small summary of the “main” anime. MyGo focuses on a completely different group. Even in this original series, the main characters change as the seasons go on but Kasumi is still the protagonist. So all that should make it quite clear that the sense of plot progression is very strong in this show. And in my opinion, it is paced really well. And as I mentioned earlier, the series just keeps getting better and better, Season 3 is an absolute treat so far.

Characters

The characters are awesome as well. I love the voice acting, the chemistry and dynamics between characters are entertaining and the character development is pretty solid as well. Kasumi has this natural charisma to draw people to her. She gets what she wants and she doesn’t even realize how convincing she is lol. She is that one sweet friend who is really clingy and I love her energy. And then characters like Saya, Arisa, Rimi, etc. have so many good interactions with her on top of that. It is chaos when she’s on-screen in the best possible way.

Seriously, the character interactions in this show are entertaining as hell.

Animations and Soundtracks

I don’t even know what studios worked on these animes. Like I looked up their names but I’ve never heard of them before. But nothing against them because Bandori has pretty solid animations overall. And the same goes for the soundtracks. Of course, it is a band anime so it has some good music in it.