#cbdct

I★CHU – Idols and Nonsense

Titles: I★CHU: HALFWAY THROUGH THE IDOL, I★CHU: Étoile StageGenre: Idol, CBDCT,ComedyEpisodes: 12Studio: Lay-duce Étoile Vio School is a very special place. For one, it’s the only place where IChus are made. Probably because no one knows what the heck and Ichu is. I think it’s just a name for idol. Like any other idol but I guess you have to differentiate yourself somehow. In any case, Étoile…

A3! Spring and Summer Season

Titles: A3! SEASON SPRING ＆ SUMMER, Act! Addict! Actors!Genre: Comedy, theater, cbdctEpisodes: 12Studio: Studio 3Hz, P.A. Works Oh no! The Mankai Company theatre troupe is in trouble. They were once a popular source of entertainment for young and old alike but in the past few years, all those popular actors have moved on and now they struggle to pay the bills. Unless they can turn things around,…

IDOLiSH7 Second BEAT! – I Still Don’t Know What an Idolish Is

Titles: IDOLiSH7 2Genre: Idol, comedy, mystery, musicEpisodes: 15Studio: TROYCA Getting your career off the ground when you’re in a brand new idol group is not an easy feat. You have to practice day and night, get your name out there by doing media appearances and taking acting jobs. You have to be in perfect shape, always cheerful and have the voice of an angel. Not to mention that you have to…

Episodes: 12

Studio: Bandai Namco Pictures

  Just because you’ve made your debut, doesn’t mean you’re an idol yet! That is the lesson all the boys of Dear Dream need to learn after winning the Dream Festival. Sure they’ve got an album out now and are reliably selling out venues but is that enough to really make them into a unit the fans can keep cheering for? It’s not enough to just show up for the concerts anymore. Each of them will have to find their own path and hone their persona skills so they can make the group shine! All while newcomers Kurofune are nipping at their heels to take their place on stage. Will Dear Dream prevail and shine brighter than ever before?

Now see, that’s a summary! I gave you a good idea of what the season holds without putting any spoilers in. I remembered both the bands’ names. I even dropped a little leading question their at the end to add some suspense and make you want to find out more. Clearly, my true calling has always been to write summaries specifically for boy idol shows. Preferably ones that are commercial tie in for mobile games or something. Sounds like a super lucrative career to me! You know what they say, find work you love doing and you’ll never work a day in your life!

for some reason this show had so much amazing looking food…

Dream Festival! R is the second season of Dream Festival and it is in all production respects, the same. Cute designs with decent detail and consistent art. Functional backgrounds. Pared down animation covered up by a lot of still shot montages and creepy creepy CG concert scenes that will haunt your nightmares!

The voice acting is superbly .suited, as in I wouldn’t be surprised if the characters were voiced by actual idols. There’s something so energetic and just pointedly earnest in all the deliveries. It’s not exactly good so much as I love it…

This is pretty much the tagline of the entire show, and a lot of boy idol shows I have watched. Not exactly good but I love it. (Some I hated…)

not you…you are great!

I was and am (at time of writing) watching Penguindrum and it’s a very immersive experience for me. In order to not get overwhelmed I figure I would choose something so light it could float away and of little to no consequence. Yup, season 2 of an airy idol show I enjoyed was the perfect candidate. And I got just what I expected. A very light show with simple characters and obvious plots that required very little of me as an audience.

But you know what else. I was smiling widely and honestly throughout the entire thing.

It’s no secret that times have been a  bit more stressful than usual for pretty much everyone everywhere. And although I think it’s not only enjoyable, but rewarding to engage with entertainment that’s thought provoking and mindfully crafted, there’s something to be said for the mindless, harmless fun of pure fluff.

and monkeys!

I think some of us have a tendency to devalue these types of shows. Be it fluffy idol shows, aimless slice of life or mild fanservice vehicles. I often see them described either implicitly or even explicitly as lower forms of entertainment. For the uneducated masses or for those that don’t have the brain capacity to appreciate greater art. That sort of stuff. Obviously no one in my reader base would ever think that way or else they wouldn’t stick around this blog for very long. But I’m sure we’ve all seen this type of dialogue at least once. And not only about anime!

I’ve seen it about books, movies, live action television, even music! Not only do people occasionally arbitrarily decide one form of fiction or one form if entertainment is of lesser intrinsic value but you occasionally see people getting low key shamed for enjoying these forms of entertainment. And that’s just sad…

Dream Festival! R or otherwise, is not a great show. The characters are pretty superficial and largely archetypes. The plots are fairly contrived and often dip into the ridiculous. But that’s what it wants to be. This isn’t a show pretending to have deep cultural significance or to change your life in a meaningful way. It’s a series of fun little stories that don’t make too much sense, full of cute boys to make you laugh in the moment and forget about the next day.

And in that sense, Dream Festival did a fantastic job!

yay!

I know very few people care about these types of anime. Whenever I review a series, I will start noticing other bloggers that have reviewed it not that long ago or that come out with reviews surprisingly close to when mine is scheduled for release. Even though they are often older shows and there’s no reason to be talking about them now specifically. It’s something that happens really often, considering the amount of blogs I follow. It ever ever happens with my boy idol reviews.

And maybe that’s fair enough. It’s not for everyone. It’s a super cheesy genre that often as unintentionally funny as it is intentionally so. And the archetypes and tropes they so lovingly and unabashedly embrace are a big part of the experience, so if those aren’t for you, you’re likely to find watching Dream Feastival! R downright painful.

if you survive the  at all…

However, I haven’t laughed this much and in such a carefree way in a long time. For the one of you who cares about boy idol shows out there and discovered my blog some day, I would say Dream Festival is in fact my second favourite of the genre behind Idolish 7. There’s no shoehorned love story like Magi-kyun or Uta no Prince Sama that gets in the way of the hilarious and it’s completely and entirely unpretentious. The fact that it’s so blazen about being a mobile game commercial, to the point of incorporating game play mechanics as in universe details, also adds certain moments of surreal absurdity that are difficult to match.

So really all I have to say is Go Dear Dream! You Can Do It!!!

Kurofume are a huge part f the show, I just didn’t’ get a chance to use screencaps of them…

Favourite character: Ritsu has always been the best, there should have been more of him!

What this anime taught me: A true idol has a monkey companion

Why limit your happy to an hour?

Suggested drink: Black Ship

Every time it’s Dorika time  – cheer

Every time anyone is changing – fan yourself

Every time Asume punches someone – take a sip

Every time there’s a shower or bath scene – oh my….

Every time there’s a still shot dance montage – dance along somehow

Every time you hear the word princess – blush

Every time anything s beyond ultimate  – take a sip

Every time Chizu is on fire – get some water

Every time you see AIM GOAT – there’s a chance I hallucinated this but it made me laugh every time

Every time an outfits features useless chains or buckles – take a sip

Every time we see Ritsu – Celebrate!

Every time Kaneda’s hair is down – take a sip

Of course, I took more screencaps. Who do you take me for! I put them on Pinterest too.

Episodes: 12

Studio: Bandai Namco Pictures

  Being an idol is an underappreciated art. It’s a lot more work than people think it is. Gruelling workouts and rehearsals to keep your voice and body in top physical shape. Constant promotion to get your name out there. Spotless record and a personal life beyond reproach. All of these are absolutely essential just to get your foot in the door, and there’s still no guarantee you’ll ever make it. But for those who have tasted the tender pleasure of an adoring fandom, it’s all worth it. Kanade, never even thought about becoming an idol until he got scouted but now, it’s his most precious dream and he is willing to do anything to reach it!

I have to be in a certain mood to review CBDCT shows. I fact I have to be in a certain mood to watch them as well. I will call that mood “unicorn crack”. I think that sums it up decently. Among the very many shows I watch, CBDCT (which are very often idol shows as well) is the genre I drop the most by far. In fact, it may be the only genre in which I drop shows. A lot of them are just not very good. But when the stars align and I find that special gem that balances out cheesy with self-aware, unintentionally hilarious with pleasantly fluffy and shallow with unabashed – I know I’ve hit pure gold. You have no idea how excited I am about binging the second season of IdoLish7! After more than a couple false starts with random cute boy idol shows, I finally settled on Dream Festival, did it make my dreams come true?

I’m sorry, that was bad… I won’t do it again!

do I have your attention?

Ok, let’s get the boring stuff out of the way. Dream Festival is, in fact, an extended commercial for a mobile game. A lot of these shows are. And it kind of looks exactly like that. There’s a lot of stills to make up for lack of animation. And I mean A LOT. All the most animated parts (the performances) are scary CG, but not the scariest I’ve seen. You can see some obvious game mechanics in the cards the boys catch to “collect” their stage costumes and in general, it’s a show that looks like a cute boy show. Nothing special about the designs. In fact, those collectible costumes are often really ugly (in my opinion) which I found sort of hilarious.

Now the important part, for reasons only meant to be understood by creatures greater than I, this show includes super frequent magical boy transformation sequences. You know the type… The background goes all galaxy and you have naked boys with strategically placed flashes of light as clothes materialize on them. There’s at least a couple per episode. And if that wasn’t enough, every other episode or so, the boys choose to have some important business discussion in the shower room…while showering. Let’s not mince words, this show is a masterpiece.

All of this said, despite the ever-present nudity, so much so that I didn’t even choose it as a drinking queue for fear of killing someone, it’s oddly wholesome. The camera never really focuses on anything other than the boys’ faces. there’s no accidental nudity or humiliation and no groping whatsoever. It’s sort of just there and weird and that makes it special.

Ok, let’s discuss the set list

So the story is almost entirely contained in my summary. That’s how you know a story is good. When someone who delights in writing the most obscure and disjointed series summary possible can resume it without trouble in a few sentences. Intricate stuff there!

In many ways, Dream Festival is a Slice of Life with the concept of an idol group trying to win a competition as a framing device. Also, that is the exact plot of every single idol show I have watched. Like all of them. OK so admittedly if you change the words idol group to sports team and competition to tournament you have 99% of every Sports! anime I’ve watched… Huh wait, is anime repetitive?

Sorry about that, I had to get one of those spatula thingies to scrape the bits of my brain of the walls. Explosive realizations hurt you guys!

But back to Dream Festival. Ok, let’s try an actual review. I still don’t exactly know what makes me enjoy some CBDCT shows while I’m unable to watch so many. I think that it helps when they are not reverse harems as I find the “romance” parts of such shows very boring but it’s not a hard rule. Some have been fun to watch as well. The best guess I have so far is that I enjoy those that have a sort of joyful understanding and embrace of their own kitschy nature. As soon as they attempt grandstanding or serious drama, I’m out!

that’s it! goodbye

Dream Festival is that type of show. It doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not but it’s also not ashamed of what it is. It a show that celebrates the silly fluff that often gets maligned in general society without the slightest trace of embarrassment. I guess I find that a little charming.

Don’t get me wrong, like all these shows it also completely whitewashes the unreasonable pressures and conditions of celebrity and more specifically idol culture but let’s not think about that… look pretty boys…in the shower!

Dream Festival isn’t for everyone. It’s a long commercial for a game that also isn’t for everyone. If you don’t like cute anime boys, there’s not much left here. If you do like cute anime boys it’s a joyful little series with some honestly funny moments. Funnier than most of the shows I’ve seen in this style.

I had a really fun time with Dream Festival and was bummed that the game is no longer available. I will watch the second season. Eventually!

Ritsu is the best!

Favourite character: Ritsu! He’s the best!

What this anime taught me: You can buy mini cheesecakes that finish baking in the microwave!

Why limit your happy to an hour?

Suggested drink: Golden Dream

Every time there are Dorika – take a sip

Every time Chizuru is eating – get a snack

Every time there are exclamation points – get psyched!

Every time anyone warns Kanade that being an idol is hard work – lazily take a sip

Every time there’s a transformation sequence – squint

Every time the great Ritsu is on screen – cheer!

Every time Haruto eats something not quite cooked – get some water

Every time anyone is in the shower alone – be confused

Every time there’s a training montage – take a sip

Every time someone wants to surpass the ultimate – take a sip

Of course, I took more screencaps. Who do you take me for! I put them on Pinterest too.

Marginal #4 – Vanguard of the Cute Boy Revolution

Genre: CBDCT, School, Slice of life, Cotton Candy, idol, comedy

Episodes: 12

Studio: J.C.Staff

  There’s no such thing as too much of a good thing. And you know what’s a good thing? Adorable and very handsome young men, dancing and singing for out entertainment. For the new generation of gifted young singers, the greatest possible dream is to ignite the hearts of thousands while on stage. A true…