Carole & Tuesday

Sadly mediocre anime, even though the creators try: there are a lot of new songs, it's nicely animated. Yet it fails to impress with the most important thing, and that's the characters. Somehow I don't even know that they've developed, in fact I somehow failed to notice its progress on the music front... almost as if it was effortless. Sure, they had their troubles, but it didn't really matter. Even if they didn't have any, nothing would have changed. So this anime isn't watched for the characters, but rather for the director and, in the end, hopefully for the songs (I like movies that are about music, so that was another reason I sat down to watch it). But somehow the anime took an awfully long time for me to finish watching, it didn't quite catch on. It's superficial. But in the end, if you take it as a mealtime diversion, totally sufficient. 50%. (27/11/2019)

Let us start on a positive note. Carole & Tuesday has at least one good new song per episode, sometimes two and they are quite varied, as are the singers who appear. Let us just say that the Mars of the future is much more progressive than we are in 2019 in terms of diversity and openness to certain subject matter. Thanks to the way this show is, there is a good chance that everyone is going to enjoy some of the music and characters in this anime series. Unfortunately, it is quite likely no-one is going to like the main two female protagonists.  While it is interesting that the two main female protagonists are socially polarized and each have their own problems, they still come across as very uninteresting in my opinion, so it is quite possible that no one is going to really care about their different predicaments. Moreover, thanks to such a strong focus on the music, there is not much significant character development for the main female protagonists, their predicaments are simply dealt with rather at the very end, and to be honest, by that point I really was not able to care less about how their problems were solved. I was also not able to care less about any of their petty melodramas. In addition to all that, I was not able to build a relationship with the central couple, I could not relate to their problems, in other words, it left me cold most of the time. In all honesty, it did not help that the first half of the anime series could be summed up in one sentence "One hundred and one ways to (not)make it in the music industry". In the end, instead of the main female protagonists it was Angela and her subplot narrative that I found much more interesting. I thought the most likable character was Tao - and I thought even DJ Ertegun was much more funny and better than the main double act, even if he reminded me a lot of DJ Paul Bulva most of the time. The ending itself, which has a quite endearing message, was the thing that really saved this show for me, although it did make me feel like sparking up a joint, putting on my John Lennon sunglasses and going to a campfire so I could sing Kumbaya My Lord. Well OK, sure, singing is not going to solve the world's problems (maybe not even with flowers), however, singers and other personalities are able to point us in the right direction.... So, one last time - I liked the soundtrack, some of the supporting characters, the animation and a message which is perhaps better than Greta Thunberg's. I could not enjoy the narrative’s pace, I did not really get to know or relate to the main double act, in other words, I did not enjoy this anime series in any significant way, so I am simply awarding it 6.3/10. (04/10/2019)

This show has got a lot of musical tricks up its sleeve, but only some of them end up working. The idea of setting it on Mars is not such a bad one, but it needed some more work on it. The main heroines are the epitome of the Mary-Sue trope, but their presence is not that irritating really. You could say that the ancillary characters are much more interesting, but that even they lack significant development. The storyline is terribly full of tropes, however, it is watchable despite that. It follows a clear formula, however, sometimes it can still surprise you. The show is rich in all sorts of plot twists, but it still comes across as a simple fairy tale in the end. It held my attention to the end, but at the same time it did not capture it. The first opening and the ending were good, but the second opening and the ending less so. Overall it did not come across as though Watanabe directed it, and I wanted more, but was left wanting. It is better than a lot of musical anime, but Kids on the Slope from the same director is much better. I considered giving it a better 2 stars, but I am giving it a lesser 3 stars. (27/01/2020)