BanG Dream! Movie: Episode of Roselia - I: Yakusoku

It was difficult to temper my expectations before I watched this movie. Having played the game for 2½ years before putting it away for good early this year, I was really looking forward to reliving Roselia's story in animation. And as much as it pains me to admit...

It delivered on some aspects, while falling short of certain fundamental expectations. It could have been so much better, but ultimately, it was barely satisfactory.

This movie is largely targeted towards the people who had played the game, and had already read Roselia's band stories, plus certain event stories for the Roselia members (especially for Yukina and Sayo). It ... assumes that you already know what happened, and it therefore better serves as a recap for the audience. Viewers who have no prior knowledge of the franchise will almost definitely emerge disorientated from its wildly accelerated pacing. To put things into perspective, Season 1 of BanG Dream had 13 episodes and was equivalent to 27 in-game chapters. This movie attempted to cram 35 chapters (not including important event chapters) in 77 minutes. Just imagine how much material had to be cut in order to achieve that, which included core interactions that would have been integral to further the cast's characterization and Roselia as a whole. I was thoroughly disappointed at how Sayo was portrayed especially. First-timers would be bewildered at her sudden transformation in personality, with a mere few still shots to "explain" her growth and what she went through. More attention should have been directed her way to flesh her out and smoothen her transition, much like how Yukina and Lisa was handled throughout the movie. It was nice to see cameos of some of the girls from the other bands though, and some added lines were included in the movie that weren't in the game, albeit for the purpose of fluff.

If you'd watched Seasons 2/3 of BanG Dream! or the Film Live, then you'll know what to expect. The art for this movie is similar in that it's fully CG. Lighting and camera angles were mostly on point especially during Roselia's performances, which did well at striving to reproduce the atmosphere of an actual live. A minor gripe would be that the movement of the characters can be stiff, almost to the point of being robotic at times, and that's when you'd notice the CG doing its thing. Nothing much else to comment on this; I got used to the CG fairly quickly and it did not ruin the viewing experience. Not the best, but not immersion-breaking either.

Sound would be the department that deserved the most praise. One thing that was lacking in Seasons 2/3 that was present in Season 1 was how the singing and performances in Season 1 were raw and unadulterated, while the later seasons were just filled with studio tracks, which lacked the authenticity and emotion that was required to reach the audience. This movie falls somewhere in between the two extremes, but it was moving to listen to the raw power from Minato Yukina's singing, pulsating through the speakers in the theatre. Awesome stuff. Also, two new songs in the movie which were bangers, always something to celebrate about.

I truly wanted to enjoy this movie to the fullest. I really did. But the manner in which the story and characters were handled prevented that reality from materializing. If anything, I'd expect the sequel movie to run in a similar fashion as this: one that sacrifices content to jam in as much of the overarching plot within a short period of time, limiting its true potential as being an anime of the music genre accompanied with a fantastic narrative... but I can only pray that there will be improvements made, and I'll look forward to watching the sequel regardless, as a fan of the series.

I'm writing this review as a diehard fan of the Bandori franchise, watching all of the anime, buy merchandise and watching most of the lives. Especially so, Roselia is my favourite band in the series, both the 2D and 3D versions, so I was looking forward to anything that will have given my favourite band their time in the spotlight.

Which brings us to this movie. The plot of EoR1 essentially stretches over a large number of segments and events in the game, which appear as visual novel-esque skits. Similarly to other VN-turned anime, that is where the gist of the problem lies.

Having only less ... than an hour and a half of air time essentially impacts how much plot and character development can be squeezed into the movie. Without going into too much plot, this is very obvious in the fact that the first 30 mins of the movie focuses on a portion very early in Roselia's formation plot, but has a sudden jump cut to a time much later in the future in which character development has already taken place for some characters, but it is not obvious how it happened for people that weren't already fans of the game.

The art of the series is fantastic, one of the best implementation of CGI I have ever seen in anime, and Bandori is renown for its fantastic music. Both the OP and ED are bone chilling, and I can very easily play both songs on repeat. However, neither art nor music can save the mediocrity of the movie.

Now, Bushiroad, the brains behind the Bandori franchise, are known for doing many things for the purpose of cash grabbing. They are a trading card making company that makes a large number of gacha games, so it is understandable that this is their business model. Sadly, as much as I hate to admit it, this movie was one of them. Their marketing for both movies have been tremendous... to a point that they forgot to actually put quality into the movie.

As of this review, I have yet to watch its "sequel" EoR2, but judging from what I have seen from this movie, I don't have much faith that it will be any better.

Had they actually put in effort to make an actually good movie, maybe giving this another hour of airtime to properly animate the cut out segments that would have helped character development, and not try to put back to back movies just for the sake of sales, we may actually have had a good movie, because the plot in the game behind some of the characters (Sayo in particular) is fantastic. But in its absence, we will have to live with the "what could have been".

As someone who loves the BanG Dream franchise & the mobile game , I was honestly expecting more from this movie. It lacked many important things such as development and proper pacing.

If someone who has no experience on the game or previous band stories , they would absolutely see no development or bond between the characters. Everything felt very rushed and out of place , like it was just a summary for the game's Roselia band story. I was honestly expecting some new scenes that were not featured in the game , & more feelings and emotional scenes. The climax already premiered in no ... less than 30 minutes of the movie , & the rest just starts slacking & getting more boring.

For the OST, the majority of the movie had no background soundtrack at all. And at the times it did , it was very faint & bland not really causing any emotion or feeling behind the characters' words or actions.

I was already prepared for the CGI animation considering I watched the BanG Dream anime. It isn't bad and is unique , but it could also throw new viewers off.

Overall, this movie had great potential & could have been one of Bushiroad's best works. I'm disappointed that it's basically just a recap of the game stories. There is no point in watching this if you are already familiar with Roselia and/or read their story.