The Winter 2023 Anime Preview Guide

D4DJ All Mix

Schoolgirl DJ unit Lyrical Lily has been tasked with putting together a performance for their town's revitalization event. But needing to perform a show every month for a year is a tall order for these kids, so what are they to do? Fortunately, they're not alone, and the connections they've made from previous DJ events, as well as their established friends and family, ought to let them combine a whole host of units into one big musical mix!

D4DJ All Mix is the sequel to the D4DJ Double Mix special and the second anime season of the D4DJ franchise. It streams on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

Christopher Farris
Rating:

So in an appreciated, if potentially confusing move, we've been granted a two-for-one deal on Crunchyroll's streaming of the new D4DJ anime. After coming out last year with no international streaming release, they've dropped the D4DJ Double Mix OVA at the same time as the premiere of the new D4DJ All Mix anime season. Double Mix is fun enough on its own, though its supposed intent of introducing anime viewers to the units Merm4id and Rondo is questionable. The characters are still showing up with only allusions to their founding stories and events that were covered in the mobile game. But it still works as an introduction to the general vibes of the new characters and a reintroduction to D4DJ's tone in the lead-up to the new anime overall.

All that's before D4DJ All Mix wheels around and focuses on another new DJ unit to introduce to anime audiences. Meet Lyrical Lily, a quartet of Catholic schoolgirls dedicated to dropping sick beats for The Lord. They're a unique concept to start out on, and there is some charm in watching the Lilies faff around through their school day at the beginning of the episode. And it certainly makes for a more nuanced introduction to the style and setup of the show than the way the previous special just blurted everything out at you. We're still catching up with Lyrical Lily after their in-canon establishment, but it feels more eased in.

Getting that tone right is necessary since Lyrical Lily's introduced story with the town revitalization event is revealed as the whole framing device for pulling all the previous D4DJ characters into this mix. And unlike the greatest hits concert assault that shotgun-blasted audiences with characters at the beginning of sister series BanG Dream's second season, D4DJ All Mix uses this networking structure to more coherent ends. Character connections and relationships are iterated and reinforced. Even if you're still working on keeping track of all these candy-colored gacha-bait performers, that sense of interconnection and building on the structure established in the first season is maintained. There is a story here, even if this part is just set up, and a refresher for some characters from a special we just got at the same time that turned out not to be all that necessary in the first place.

Busy as getting airdropped into this cast horde is, this musical show's audio/visual component carries it as one would hope. It's no Trigun Stampede, but Sanzigen's efforts on the original D4DJ were already some of their best work, and that's been improved upon now that we've arrived at All Mix. Characters bob and bounce with distinctive energy, with the facial expressions carrying some wonderfully cartoony appeal. Silly bits like Rinku's lightspeed gift handout are just as entertaining as the musical scene capping off the episode (the Merm4id/Rondo joint show in Double Mix is also a highlight). It's a style that fits with this thing's messy, whirlwind appeal. You probably aren't going to get anything out of it if you haven't seen the previous season, to say nothing of people who have even more specific context from the game. But for fans, it's a fun enough welcome back and almost impressive in how economically it reintroduces all these DJ girls.