Tacsk0 said:My problems with BtR are two-fold:
1. BtR is a "4-koma" gag manga and as such lacks substance. It's definitely possible to make not great, yet enjoyable anime out of 4-koma source, but it takes modesty (e.g I liked xenon rifle is beautiful).
In contrast, Watamote's source is a full-featured manga created by a light novelist + illustrator duo, a long-running work whose story actually had to be dumbed down and panderized after the anime adaptation (* see footnote)
Girls Band Cry is a fully original story, but written by the creative staff who had made Stein's Gate (MAL 9.04 !!!), Antartica / Yorimoi (8.64) and the perennial favourite Love Live Sunhine!, also a sizeable portion of the Hibike Euphonium saga. As such, GBC's team was able to pour tremendous amount of creativity into a story that's free from the boring and overused cliches of school-life (note: all 5 of the GBC main chara are dropouts). More mature themes and drama, balanced by great pysical comedy that reminds me of old silent movies, set in a highly realistic urban environment and with a down-to-earth approach.
Comparing Bocchi to GBC and Watamote storywise is like putting an ABBA musical next to Hamlet and Moliere...
2. BtR looks ugly and I can't find a less heavy word for it. I have no problem with low quality animation as long as it has a certain charm to its aesthetics (e.g. Kemono Friends S1 is a miracle!) However, when animation is both sloppy and unpleasant, there is no excuse to watch it! Much of Bocchi wasn't even properly 2D animated, more like a flipbook drawn by a 10 year old kid.
In contrast, decade old Watamote still looks visually pristine and Tomoko is oh so pretty! It shows how much effort and love the animators poured into her character, even the ED has genius animation.
We don't even need to get started on GBC: it's a revolutionary anime series, a TV-budget 3D CGI production whose visuals match those of 2018 Hollywood animated movies. If that sounds silly and petty, think again: TV anime is broadcast free-to-view in Japan, thus an original project like GBC has near-zero guaranteed income and must cope on a shoe-string production budget accordingly. Movies can rely on ticket sales and if already established franchises they can easily gain collabs with fast-food chains, etc. Furthermore, Japan has neglected full-potential CGI use for decades, both in games and animation and so fell hopelessly behind the USA and China. GBC single-handedly removed min. 10 years of that lag and if anime industry as a whole has the courage to adapt to this new era heralded by TOEI, they can survive. I don't have much hope in anime industry reforming itself but they've undeniably been given a chance by GBC success. Btw, GBC's character designer is Teshima Nari of Holo Live / Grafitti fame.
(*) Footnote: the story of Watamote's "spaghetti conspiracy" is long and complicated, but essentially the western (!) fandom manipulated manga sales figures as the story moved from web publication to physical (tankobon) format. Such cooking of stats led the publisher to vastly overestimate Watamote' potential in the anime market and a high quality one-cour adaptation was greenlit. Domestic disc sales turned out miserable however and western fandom couldn't afford to manipulate sales for expensive DVD box sets the same way they did with dirt-cheap tankobons. As such the anime's commercial failure almost sunk Watamote manga as well and the authors had to abruptly transform the story into a lesbian harem just to stay afloat. Watamote anime S2 never happened, of course.