Hello Kitty kills a monster with the power of ROCK ‘N ROOOOOOOOLL and joins a rock band.
Okay…
so um
okay.
I’ll get to the Hello Kitty part in a bit, let me back up for a bit. Our protagonist for this story is a girl named Cyan Hijirikawa. She loves playing music and singing, and wants to join her school’s band, but the problem is that she’s too shy to join. But she’s finally found the confidence to turn in the application form to be part of the band. Cyan is a sweet girl. She just loves music and wants to be part of the band, and she even daydreams of singing with the band, singing and pointing right in the middle of the school hallway, making a complete fool of herself. I love how she’s passionate about it. And I thought that in the end, she ended up signing up with the BRR label without even thinking because it was finally her chase of being in a rock band. So she dismissed the mystery of where the hell she ended up in, and just embraced the fact that she was part cat, and went on to sign up in the band. Which I thought was pretty funny.
So, in her room she’s playing a rhythm game on her phone, and all of a sudden the screen glitches, displaying something called Unicorn Music something or other on her phone, and then all of a sudden she gets sucked into her phone. She somehow enters the world of the game she was playing, and ends up turning into a kitty and crashing into a concert, sung by…foxes I think?, the main fox being voiced by Mamoru Miyano lol (I’m gonna be hearing him sing a lot this season). And here in this part is where I almost fell out of my chair. Now let me remind you all that SANRIO came up with the story. Y’know…SANRIO…Hello Kitty…yup. So the anime switches between these childish animals in CGI to the regular animation that we had before, and it was pretty strange and I admit that I was laughing a lot.
A skeleton monster appears and attacks the fox band, Cyan somehow gets the legendary Strawberry Heart guitar, and kills it with music. Then it’s over and we return back to the regular animation, and Cyan has no idea what the hell happened. The girls we saw in the show’s poster appear before Cyan, and an egg man. Named Maple or something, and he’s in charge of the label that Cyan eventually joins.
I was actually surprised how funny the show is. The humor is a little wacky, like when Fox!Miyano’s limo smashed into BRR’s van, and it just kept smashing into it and the girls had to ride in the messed up van. Maple being punished by a sexy woman fox…and…it’s just so funny, I don’t know. I guess what threw me off was the CGI and when the characters look like animals you would see in a children’s show. In the ending of the show, the other characters look like this as well, so I’m going to guess that this type of format is going to be used in this show the entire time. Now…it’s SANRIO, I get it, so I guess I’m not too surprised. But I was honestly laughing during that whole battle thing, and if the show is seriously going to be like this, then it’s going to be hard for me to take it seriously. At least the CGI is done really nicely. It was just so smooth and clean, compared to other CGI I’ve seen in anime. The movements were good, the colors were too, it actually didn’t look too shabby at all.
I also really like the regular animation style as well. It’s vibrant and cute! I like Cyan so far, I like the humor, I like the character designs, and I actually quite enjoyed the songs in both the opening and ending. I guess the main thing that’s strange about this show is the CGI, and I know a lot of people are going to be pointing it out, and I don’t blame them. It caught me off guard too. I guess it just gives it a different feel for the show. I know there’s going to be a lot of different opinions about this.
There’s no concise plot yet, I just wonder what the baddies in this show are going to do. It’s the simple “Rule the universe!” type thing, but I hope they do something different with that. Anyway, this show is super cute. Extremely cute. It gets even more diabetes cute when the CGI kicks in, or it just might be funny. For me, it’s both. I don’t know, judge my weird taste in anime if you want, but I think I want to stick for the ride.
Watching: Guaranteed
Blogging: Hell yeah
IT BURNS!! THE HORRIFYING CUTSEY CG! IIIITTT BUUUUUUUUURRRRRNNNSS!!
Ahem. This is an extremely bizarre series, to the point that I think I need to watch more of it just to see if I can figure out WTF is really going on. At least Cyan’s kind of adorable when she’s not a horrifying CG cat-doll.
Horrifying?! JUST LOOK AT HER EYES. THEY’RE ALL SPARKLY!!
OH MY FREAKING GOD, THIS SHOW IS SO FREAKING CUTE AND WEIRD AND HILARIOUS, CYAN IS SO ADORABLE. Totally watching this, let’s see how much crazier it can get!
Also the CGI is pretty well done, it’s cute, really cute. Actually, I find the texture makes it look a lot like GSC’s nendoroids.
It’s a real shame Funimation doesn’t translate the lyrics for the songs :\ They ought to start doing so.
Just watching the show and… Oh my gosh this is DAMN TOO AMAZING TO THE OVER 9999% CUTENESS OVERLOAD POWER!!! Graciously goodness about the CGI being pretty good but yet there should be a balance between it and the 2D animation. So cool, pyuru!!!! >_<
And oh yeah, while watching one thing that's familiar to me and that was the music of Yasuharu Takanashi. Then uh, Bones yes, the studio which brought us some highly calibrated anime scenes, enters the stage as the studio for the anime. Right now, I officially started to like Cyan very much and adorable at the same time, awww!!! Originally that Show By Rock!! didn't include in my spring anime watchlist because I already picked Digimon Adventure tri, and Nisekoi 2, but with conscience yes, it's decided that SBR was the lately third on my list due to the fact that I was a Sanrio fan for years now. My fave characters aside from Hello Kitty were My Melody, Kerokeropi and Robby the Rabbit (I have some bags of him before when I was a kid). So maybe I could try the game version of it in the near future though.
Just shake the haters out and look forward to the next one! :p Nice reviews anyways, Berry-dono.
Yeah I’m actually pretty surprised that Bones picked it up, but that means great animation!
I had no idea that there’s a game version of this! Now I’m really curious. Though I guess I’m not too surprised since this really looks like it can be from a game.
Well thanks to research, now you know! Those sparkles and all the fighting makes me awesome as a true mahou shoujo fan at least. 😀
IT’S A GOTHIC LOLITA HELLO KITTY WITH A GUITARY!!!
Okay, I have to admit, originally, this show looked just horrible to me when I saw it in the Spring 2015 anime line up. I thought it would be some magical animal girl music band thingy with no plot and just lolis and moe (which I do actually like). I don’t really know, it just looked bad. But I was wrong. First of all, I had no idea it was a Sanrio production. I love love Sanrio. When I was a kid, I had a ton of Hello Kitty stuffed animals, toys, stickers, notebooks, stamps, everything basically (fine I still have them). I even owned a couple of Hello Kitty Theater movies (American) and two Hello Kitty Nintendo games, the Hello Kitty and Friends ones. I also love My Melody, Cinnamoroll, Kerokerokeropi, Pikko, and all the others. If I knew it was Sanrio, it definitely would have originally been on my list.
Also, this anime is just so CUTE. Even the CG is adorable somehow. I love all the characters so far, and watching this somehow gave me childhood nostalgia. This show is fantastic, and it’s only the first episode. Really really weird though. I can’t really take this show seriously XD
I agree with Eva though, Funimation needs to add lyrics. I look forward to the next episode and the boy bad Crimson whatever 😛 Thanks for reviewing this Berry!:)
Don’t be ashamed because I have a lot of Hello Kitty things too! Maybe not as much as you but still. The most notable is a giant Hello Kitty plushie, which is the biggest of all my plushies. And yes I’m a grown woman and I have plushies. It’s so big and cute! I know the other Sanrio characters, but I never learned their names except for the frog because of a friend.
Lol it’s hard for me to take it seriously too, but it was a great first episode and I actually can’t wait for the next one. Hopefully later Funimation will add the lyrics because they usually do.
Should I mention that Hello Kitty bordered on being terrifying to me when I was younger, and that similarities to it may partially explain my… distaste for the CG in this series?
Oh lol, yeah I kinda get it, Hello Kitty is not for everyone. To be fair, some dolls scare me to death (those creepy overly realistic ones). The main reason I have so much Hello Kitty stuff though is mainly because my mom loved it and she kind of forced her “obsession” onto me by buying Hello Kitty stuff whenever she saw it XD. I do admit, I don’t like it as much anymore and the main reason that I have so much stuff is because I’m a̶ ̶b̶i̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶h̶o̶r̶d̶e̶r̶ no I mean lazy and never got around to throwing all that stuff away. A lot of it is in the garage though (where all my other childhood things are that I never got around to giving/throwing away).
You’re not the only one, Hello Kitty scared the crap out of me when I was a kid too.
I never saw the CG one though…. I just remember watching it on the whim and before I knew it I was running out of the room. LMAO!
“A skeleton monster appears and attacks the fox band, Cyan somehow gets the legendary Strawberry Heart guitar, and kills it with music.”
Lol, ok, sounds like I’m going to have to watch this now.
Apparently Cyan is the first role of a new voice actress, Inagawa, Eri 😮 She’s doing a splendid job. Moa is also jut who I thought: Naka-chan! 😀 Hurray!
Anyway, I came because I’d never watched such a cutesy or musically oriented anime before. It was enjoyable, but I’m definitely also staying for the Sonic-like 3D animation. That takes me back 🙂 Oh and of course I want to see how her real life endeavors pan out. Thanks for starting up the coverage so enthusiastically, Berry.
It’s going to be interesting watching Hibike Euphonium after this, but I’m excited to see a entirely different brand of musical anime!