"D4DJ" is an anime themed around high school girls and female college students who are devoted to DJ activities. It is attracting attention because a new series of the anime will be broadcast in 2023. D4DJ is a content that was started by an anime production company as a large-scale project. Are you interested in what the project was like? This time, I would like to look back on the birth of D4DJ!
How the project was launched
D4DJ is produced by Bushiroad. The company behind "BanG!Dream" and "Shoujo☆Kageki Revue Starlight" will be producing this as one of their "Music Media Mix Trilogy" along with these two works. When talking about how the project got started, Bushiroad Chairman Kidani Takaaki saw young people causing a ruckus at Halloween in Shibuya and wondered why the desire to have fun turned into a way to vent frustration. When he was based in Singapore, he saw an American DJ unit livening up the venue and creating an atmosphere of positive emotion, and felt that the era of DJs was upon us. It's an episode that makes you realize how important it is to have a big opportunity to move people's hearts!
Project Launch
On December 30, 2018, at a Bushiroad-related event, it was announced that the D4DJ project would begin. The following year, some of the voice actors were announced, and then the voice actors for all units except for a few were announced. As the theme is DJing, this content places great importance on live performances. The live performance is full of the unique difficulty and joy of DJing, which is to compose music to match the atmosphere of the venue. Seiji Mizushima, the director of the TV anime version and producer of Photon Maiden, commented that he felt a great sense of enthusiasm for the live performance.
About the unit settings: Lyrical Lily Edition
The concept of Lyrical Lily is a group of four sheltered girls who attend a school for rich girls, but according to producer Wataru Nakamura, the last unit to appear so far, he recalled in an interview that both the cast and himself were feeling their way around. Composer Hiroshi Egawa, who was also present at the interview, said that he was struggling with the details of the settings because of the big gap between the combination of a DJ and a rich girl. In the end, he thought that they should at least maintain their dignity, and since it was a unit that maintained the cuteness of an idol, he was conscious of creating songs that could also function as pop songs.
About the unit settings: Merm4id edition
Merm4id was conceived before the character settings, with the idea of introducing a unit that could expand into fields other than games and anime. When casting, we recruited people who were models or gravure idols and also wanted to be singers or voice actors. With the above background, we started as a mature unit that could also do gravure idols. It's true that compared to other units, it exudes a somewhat sexier atmosphere! In terms of sound, the producer wanted to create a sound that evokes the image of a large-scale festival. On the other hand, because the vocals are cute, it became necessary to strengthen the bass, and the direction was set for the unit to emphasize the festival element.
Summary of the background to the launch of the D4DJ project
It took about a year from the official announcement of the project's launch until the app game was launched, and more than a year and a half until the anime was made. Creating a music media mix from scratch is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task, and when you understand that, it makes you feel very emotional. Knowing the background of its creation can also be an opportunity to enjoy the anime and games even more! That's all for now. Thank you for reading.
