Toymakers Sanrio and Studio Bones team up to give us the oddest music show of the season.
What They Say:
Set in the glamorous metropolis Tokyo Midi City, where music is everything. Here, “battle of the bands” is more than just a teen rivalry: Dozens of ensembles compete for the honor of playing atop the city’s highest tower. Cyan Hijirikawa longs to join the band at school, but is too shy. While worrying about it at home, she’s transported to another dimension…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Show By Rock!! was a late addition to the season charts, only being added within the last few weeks. Animated by Space Dandy’s Studio Bones, and based off an smartphone rhythm game by marketing giant Sanrio (who previously funded Ringing Bell and the Jewelpet series) it was anybody’s guess what to suspect. After having seen the colorful and crazy first episode, it’s easily the first big surprise of the Spring season, in many different ways.
The show stars shy girl Cyan Hijirikawa, a talented guitar player who wants to join the a band at school, but is too shy to try. Instead she cowers outside the club room door and fantasizes about stardom, soon retreating home to lose herself in smartphone games. And boy does she get lost. Before Show By Rock!! can be mistaken for another school club anime, Cyan is transported to another dimension, that of the colorful Tokyo Midi City, where animal-eared mascot character bands wage fierce battles with Jpop.
Cyan finds herself next to a concert by the boy-band Trichronika, and she is awestruck by their magnificent performance. But there is a great evil in Tokyo Midi City, represented by a giant purple skeleton who kidnaps Trichronika and attacks them with noise that launches out of giant speakers in its body. The skeleton is after the glowing Melodisian Stones that exist within the heart of the musicians, and by capturing these stones, the skeleton with turn the members of Trichronika into other skeletons. It’s up to Cyan and the power of rock manifested in her Strawberry Heart guitar to defeat the skeleton and save the day.
This existential danger via magical crystals material sounds like fairly standard magical girl material, but what makes it especially surreal this time around is that the characters are all rendered as Sanrio mascot characters in 3DCG. The CG this time is much better than the standard CG we’re used to in Japanese animation, but the animal people aren’t given any kind of realistic fur or mouths (perhaps thankfully), giving it the somewhat eerie look of stop-motion animation done with Nendoroids. As a big fan of stop motion, I am very pleased by this. The plasticy look of Sanrio mascots battling skeletons will probably turn not a few viewers off, however, so be warned in advance.
Once the danger is defeated by our heroine, Cyan is recruited into the band Plasmagica by a somewhat shady egg-producer by the name of Maple. Sure she’s confused about being turned into a catgirl, transported into another dimension, and being the apparently legendary hero able to fight off evil with the power of rock… but she also gets to be in a band! The enthusiasm leaves the mysteries in the dust, and soon Cyan is teamed up with Chuchu the Bunnygirl Singer, Retoree the Retriever Bassist, and Moa the Alien Sheepgirl Drummer in a quest to get BRR Records off of the ground. But not before tangling with the other band on their label – ShinganCrimsonz!
In Summary:
As you can tell, this anime is the height of ridiculousness, the kind of sublime nonsense I expected when I heard Sanrio was going for its first late night otaku/fujoshi anime. You have the cuteness and toyetic nature of an early morning kids’ show, the risque fanservice and rapid fire humor of an otaku comedy, the production quality of a Bones show funded and supported by Sanrio’s warchest, and the nonsensical bravado of a show based on a rhythm game. It’s still hard to figure out what the show will be about: Are they fighting skeletons every week? Or are the bands jockeying for power amongst themselves? Will Cyan find self confidence through achieving her destiny, or will the masochistic Maple and his secretary fill the joke with sketchy S&M jokes? We don’t know, and that’s the most wonderful part of all.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Funimation.com
Review Equipment:
Sony VAIO 20″
