Is Girls Band Cry stalling in the West? Can we jump-start it?

Hello,
It just dawned on me there is one more factor which badly hurts Girls Band Cry's foreign popularity:
The absolutely toxic nature of its western fandom (or more precisely, the self-designated leaders of said fandom). Extremely vain and juvenile admins have taken over both Reddit and Discord locales, banning people left and right and so the content found there becomes ever more imbecile and inbred.
This is an expected development from "similis simili gaudet" and Nina was easily the most toxic substance in the universe, so fans become like her. Still the situation got out of hand and the rabid ones are now literally killing the fandom from the inside!

Is this an elaborate troll, someone new to the anime industry, or a high-functioning autistic? GBC didn't do well because of many reasons; Key of which being that it's an anime in an unpopular genre that wasn't officially subbed for nearly half a year post-airing. Factor in that many westerners have this weird blind hatred towards any and all CGI (which the show is 100% made of), and it's no wonder the views are bad. I love idol/girl band anime, and GBC is a hidden gem, but the reasons it failed are all over the walls man.

@RedFoxRara

> it's an anime in an unpopular genre that

Bocchi the Rock has 56k viewer ratings on CR, despite it's ugly experimental animation and 1-dimensional characters. There is also Hibike Euphonium, which at least has the looks, even if season after season are made from the same mold. Thus music anime genre isn't unpopular.

> many westerners have this weird blind hatred towards any and all CGI

Considering 99% of western animation are CGI nowadays, that's a difficult position. In particular, GBC is the very anime which can face western works without losing face: it has fluidity of animation, expressive character models, with palpable personality, great story and music.

> GBC is a hidden gem

I'm thinking about organizing a renewed grassroots PR campaign for the turn of 2024/2025 anime hiatus period - those are a precious few weeks when Garukura could be pushed right under the nose of bored weebs who haven't seen it yet or didn't even hear about it. Some won't tolerate it, because of how much Nina is unbusinesslike but the crazy amount of comedy in it would certainly keep many binging. Dr. Subaru's patent remedy against boredom!

However what would be the proper venue for organizing? I've only got bad experience with Reddit and Discord, while MAL seems to have lost most of its patronage since the ownership change and CR doesn't allow commenting any more. The animedom landscape is really fragmented nowadays.

Crunchyroll didn’t promote it. Their homepage focuses on mostly forgettable seasonal anime. So maybe the number of Crunchyroll ratings isn’t the best indicator.

GBC is often mentioned online in English-speaking anime spheres.

I’m just watching the show now. I like that it shows characters who didn’t finish school; I can relate to that as someone who got a GED at 17. Really I never expected to see this in Japanese media, the traditional pipeline of school —> 4 years of college —> immediately taking an office job is quite baked into the Japanese psyche. People who fail at any point in that path are looked down on.

Fair enough. I do agree with your point that people with “difficult” personalities are ostracized in the US. Or people who do antisocial things (in its original meaning, == going against societal norms).

Another reason why I hope for the success of this show. I can quite relate to the characters.

If it’s any encouragement, merch / “character goods” sales for GBC are quite high in Japan. But I haven’t seen anything for sale stateside yet.

I have suggested GBC to some causal anime watchers that I work with, but the 3D visuals turn them off. Unfortunately.

Hello,
Looks like Girls Band Cry may now be stalling even in Japan, not just the in the West:

• The upcoming collab concert of TogeToge (GBC IRL band) with She is Legend (some kind of Angel Beats game spin-off?) apparently has difficulty filling a 7-8000 capacity venue, due to relative lack of common fanbase and the event taking place on a workday. So the organizers are holding a second round of advance ticket sales (with discount?) which is unusual to say at least.
  
• The new TogeToge single has only about 3000 disc sales total (Bluray+DVD) thus far and I don't think any volume had less than 9000 before, usually it was in the 12-16,000 range.
  
• Fanart activity regarding the Garukura x Yorukura collab announced last month is now essentially non-existent and fanart output related to the new TogeToge song "Daremo" unexpectedly withered after about 10 days or so. Fan artists are unwilling to engage in non-official collab ideas, like GBC x Medalist and so can't reach new audiences.
  
• Fans couldn't care less about the upcoming smartphone GBC game, a game of which nobody has seen a single frame yet... They want the IP owners to come clean about what's going on with ToteToge band members Mirei (Awa Subaru) and Natsu (Ebizuka Tomo), who have been on hiatus with total radio silence, for almost a fully year now.
  

The sky darkens again... If Studio Toei wants to avoid a crisis, they should take international markets seriously and produce an english dub now and not an ordinary one at that, but a high quality work! GBC anime has great potential but they need to make is more approachable worldwide. As for season 2, I think we forget about that for years to come.