Forum - View topicListeners (TV).
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Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Listeners (TV) Genres: Sci-Fi, Music Plot Summary
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15510 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 1
I was watching the episode and thinking that this should have all the pieces to be a pretty good show, but for some reason it really was not working for me. My first thought was that maybe this was a was a world without music anymore, to which I thought that I already saw AKB0048, but that might not have been the case. Fighting with music seems to be a thing, but at least in this first episode it did not feel like the same punch as Symphogear. Like the majority of the episode had chill grooves in it, and the moment did not feel like it had the right kind of punctuation. It also kind of felt like the first episode was kind of formulaic, like things set up just because this is how these stories usually go. I do hope that I might like it more as I go. |
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Beltane70
 Posts: 3908 |
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I was really looking forward to this show and was really pleased with this first episode and I hope that the rest of the series continues to build on this.
The music theme is what got me interested in this show since it looked to be a slightly different take of using music to fight one's enemies than AKB0048 and Macross. Plus, I remember seeing the characters in one of the early articles on ANN and loving some of the characters being homages to real-life artists, particularly in the characters Wendy and Lisa, who are undoubtedly reference to the real Wendy and Lisa of Prince's band, The Revolution. Not to mention that the show even has a character that looks like Prince! |
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ACｘS
 Posts: 910 |
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1:
Hmm, I don't know. Strangely the art style and theme reminds me a bit of Carole & Tuesday. I know the message of the show: music triumphs everything à la Macross. But it feels like C&T because the show's paying homage to music makers (and the sponsorship of music equipment is a telling sign). But that's the thing: for a musically themed title, it's lacking flair and energy. It feels like a poor man's BONES production. I don't have any beef against the clichéd setup per se (boy who was contented with the status quo meets a mystery girl who implored him to open up and seek more towards life? How clichéd can you be?), but at least offer something exciting! No, I'm not feeling it. Talk about underwhelming. Not sure if I want to continue with the show. We'll see. Maybe we'll see some interesting characters along the way (really think I saw Prince in the credits), and that's promising. edit: you know what? Forget it; I'm out. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15510 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 2
Found most of the episode uninteresting, felt more confused than anything with the revelation this early on that apparently Earless were once people. But I thought that the ED was pretty good. Can't remember if the first episode had one, and all the visuals seemed to be specific to this episode, so if it changes to match each episode the way it did this time, I would probably actually be impressed. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15510 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 12
Oh good, people came back to life, so nothing matters. God that was dumb. I am not saying everything was bad, like a sentiment of you being who you are, not needing to rely on violence or something, and some focus on certain aesthetic elements, but it just does not work here. What the hell is the whole thing about the Earless mostly being sad about being discriminated against? Is this whole thing supposed to be relevant to the one episode where the girl somehow knew that the Earless were like ghosts of her people that were killed/converted by the Earless? I don't understand how this became like a core theme of the series, especially when Earless mostly seemed be mindlessly violent/dangerous or simply seemingly controlled. What was their deal? Did they like music/sound or dislike it? The motives really feel like they came out of nowhere with Mu suddenly becoming the devil that want to destroy everything because no one accepted them. To talk more about characters, I think that our main characters flat out suck, Mu and Echo just really were not that interesting or felt like they really brought anything. Mu being a bit more interesting for her personality not just being "is nice and fixes things", but she still also came across as generally unlikable for generally just switching between being mean to Echo and being nice in wanting him to adventure with her. Felt like her character could not choose a lane of she should be, so they threw in a McGuffin character Jimmy to search for to fill in the rest. The rest of the cast also felt generally one sided not much of interest either, the one exception I would say would be Nir, played well by Rie Kugimiya. Nir being the most interesting because it felt like she did not fit into any one basket, not being conventionally attractive (by anime standards), being antisocial prickly while not actually hating people, and having a rather complex set of motives. The episodes focusing on Nir were probably the best. Next I want to talk aesthetics, which I think could have been its greatest tool, but unfortunately I think was one of its biggest missteps. When you are blending something like music right into the action, something that I think is refffered to as diegetic music where the music the audience hears may also happening in universe, you have a big chance to use it. Sort of turn the whole thing into like a music video, which I would say that the EDs actually did well. But I think that the majority of the show failed at this, where unless I got it wrong this is a world that has been without music for some time, but there should an explosion of such when a Player activates an amp, but I don't think it ever did effectively. This is the sort of thing that Symphogear and should have been easy to integrate, I am not saying they would need to sing, but rather than having a slow guitar rift during any particular moment, you should have something lowkey followed by the sound of an amp and the sort of music like wild guitar playing and rhythm that they have forgotten. I am not a music expert, but I feel like that should have been doable rather than relying on CGI robot models to make the fights feel exciting. I would say that they were pretty consistent in making the EDs the best part of the show, those were the parts that really felt like someone put in an effort to use music, sound and visuals to tie it all together around themes and the sort of styles they were aiming for in the episode. But it occasionally felt like someone came up with these really cool songs and videos around the story that was written, and neglected to make the episode itself feel reflective of that. Like one of the episodes I said good because it had Nir, the school episode, which kind of gives this feeling of a passing of time that comes from school, but I think the episode itself was like a day or so long. That could have been fine if the episode itself was from the point of view of the students that are spending their time together for a length of time, but instead it focuses on generally boring Mu and Echo. I still don't understand what the whole point of the boy vs girl dynamic of the love episode, where Echo was forced into manual labour, and I think Mu was doing some form of phone sex, it was all weird. While I think that the show had some good ideas in places, that maybe some people did put a lot of work in and even some passion, I think that it totally failed in execution. That I would rather have something soft and familiar over a project that tries something special but leaves me feeling like it was done half a job and confused over its messages. My rating is So-so (5/10), good enough in areas and creativity in parts I think is more than a waste of time, but bad in others that I don't think is worth that much attention. A little work in places could have done a lot. EDit: Almost forgot, why did the Earless suddenly turn into people at the end? |
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