Rejection of CGI decreases thanks to VTubers

Among all the premieres of the Spring-2024 season (April-June), "Girls Band Cry" is definitely one of the most exciting surprises. With a theme reminiscent of "K-On!" and "Bocchi the Rock!", this new series also includes a group of teenagers who form a band and dream big.

The plot is described as follows:

• The protagonist drops out of high school in the second year and aspires to enter university while working alone in Tokyo. A girl is betrayed by her friends and doesn't know what to do. Another girl is abandoned by her parents and tries to survive in the city by doing part-time jobs. This world lets us down all the time. Nothing goes as planned. But we want something we still like. We believe there is a place where we belong. That's why we sing.

It's certainly a much deeper story than the two previously mentioned, but the differences don't end there. Toei Animation Studios changed the paradigm by producing this series in 3DCG animation, quite similar to what happens with some other idol anime.

Despite the fact that CGI animation is not popular with fans, "Girls Band Cry" has definitely been able to capitalize on its theme with different scenes that went viral on social media with each new episode.

Something worth mentioning is that the voice actresses of the protagonists of "Girls Band Cry" can in fact play their respective musical instruments on stage. That is to say, they are a real band, as evidenced by the following video where they perform their first single titled "Nameless Name".

But if this style of animation is generally frowned upon by fans, why is "Girls Band Cry" being well-received? According to an article by Nikkei, this is not only due to their proposed story, but also because Virtual YouTubers or VTubers have been mitigating the rejection of 3D models. In an interview, producer Satoshi Hirayama commented:

• There are two main trends in global animation: one is the "royal look," represented by Disney and Pixar. The other is the "cel look," represented by Japanese hand-drawn animation. As there are already many pioneers in these two areas, we thought we should compete in something else that no one else is doing, and that's how we arrived at the "illustration look".
• When we think about how Japanese animation will survive in the future, if we continue to do the same thing as before, there is a possibility that one day we will be overtaken by other countries and even end up losing in an economic power battle. But with CG animation, there's still room to evolve in expression. As Japanese animation is at the forefront of the world, we want to do more new things.
• Also, in the past, we used to get the reaction from otakus that "3DCG models suck!" But with the popularity of VTubers in recent years, the rejection has decreased drastically, which is one of the reasons we embraced the design look. In addition, we were able to realize detailed emotions and movements using 24 full frames in this work, whereas in normal TV animation eight frames per second move.

Source: Yaraon!