[novalysis]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Warning: Below is a meta-heavy effortpost. It talks about Bang Dream a lot, but it'll be about more than just Bang Dream. If this thread was more active, I might not "go there", but since there's not a lot of discussion here anyway, might as well talk some on Bang Dream/Love Live similarities.

I greatly appreciate that effort. And I do think it's worthwhile discussion worth having, because comparing BanG Dream with Love Live (I don't think K-on comparisons are really fair, because of BanG Dream and Love Live actively drive towards their goal while K-on doesn't really make that push) tells us something genuinely interesting about the School-Idol club genre. I suspect that any School-Idol club anime where the Idol heroine founds her own club rather than joining a club is going to follow a particular structure that Love Live and BanG Dream is defining. And while this genre emerging convention renders the risk of future Idol-animes being branded a rip-off, I think it is important to appreciate how the same structure can be executed subtly.

To put it briefly, this structure follows a certain predictable pattern.
1. Call to Action where the protagonist receives inspiration and defines some goal and motive.
2. Recruit a Composer
3. Have a debut performance
4. Recruit the rest of the members, preferably in escalating order of difficulty.
5. Have a climatical recruitment drama.
6. Have some group defining experience/drama
7. Have a group training camp
8. Meet a rival
9. Accomplish some preliminary goal.
10.Fail in some other goal.

Note that from 5-10, the order is not necessarily chronological. Aqours had their group defining experience at the Tokyo School Idol World prior to the climatical recruitment drama with the third year arc. Poppin' Party still has not a group defining experience yet, and we are at the climatical recruitment drama with Saya. The nearest thing I can think to a group defining drama for Muse was the Kotori-drama. I don't think K-on had a climatic recruitment drama unless you are willing to claim that Azusa's recruitment is anywhere comparable to Eli's recruitment or Kanan-Dia-Mari's recruitment or Saya's recruitment, and that's one reason why I think K-on is NOT in the same story-genre as BanG Dream.

You're making a keen observation here of something real. A real plot pattern found in both BanG Dream and at least some of the idol/school club anime shows that came before it (with Love Live probably being the most similar to BanG Dream). And my guess is that this similarity is intentional on the part of BanG Dream's director and writer(s), which in my view is to their credit, as I think they're hitting a very good balance between comfortable familiarity and fresh execution.

I agree with you there's a great deal of intentionality in BanG Dream's writing. Kasumi's antics in Epsiode 1 and Episode 2 seems to be a wink to audiences coming over from BanG Dream's nearest anime cousin, Love Live, and the careful expansion of Kasumi's characterization since then seems to be done with a high degree of awareness of the meta of School club founding protagonist.

But I don't know if I'd call this a cliche. In my view, it's just Good Writing 101. Good Drama 101. I don't want to get overly mechanical here, as differences do matter and this all works largely for emotional resonance reasons. Still, I think there is an element of craftsmanship to this, of utilizing well-proven narrative structures while still putting a distinctive mark on everything.

Perhaps cliche is not the best word to be used. A Trope might be a more neutral and less loaded term to employ to describe what BanG Dream is doing.

Let's get to the very basics. You have a protagonist. You have a protagonist that you want readers/viewers to like and cheer on. You want readers/viewers to grow steadily more and more emotionally invested in that protagonist. And should that protagonist come with important friends and/or allies, or gain them over time, you want readers/viewers to feel the same way about those friends/allies. So how do you accomplish this?

Note that this has to be balanced with creating a good first impression for the said protagonist. You don't want him or her to turn off your starting audiences. And I do think Kasumi's hyper behavior with Arisha during the first two episodes in homage to the Honoka archetype was a very risky decision.

Well, one well-proven way is to provided a steady stream of challenges to the protagonist. A stream that starts relatively easy so readers/viewers are given quick gratification of seeing the (hopefully likeable) protagonist gain swift shiny successes. But then the stream of challenges get gradually harder and harder so dramatic intensity increases, and emotions run higher, and suspense might even grip the heart of the reader/viewer! This can work for a Starfleet Captain, a costumed superhero, a war hero, a literal magical girl, a police officer, a video game's player character, or any number of character types. And it can also work for an idol or rock band heroine. And what's probably the smoothest way to take this steadily strengthening stream of challenges and apply it to the world of idol/rock band heroines? A group recruitment drive.

The moment an Idol/rock band heroine decides to form a group, a group recruitment drive tends to be inevitable. The decision of "found my own club" locks the narrative into some stations - someone who can compose must be recruited, some debut performance must be made, and several recruitment arcs need to be run. Incidentally, this is also the structure Fuuka employs, though Fuuka does not choose to go through the sorting algorithm of challenging recruitment and mashes recruitment with romance and love triangles as a parallel sub-plot. And the way to make a succession of recruitment arcs compelling is to amp up the difficulty of each recruitment arc, as you've said.

There's a very plausible logical reason of course - characters present at the start of the story who do not join quickly ought to have some compelling reason that prevents them from joining. And the more difficult the final recruitment is, the more emotionally impactful the climax of the final recruitment arc, which usually terminates the first crucial part of a found my own club style story - the formation of the fellowship.

On the other hand BanG Dream and Love Live Sunshine opts for a character competency building sub-plot - for BanG Dream, it's Kasumi learning to master the guitar, for Sunshine, it's Chika actually learning to lead for the first time in her life.

Love Live made very good use of this. And now Bang Dream is (so far) doing this very well itself. And yes, as part of that steadily strengthening stream of challenges, it is the final recruitment(s) that will prove the most difficult (the 2nd last recruitment should probably also feel more difficult than the first recruitment). Start small and intimate, grow harder, grow bigger, grow great. That's what Love Live did, in my view. And I'm glad to see Bang Dream doing it as well.

Love Live did go for the short-cut of sweeping several girls into the group in the same episode. Unlike Love Live though, Kasumi is as much an outsider to her new environment as Riko, so she basically get's no freebie initial recruits unlike Honoka or Chika. So that's probably one of the crucial differences that already separates Love Live from BanG Dream right from the start.

I also think that BanG Dream is benefiting from having half the number of characters than Love Live to juggle. Because of that, they can afford to breathe and give O-Tae and Saya their own well paced focus-arcs.

But yes, one key difference is the very practical family aspect of Saya's situation. In Love Live, recruitment challenges were very much ideological or psychological or personality-based. You had to tailor recruitment success to fit strict perfectionists, or colorful chuunibyous, or people still reeling from the hurts of past disappointments. The last of these is also true of Saya, but Saya also has a very practical issue with her mom. Honestly, I deeply sympathize with Saya. This shouldn't be an easy call for her, in my opinion. From Saya's perspective, it's quite possible that her mother's health issues could undermine Poppin' Party just like those same issues did for Saya's prior band. I mean, that's a bit of a cold way to look at it, but it's still accurate. It makes sense that Saya is fearful that her family issues could prove a burden to any group Saya joins. I hope Saya joins Poppin' Party of course, but Saya's current position is deeply understandable and sympathetic.

While Saya's mom has classic vague anime disease (), the problems it poses are practical and does help distinguish Bang Dream from Love Live.

The nearest analogy to Saya's situation from Love Live is basically Ruby joining the club despite Dia's opposition to the club. But Saya's situation by rights should be much harder to resolve since she does have a very valid reason and fear that her mother's ill health prevents her from making the kinds of commitments she believes Poppin Party and Kasumi deserves. Saya's situation is a real physical trade-off. Ruby's situation was basically blow-back from Dia's past as a failed Idol and psychological in nature.

Both arcs are based on family issues, but I'd dare say BanG Dream plays with higher stakes here, since Saya believes the actual physical health of her mother is at stake were she to pursue her wishes.

I'm not sure how BanG Dream is going to satisfactorily solve this conundrum, given we've seen Saya's mother's physical weakness several times and it is presented to us as an ongoing issue that is not going to be solved by something as straightforward as communication.

I will also say that Kasumi's solution offered to Saya is abit rash, concerning that she also has Arisa's loneliness issue to also tackle. The issue here is that Kasumi is offering to cater to the needs of at least two girls at once, and we've seen how bad she has been at juggling two relationship priorities simultaneously with the neglect of Arisa during the O'Tae arc.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Yes, that is a key difference between Bang Dream and both Love Lives. Yes, Kasumi does more recruitment on her own than Honoka/Chika did. You're right about how there can be a downside to this.

Still, I want to see what Poppin' Party is like as a completed group of 5 before I put a lot of weight on this difference. I'm hoping that in-group interactions will be a little more balanced after the full group is formed (i.e. it won't just be Kasumi and her 4 best friends, it'll be 5 close friends where there's good interactions between either 2 of the 5 or all 5).

In reality, ever since O'Tae joined that little lunch time group, Poppin' Party has already begun to actively interact as a de-facto social group of five. We know that Arisa and Rimi has begun to form some kind of relationship off-screen, while Tae and Arisa have a frenemy dynamic and Saya tends to play peacemaker and negotiator.

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

Compare to both LLs and even K-On!, where all current members are involved in convincing the new prospect to join.

This charge might be true for some arcs (Tae's first episode was the worse offenders). But even in LL, some members were far more involved in the recruitment of the new prospect. Riko and You had very little involvement in Yohane's recruitment in Sunshine, and I don't recall the First Years being really core to recruiting Eli and Nozomi. Similarly, the third years in Sunshine were primarily recruited by Chika's intervention (with Yohane and Ruby playing a slightly more significant role). Not every LL character was majorly involved in recruiting the new prospect - usually, some were more central than others.

I'm not sure whether the current members of Poppin Party are exactly completely irrelevant to the recruitment of Saya. We've seen Saya having many crucial conversations with the rest of Poppin Party who is not Kasumi, and Tae sent Saya the music sheet. It's not as if the rest of Poppin' Party are passive actors to recruiting Saya.

Originally Posted by Dextro

I'm very eager to see what's in store next. Bang Dream is clearly the dark horse of the season for me.

PS: Triple_R, novalysis, et all, I wish I could rep you guys for some of your latest posts. It was interesting read your takes on the show and its storytelling.

Thank you very much. It's a shame BanG Dream is getting so little attention internationally and I suspect it's down to it's very late release in the season. The centrality of Kasumi in each recruitment aside, I find it a very competent take on the emerging School-Idol genre.

I do wonder whether anyone knowledgable about the Japanese BD market or Amazon stalker could tell me though: is BanG Dream as unpopular in Japan as it seems to be in the International anime community?