Takt Op. Destiny Episode 4 Discussion

SSL443 said:
This anime continues to be a slipshod mess.

As before, the action scenes have no tension because there are no stakes or drama. Instead, they have the clinical, dispassionate feel of a video game, where the player character is tasked with clearing the level of monsters to complete the objective. The fights do not serve the internalization of the characters or anything else remotely interesting. They are just there to fill runtime with flashy but empty animation sequences.

The character relationship revolving around Takt, Cosette, and Anna has been swept under the rug in favor of hitting the standard training montage plot points. There's zero acknowledgement of the emotionally fraught situation they should be in, given that someone close to them has basically died, and been reborn as this alien "thing" that smashes through walls and pigs out on food for cheap comedy. This is the weakest aspect of the characterization at this point, and leaves the emotional core of the show feeling like it has been abandoned.

The plot of the episode was mind-numbingly banal and cliche. "Nice" settlement leader who gives off obviously sinister vibes turns out to be leaching off the common folk, only to be resoundingly defeated by our trusty heroes, with no need to worry about nuance or pesky moral ambiguity. He's just a cookie-cutter bad guy. Why is he bad? Because the plot needed him to be. What are the consequences of waltzing in and nuking his operation? None, because this is a farce with no thought put into the story whatsoever.

If that weren't enough, the show doesn't even try to come up with a reason for why there are D2s under the casino. They're just there, and pop out conveniently when Cosette and co. show up. What does their presence have to do with the casino subplot? Nothing, apparently. Or maybe it does and the anime just isn't telling us because "mysterious" equals "artsy".

Finally, and worst of all, is the situation with music. The way it is being used in this show sucks, and this episode did nothing to change that. They are obviously trying to leverage popular music as some kind of thinly veiled analogy for social stratification, where the wealthy and powerful get to enjoy music, while everyone can only dream of it. Uh, ok.

Conductors are literally just puppeteers for the Musicarts. Using fifteen different music terms while describing it doesn't make it clever or original. This has nothing to do with conducting, ensemble playing, or music in general, at even a superficial level. It's just taking a tired, overdone idea and slapping a new label on it to make it sound original in the ads for the game.

Lastly, and most horribly, the actual musical score for the show continues to be trash. The few bastardized bars of horribly quoted Beethoven should be enough to demonstrate just how little this show actually cares about its subject matter. This is the prose equivalent of having characters quoting Shakespeare. It's pretentious at best, and certainly isn't a substitute for actual depth or intelligence in the relationship between the story and the score.

I can't even praise the show for the animation because it frankly isn't anything special, and more importantly is in service of nothing. If Cosette was even doing anything remotely interesting I could consider this show redeemable for her character design and personality. But literally every fight is just some nameless, faceless, monster with no important to the immediate plot. Yeah, I don't doubt (or at least I hope) we'll get some fights with more gravity once we get out of this slog of an exposition. But no halfway decent anime struggles this hard to make the action matter, even in the first few episodes.

VP2003boi said:
Yea... this episode was bad and im dropping this show lol. First the visuals were a mess, good little scene in the beginning but everything else either didnt move or it looked REALLY unfinished. And the thing is, i could see that the staff actually tried in this episode, but they obviously didnt have the time to polish it. Besides that the episode was just boring. I cant care about the story/plot and these characters, i thought they were promising, but now i just find them mediocre. Ill probably just watch clips of the fights online or the posts on sakugabooru.

raiderublaze said:
I think that serves as the end of the prologue, because this might be the last date before the events of the first episode. With Titan and Lenny parting ways with our duo, it's just the wide expanse of the road from here on out. But it's alright, considering that Takt and Destiny are getting better with their skills, and they managed to beat a D2 together in a good way.

Now with all that being said, the animation is at its worst here. Although people are tired of hearing people like "animation sucks, so the show sucks", I wouldn't lie that this episode is now making me start to worry about the show's performance in the future. When you have main characters who are already cardboard-like to begin with, and with the animation clearly sucking throughout the runtime, the show is off to some very bad futures. As a man who's trying to invest on this show, this might be the one who'll hurt my finances, I'm just hoping it'll turn the other way.

teofilusSW said:


Yes, at least sakugas still 10/10 high quality from MAPPA and Madhouse team (including MADBOX too as the animation finisher).

But the story ...
Hmm, I should play the game to get the real sensation of the story.

StardustReverie said:
what did the casino owner do wrong again? He's just a capitalist. Men like him built america. Now the man is just doing his part in rebuilding it and these servant motherfuckers fuck his shit up for no reason. Should have invested more in the gacha.