D4DJ Petit Mix

Now I’m saying this as a D4DJ fan and as someone who was really looking forward to Petit Mix… but yeah we were robbed. With D4DJ: First Mix being as fun and as polished animation-wise as it was, watching the first few episodes of Petit Mix was pretty disappointing.
When all we had to base our expectations on was the anime’s official poster/illustration, it was very easy to expect the same kind of quality as Garupa Pico, another chibi-style mini anime based on a big Bushiroad anime media series (Also made by one of the same animation studios as Petit Mix). But Garupa Pico uses ... 2D models for their characters, keeping quality consistent- and once I watched the first Petit Mix episode and saw that it used hand-drawn animation, I immediately got a little skeptical.

And I was kinda right in thinking that way, because as the series went on, there were more animation quality drops. Sometimes the lineart was too thick or pixelated, sometimes the eyes or mouth were too high or low, and sometimes there were pretty iffy body proportions. And even looking past the animation quality, the animation style sometimes isn’t very nice to look at either- the highlights on the eyes and hair can be TOO shiny and bright, and it was very noticeable for me, because the episodes were released on YouTube at night in my timezone, and I often watched them while they were being Premiered.

Outside the animation, the writing isn’t very strong either. It’s a mini anime after all, so I don’t expect it to have strong plot, but what I did expect was some good comedy. I know that Japanese humour is very different to the humour most English-speaking countries are used to, but at the very least, I do remember laughing at some of the jokes that Garupa Pico made. But despite the fact that Petit Mix had 26 episodes, I don’t remember laughing once. What I do remember were whole episodes where I wondered ‘…What’s going on? Is this supposed to make me laugh, or…?’ Episode 2 was the first episode that made me feel that way, and the fact that it was only the second episode… that tells you about all you need to know really.

Overall, Petit Mix was overhyped by the official accounts, and because of that it was a pretty big disappointment for me and many other D4DJ fans. Some of the character interactions and episode premises are fun or entertaining to watch, but the animation holds it back and the comedy doesn’t land. I believe in First Mix supremacy