Dream Festival! R – Don’t Let Your Dreams be Dreams!

 

• Genre: School, Slice of life, idol, comedy
• Episodes: 12
• Studio: Bandai Namco Pictures

 

Just because you’ve made your debut, doesn’t mean you’re an idol yet! That is the lesson all the boys of Dear Dream need to learn after winning the Dream Festival. Sure they’ve got an album out now and are reliably selling out venues but is that enough to really make them into a unit the fans can keep cheering for? It’s not enough to just show up for the concerts anymore. Each of them will have to find their own path and hone their personal skills so they can make the group shine! All while newcomers Kurofune are nipping at their heels to take their place on stage. Will Dear Dream prevail and shine brighter than ever before?

Now see, that’s a summary! I gave you a good idea of what the season holds without putting any spoilers in. I remembered both the bands’ names. I even dropped a little leading question there at the end to add some suspense and make you want to find out more. Clearly, my true calling has always been to write summaries specifically for boy idol shows. Preferably ones that are commercial tie in for mobile games or something. Sounds like a super lucrative career to me! You know what they say, find work you love doing and you’ll never work a day in your life!

Dream Festival! R is the second season of Dream Festival and it is in all production respects, the same. Cute designs with decent detail and consistent art. Functional backgrounds. Pared down animation covered up by a lot of still shot montages and creepy creepy CG concert scenes that will haunt your nightmares!

The voice acting is superbly suited, as in I wouldn’t be surprised if the characters were voiced by actual idols. There’s something so energetic and just pointedly earnest in all the deliveries. It’s not exactly good so much as I love it…

This is pretty much the tagline of the entire show, and a lot of boy idol shows I have watched. Not exactly good but I love it. (Some I hated…)

I was and am (at the time of writing) watching Penguindrum and it’s a very immersive experience for me. In order to not get overwhelmed I figure I would choose something so light it could float away and of little to no consequence. Yup, season 2 of an airy idol show I enjoyed was the perfect candidate. And I got just what I expected. A very light show with simple characters and obvious plots that required very little of me as an audience.

But you know what else. I was smiling widely and honestly throughout the entire thing.

It’s no secret that times have been a  bit more stressful than usual for pretty much everyone everywhere. And although I think it’s not only enjoyable but rewarding to engage with entertainment that’s thought-provoking and mindfully crafted, there’s something to be said for the mindless, harmless fun of pure fluff.

I think some of us have a tendency to devalue these types of shows. Be it fluffy idol shows, aimless slice of life or mild fanservice vehicles. I often see them described either implicitly or even explicitly as lower forms of entertainment. For the uneducated masses or for those that don’t have the brain capacity to appreciate greater art. That sort of stuff. Obviously, no one in my reader base would ever think that way or else they wouldn’t stick around this blog for very long. But I’m sure we’ve all seen this type of dialogue at least once. And not only about anime!

I’ve seen it about books, movies, live-action television, even music! Not only do people occasionally arbitrarily decide one form of fiction or one form of entertainment is of lesser intrinsic value but you occasionally see people getting low key shamed for enjoying these forms of entertainment. And that’s just sad…

Dream Festival! R or otherwise is not a great show. The characters are pretty superficial and largely archetypes. The plots are fairly contrived and often dip into the ridiculous. But that’s what it wants to be. This isn’t a show pretending to have deep cultural significance or to change your life in a meaningful way. It’s a series of fun little stories that don’t make too much sense, full of cute boys to make you laugh in the moment and forget about the next day.

And in that sense, Dream Festival did a fantastic job!

I know very few people care about these types of anime. Whenever I review a series, I will start noticing other bloggers that have reviewed it not that long ago or that come out with reviews surprisingly close to when mine is scheduled for release. Even though they are often older shows and there’s no reason to be talking about them now specifically. It’s something that happens really often, considering the number of blogs I follow. It never ever happens with my boy idol reviews.

And maybe that’s fair enough. It’s not for everyone. It’s a super cheesy genre that often as unintentionally funny as it is intentionally so. And the archetypes and tropes they so lovingly and unabashedly embrace are a big part of the experience, so if those aren’t for you, you’re likely to find watching Dream Feastival! R downright painful.

However, I haven’t laughed this much and in such a carefree way in a long time. For the one of you who cares about boy idol shows out there and discovered my blog some day, I would say Dream Festival is in fact my second favourite of the genre behind Idolish 7. There’s no shoehorned love story like Magi-kyun or Uta no Prince Sama that gets in the way of the hilarious and it’s completely and entirely unpretentious. The fact that it’s so brazen about being a mobile game commercial, to the point of incorporating gameplay mechanics as in-universe details, also adds certain moments of surreal absurdity that are difficult to match.

So really all I have to say is Go Dear Dream! You Can Do It!!!

Favourite character: Ritsu has always been the best, there should have been more of him!

What this anime taught me: A true idol has a monkey companion

Why limit your happy to an hour?

Suggested drink: Black Ship

• Every time it’s Dorika time  – cheer
• Every time anyone is changing – fan yourself
  
• Every time Asume punches someone – take a sip
  
• Every time there’s a shower or bath scene – oh my….
• Every time there’s a still shot dance montage – dance along somehow
  
• Every time you hear the word princess – blush
  
• Every time anything is beyond ultimate  – take a sip
  
• Every time Chizu is on fire – get some water
  
• Every time you see AIM GOAT – there’s a chance I hallucinated this but it made me laugh every time
• Every time an outfit features useless chains or buckles – take a sip
  
• Every time we see Ritsu – Celebrate!
• Every time Kaneda’s hair is down – take a sip

Of course, I took more screencaps. Who do you take me for! I put them on Pinterest too.