For a brief introduction of the game in question here, you may refer to this article.

The following review is a reproduction of the one I previously posted on the (unofficial) subreddit of the game, with some minor adjustments.

Some introduction about the event story

This article discusses an event story in the game titled Time to take off!, which was recently released on the global server of the game. It is one of the key stories centring around the street music unit in the game known as Vivid BAD SQUAD, and having Toya Aoyagi, who is one of its members, as the focus character of the story.

An archival recording (in original Japanese) can be found in the official YouTube channel of the Japanese server of the game, which is linked here and below.

The review

Initially, after I finished reading Episode 6 which is where Lloyd told VBS about Harumichi’s unfortunate first encounter with street music, I was kinda angered by how it paints street musicians as elitists when musical elitism in real life tends to revolve around classical music instead; it’s like blaming the victim. It also felt unsatisfying due to how lacking in context that recount was, especially how it may lead to the conclusion that Harumichi’s street music hate was just because “street music got the short end of the stick”, which would be really underwhelming.

However, I think that we should give the writing team a benefit of the doubt here.

Maybe Lloyd was actually an unreliable narrator who didn’t properly convey the full context of the incident (he’s not Harumichi after all, so perhaps he might’ve misunderstood what went through his mind back then).

Even if what Lloyd said was fully true, there is a massive time gap between that encounter and present day, so other things may have happened that contributed to this – frankly – drastic shift in Harumichi’s mindset. Even maybe, just maybe, (at least) when Toya decided to pursue street music, Harumichi already became a classical music elitist who hates every other musical genre.

Also, a sidenote, but while lots of the fandom think that Harumichi’s harsh teaching towards young Toya was because of his hate towards street music, I actually don’t think that it makes sense, as Toya actually liked classical music that time (as mentioned in Toya4¹), and only chose to quit and pursue street music (to get on his father’s nerves) when he was in junior high school because he’d had enough of the brutality.

I think Harumichi was just plain ol’ mean in his teaching LOL, but his street music hate was not the cause; I don’t even think they’re related. What actually soured his and Toya’s father-son relationship was, again, when Toya decided to quit classical and pursue street.

Another sidenote, I think that purism and elitism in classical music are two different concepts, as shown in young Harumichi: he’s already been a purist during that time, but (seemed to have) developed elitist attitude as time passes.

Nonetheless, whatever established so far in terms of Toya’s backstory and Harumichi’s character during previous events has been affected by this event; I think that’s for sure. However, considering the gaps in explanation of developments after that encounter, they’re still salvageable (in [the upcoming] Toya6² perhaps) if the writing team manages to fill in the blanks and justify the existing inconsistencies in a convincing manner – most importantly, keeping the previously established characterisations intact.

Some other comments

The following comments are my replies to other users’ reviews of the story. They were originally posted on the subreddit and reproduced here, with some minor adjustments.

I agree, they actually did a good job in resolving Toya and his middle brother’s relationship and making them come back to good terms. They really could have explored this newfound bond even more deeply, considering how LITTLE Toya’s actual siblings related content there is so far in the event stories.

The Tenmas are almost taking over man what are you two brothers doing

I don’t think that [Vivid BAD SQUAD (VBS) were] surprised by the jam session because it’s multi-genre, but because of the fact that the students responded by only playing musical instruments, instead of singing which VBS was used to.

Maybe this is because playing musical instruments is a whole other skill, which makes translating musical ideas in mind into actual instrumental performances in real time generally more difficult.

That’s my take on it anyways.