Key findings
- “Girls Band Cry” is a top anime of 2024 with expressive 3D animation and captivating characters.
- The series takes a more realistic and cynical approach than comparable series when it comes to music-related original content.
- Although it primarily uses 3D animation, “Girls Band Cry” successfully combines elements of both 2D and 3D graphics.
Although 3D animation and its use in anime production have developed a strong dislike among many fans, there have been several successful moments for this visual style. One of these is Toei Animation's musical drama about a young girl who leaves her family to pursue a music career in Tokyo.
Girl band Cryis one of the best anime of 2024 with its incredibly expressive 3D approach and captivating characters and for a while it wasn't even available to stream outside of Japan. Here's why Girl band Cry is a must see and why it is different from other films like Purchase! or Bocchi, the stone!
what is Girl band Cry Um?
You guessed it, it's music
Determined to find the meaning of her life, 17-year-old Nina Iseri leaves her hometown to travel to Tokyo, where she gets lost on her first day and is locked out of her apartment. Her luck turns when, as she wanders around the city, she happens to meet Momoka Kawaragi, one of her favorite musicians and the driving force that inspired her to come to Tokyo in the first place.
Nina accompanies Momoka to a street performance, after which Momoka asks Nina to form a band with her. She is hesitant at first, but as they get more band members together, the dream takes shape. In secret, Nina deals with a toxic relationship with her family that affects how she performs in the band they have named. “Togenashi Togeari” (Thornless Thorn). Every band member is a dropout in some way and everyone has their reasons for the journey of Girl band Cry not only about the founding of Thornless Thorn, but also about the mental wellbeing and stories of its members. The series ran from April to June of this year with 13 episodes.
On the production side of things, Girl band Cry The series is directed by Kazuo Sakai and written by Jukki Hanada, who has extensive experience with series of this type as a screenwriter for several versions of the series. Love Live! School Idol Project Anime and even worked with Sakai on one of them. The series also features music by Yūsuke Tanaka, character designs by Nari Teshima, and veteran lead animator Chika Yamazaki as animation director. Toei Animation is considered the original creator of Girl band Crywhose cast includes Rina as Nina Iseri, Yuri as Momoka Kawaragi, Mirei as Subaru Awa, Natsu as Tomo Ebizuka and Syuri as Rupa.
A much more realistic approach
The girl band Cry is much more cynical than their competitors
When series producer Tadashi Hirayama joined Toei in August 2019, he was asked to produce a music-focused original series, which prompted him to recruit Sakai and Hanada as they had already worked on Love-life! Sunshine!!. Having already done stories about idols, Hirayama turned his focus to the Japanese rock scene, and the economic impact of the pandemic was cited as a reason to make the series more realistic and focus more on portraying the hardships faced by musicians than some of his previous work. For example, the characters still have to deal with the basics of everyday life, like finding and keeping work and competing with other artists for good spots for street performances.
Aside from the familial expectations she was trying to escape at home, Nina learns that living alone isn't really a great time when she doesn't speak to anyone for a whole week, but when she gets the chance to meet someone new, she acts cold and disinterested. In moments when Nina feels the discomfort of remembering something from her past, there is a visual effect where red thorns emerge from her, with varying degrees of intensity depending on the trigger, which is a nice touch. One great moment is when Tomo and Rupa are trying to record in their apartment, and we get a glimpse of the padded cardboard box Tomo puts on her head and over the microphone to seal out the sound and make the most of attempting to record in a location unsuitable for the purpose. Studio time is expensive, after all.
CGI done right: Girls Band Cry looks great
Why is 3D a good choice for this series?
It's easy to dismiss an anime series entirely because it doesn't have the kind of visual elements we typically associate with anime, but if the animation production shows skill and respect for the story and characters, shouldn't that be enough? What makes 3D so unpopular in the first place is the fact that it has a completely different feel to it than the cel-shaded 2D animation style we understand as “anime.” While many modern anime use 3D or CGI to augment the 2D, using primarily 3D in the production of an anime can feel like it's disconnecting the medium from its core aspects.
There's a lot of problem-solving that goes into producing 2D animation – from the designs to the colors to the actual movements. The idea that drawings can move, and do so in a way that either wonderfully exaggerates reality or finds a “believable” way to simulate movements that may not be realistic, is one of the most enchanting things about animation in general. In general, 3D can feel odd, but with titles like Studio Orange's various works, there are many moments that prove the value of such productions.
When Toei commissioned the 3D animation for one of the Dragon Ball Unlike the films in the franchise, it was different, but ultimately a visual success, especially in terms of the fights and photography. Girl band Cry is a great experience visually, not only because of the immense amount of detail that went into the series, but also because of how expressive it is in a way that we usually associate with 2D anime. So it seems like elements from both sensibilities are combined, to the point where the brief moments of the opening sequence that are more akin to the animation style we're used to look even more impressive because they have a “rendering quality” that makes them even more impressive than they would have been had they just been the more detailed parts of an otherwise entirely traditional anime approach to visuals. The 3D is especially great during the performances, as it evokes a “music video” or live concert feel that elevates these scenes and utilizes the three-dimensionality in a way that highlights the music well.
A good sense of humor
Just because it's grounded doesn't mean it's not fun
It can get very tense as each band member has their own circumstances and there can be a lot of friction between band members. Girl band Crybrings many jokes. From Nina, who is told that holding up both middle fingers means “Thanks to From the “silly joke” “You” and then that trick towards the staff in a restaurant after a hearty meal (probably the most famous image of the series), to Momoka just listing the horrible aspects of being in a band in a speech meant to inspire Nina to form a band with her, or even a pigeon bobbing its head in time with the beat Nina was making instead of studying (and which later made her write in her notes at the library: “The pigeon was in rhythm”), the series does a very good job of timing its humor well.
It strikes a great balance between the optimism inherent in a show like this, its own more grounded approach, humor, and the characters' personal circumstances. The humorous bits aren't sparse either, but are almost as frequent as the various rock beats and riffs that fill most of the silence from scene to scene. While it wasn't available outside of Japan for some time, it's now available to stream on Fandango at Home, Microsoft, Hoopla, and Amazon Prime Video.
