On April 4, 2018, “BanG Dream! Girls Band Party” (also called Bandori) saw the release of its much anticipated English version. Developed by the company Craft Egg and published by Bushiroad’s game subsidiary Bushimo (the same publisher of Love Live! School Idol Festival), the game is the latest piece of media from the series.
The original “BanG Dream” game came out in Japan on March 16, 2017. A mobile rhythm game, the player gets to name the faceless protagonist and act as an employee at the CiRCLE live house. The main story focuses around five bands of five girls each, with the main band being Poppin’ Party.
The employees at CiRCLE are helping the Poppin’ Party girls recruit other bands for an event. The player levels up through the bands while also working to rank up. Levelling up bands lets the player read the backstories behind each separate group, while ranking up leads to unlocked songs and the main story progressing.
Several parts of the game are animated and voice acted; when reading a story, the option to listen to the voices is available if enough room is on the player’s phone.
Bandori began as a manga series back in January 2015 and now has three separate manga series currently running. The two other editions came out in 2016, with the first two manga being published by Bushiroad and the last being published by ASCII Media Works. All three are written by separate authors and only two are located in Monthly Bushiroad, while the latest Bandori manga runs in Dengeki G’s comic.
An anime for “BanG Dream” came out on Jan. 21, 2017 and ran until April 22, 2017 in a 13 episode run. The original video animation (OVA) titled ‘We Had Some Fun!” came out with the seventh BD/DVD bundle on Nov. 22, 2017.
As for the main characters of the story, there are 25 specific girls to pay attention to. As previously mentioned, Poppin’ Party is the main group and the ultimate protagonist of the story is their leader Kasumi Toyama.
Their name is used to describe the general ‘popping’ theme the girls and their music holds, and was founded so Kasumi could rediscover an excitement she felt prior to entering high school.
Afterglow is a band made up of Ran Mitake and her four childhood friends. Their theme revolves around rebellion and thus, their style takes more of a punk aesthetic to it. The name of their band comes from the effect on the sky following a sunset.
Pastel*Palettes (also known as PasuPare) is a group that became an ‘idol band’ as a gimmick from their talent agency. The experience is currently being used so the group can bolster their own definition of what an idol is. Their name refers to the colored and varying personalities of all the girls within the group.
Roselia is a popular J-Rock group with a gothic theme. They’re recognized at a near professional level and have caught the eye of the music industry. Roselia’s name is simply a combination of the words rose and camellia.
Hello, Happy World is a group formed by Kokoro Tsurumaki with the goal of making people smile as her reason for creating the band. The band is most popular with children and they play often at preschools, though their music appeals to all age groups.
With updates incoming often and the gacha feature to get new cards lurking, Bandori is set to stay fresh and fun for years to come.
Erika Brandenburg
Staff Writer