Ranking Every BanG Dream! Album
A purely self-indulgent project. This franchise has eight LPs -- which is the best?
If you’ve been in my orbit any length of time, you’ve probably heard me mention the BanG Dream! franchise. It has a number of moving parts, with the flagship being the rhythm game BanG Dream: Girls’ Band Party!, which I have played for several years.
The franchise features seven bands, each with five members. Six of these seven bands have released at least one LP (the seventh, Morfonica, probably won’t for some time — they are newer and have fewer original songs than the others by a substantial margin).
Four of the bands also do live concerts, and there’s an anime, and movies…it’s a whole thing. But today, we are focusing on those albums, because I know what you are here for: ranked lists. Four bands have released one LP, and Poppin’Party and Roselia have two each. There’s also cover albums and a Roselia EP, but I’m not including them. Let’s get into it!
The problem with Poppin’on! is extremely simple: there’s too much of it. At 1h40, spread out over two full-length discs, it is a hefty listen, and ends up feeling more than a little bloated. In addition to its 17 (!) regular songs, it includes five acoustic self-covers, each spotlighting a different band member as vocalist — which are charming, but also something that probably should have been bundled as a separate EP release. Its tracks are also mostly in chronological release order, and the album’s flow suffers for it. The other problem is that some of the inclusion/exclusion choices for the album are baffling; “Christmas no Uta” is both bad and weird as a choice for an album released in late January, and there’s a few other tracks that are, frankly, forgettable. Future releases would be much more tightly edited, leaving Poppin’on! something of an ungainly oddity in the catalogue. Stand-out tracks: STAR BEAT! ~Hoshi no Kodou~; Double Rainbow
I have a confession: Pastel*Palettes are my least favourite band in the franchise. This isn’t a knock on them — obviously, someone had to be — but their particular brand of sugar-sweet idol pop doesn’t land for me as well as what the other groups are doing. TITLE IDOL showcases their strengths, though, moving smoothly between rousing group numbers like “Tenka Toitsu A to Z☆” and more soloistic pieces like “Kyu-mai * Flower” or “Mou Ichido Luminous”, which make good use of Aya Maruyama (Ami Maeshima)’s voice. Her singing is at times a little thready, but generally the songs are written to not make this a major drawback. Ultimately, TITLE IDOL is a fun, frothy summer listen, but lacks the substance needed to really wow.
Stand-out tracks: Wakuwaku Meets Trip; Yume Yume Gradation
If Poppin’On! was the somewhat disjointed journey of Poppin’Party! figuring out their sound, Breakthrough! shows them in a much more confident light. While there’s still some oddities on the tracklist (the extremely fun “Hello Wink!” comes to mind), the overall sound is much more consistent and polished than on their debut. Indeed, at times this consistency is almost a drawback; there’s a preponderance of midtempo pop-rock, such that a lot of songs end up blending into each other. The tracks that do stand out, though, mostly do so for good reasons — the aforementioned “Hello Wink!”, “KIZUNA MUSIC♪”, and album centrepiece “Returns” are all excellent, and even the less memorable tracks are still an enjoyable listen.
Stand-out tracks: Hello Wink!; Returns
Hello, Happy World!: niconiconnect!
As their name suggests, Hello, Happy World! have the most limited emotional palette of any of the Bandori groups. Their songs generally occupy the range from “warmly cheerful” through “aggressively cheerful” to “maniacally cheerful”. They compensate for this though by having a huge sonic palette they draw from, playing with instrumentation and genre more than any other band in the franchise. niconiconnect! showcases this well — while the majority is a sort of hyperactive kitchen-sink pop that, at its best, is reminiscent of acts like Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, there’s also the neo-big-band sound of tracks like “Kimi ga Inakucha!” and “Goka! Gokai!? Phantom Thief!” and a brief detour into hip-hop with “Nice to Meet Chu!”. It could sound disconnected, and there’s a handful of tracks that feel underbaked, but the sheer force of personality in Kokoro Tsurumaki (Miku Itou)’s singing does a lot to hold it together. The other members of the band get less time to shine, but Michelle (Tomoyo Kurosawa) and Kaoru Seta (Azusa Tadokoro) both sound great whenever they’re featured — I’d love a duet or trio on a future release.
Stand-out tracks: Kimi ga Inakucha!; Egao･Sing･a･Song
ERA has a number of atypical traits for a Bandori album, but RAS is an atypical band. Their hard-edged synth rock is an outlier in terms of sound, certainly, but the more salient point is this: they started as a live band rather than in-universe characters, and are still marketed as such. ERA is the only album with a photograph of the band’s members on the covers rather than an illustration; it has a higher number of album-exclusive tracks than any other; and unlike every other album release in the franchise, most of its songs had not had truncated versions featured in the rhythm game at the time of release — many of them still have not appeared in the game! Bushiroad wants you to consider RAS’s music on its own merits, and ERA makes a strong case for doing so; it’s a flashy, confident release, held together by LAYER (Raychell)’s expressive, flexible vocals and by the sheer maximalism of the synth and guitar writing. Some of the songs are a little overworked (and CHU² (Risa Tsumugi) never quite matches LAYER’s effortless swagger), but I can’t help but respect the big swings.
Stand-out tracks: Invincible Fighter; R・I・O・T
Roselia were the band with the most tightly-defined sound from very early on, which has been both a blessing and a curse to them. On Wahl, they continue in the heavy-guitar, baroque mode they’ve established, but find a couple of interesting directions to push their sound (directions they’ve happily continued to explore since its release). Songs like “Break Your Desire” feel like a fusion between the rippling synths of “Hidamari Rhodonite” and their harder fare, with the combination standing out. “Avant-garde HISTORY” is structurally a lot more interesting than the hard 4/4 of most of their songs, and tracks like “Yakusoku” show restraint while still maintaining that Roselia grandeur. It’s an album of experiments (and a couple of old favourites, particularly “Neo-Aspect”), and served as an exciting bellwether for songs they’ve released since.
Stand-out tracks: Avant-garde HISTORY; Song I am.
Anfang was the first full-length album released by any of the Bandori bands, and it’s clear the track selection process was very straightforward: take the ten songs Roselia had released thus far, add two album exclusives, and call it a day. It benefits tremendously from the overall cohesion of Roselia’s sound, though, and from some smart sequencing choices. A lot of Roselia’s tracks are driving and forceful in a way that can get exhausting if listened to back-to-back, but breaking up the bombast with softer pieces like “Hidamari Rhodonite” and “Re:birth Day” helps tremendously. Even “Kiseki”, the weakest track here, is placed well, providing a breather before launching into the much harder sound of album closer “Louder”. Anfang’sproduction was clearly constrained, compared to everything else on this list, by there being a very limited number of songs to choose from; but within those constraints it does extremely well. Stand-out tracks: Hidamari Rhodonite; - HEROIC ADVENT -
It’s difficult to position yourself as a scrappy garage band when you’re part of a massive multimedia franchise project, but on ONE OF US Afterglow to a surprisingly credible job. Part of this is due to their arrangements, which have real bite — their lead guitar is consistently good, and the bass parts are among the best Bandori has to offer — but a huge amount of credit must go to Ayane Sakura, who is perfectly cast as Ran Mitake. Her voice has a smokiness that effortlessly reads as “cool”, and while her high range is more than a little strained, it reinforces the band’s rough-around-the-edges image more than it detracts from their sound. The tracklist for the album was also clearly assembled with care; Afterglow’s biggest issue is that they took a long time to figure out their sound, with some early songs being bizarre outliers from where they ended up. ONE OF US benefits from being able to omit those, while still having a good range of sonic variation and still hanging on to a handful of fascinating oddities (with “Hey-Day Cappriccio!” being the standard-bearer for this category). Overall, it’s a great album, showcasing the band’s strengths and effectively minimizing their weaknesses.
Stand-out tracks: SENSENFUKOKU; Tsunagu, Soramoyou
Overall, it’s a strong body of work! I’m always impressed by this franchise’s ability to maintain each band’s distinct identity and give each a really solid catalogue of songs. The songwriters of Elements Garden are really able to tailor the work to the performers’ strengths — I honestly think any of these albums are well-worth checking out except maybe Poppin’On!, for which you might be better off finding the best tracks as singles.