Listeners

HEY! Listen!

“Listeners” is fucking garbage, and in most cases, I’d say you’d have to see it to believe it but I pray no one besides myself has to lay themselves bare to this level of unfiltered drek.

If the litmus test for a half-decent anime screen-writer is having listened to the musical stylings of Jimi Hendrix, Prince, and Pink Floyd (among many...many others), then you can consider most dads in the continental United States accomplished enough to pen something equal to or better than Listeners. This isn’t a show for music nerds or people who can appreciate the hallowed halls of surface-level dad-rock, no, no, Listeners is a bit more sinister than that. Listeners is 12 straight episodes of some smug prick patting himself on the back for having listened to the most bare-essential “classics” in the history of popular music. You like Nirvana? So does the rest of the world, dude.

Besides its flashy concept and presentation, Listeners is one giant nothingburger of an anime. Its intentions are pretty damn transparent, to the point where its disjointed narrative throws caution to the wind in order to fulfill the fucking reference quota in any given episode. The dialogue in this script simply acts as a placeholder for more fucking references. I shit you not, entire sequences of conversation in this show can be boiled down to two Talking Heads (see, I can make references too) reciting famous song lyrics to each other in place of substantive discourse, exposition, or character interaction. I’ve seen some call this “impressive” for sheer virtue of the fact that you have to frame this in a manner that both visually and narratively fits the story… PUHLEASE! “We don’t need no education”, frame that entire lyric on a shallow vignette that barely touches base with what Roger Waters was intending when he wrote that it and make it a slice of life school anime, that's Listeners' brand of storytelling. It’s not hard people!

Mu, of course, the mascot character and strong female deuteragonist. Another mysterious Mary McGuffin who lacks social graces, sports a bitchy attitude, and is generally unlikable by most standards. Complete with a nebulous past that is somehow directly involved in the plot, lovely, haven’t had enough of those. But she wouldn’t be complete without “Echo”, what a lovely character. An intrepid young lad with an appetite for (reconstruction?). These two may as well just be Kamijou Touma and Index but even they had better chemistry than these two buffoons. Your average character interaction between them will generally involve Echo regurgitating essential world-building and Mu calling Echo a weirdo for doing so, brilliant.

I get that this show is supposed to be some kind of kitschy tribute to artists of old but there’s little to no consistency in terms to what it chooses to riff that the references at best come off like a Spotify playlist of rock essentials. The world of Listeners suggests a reverence for rockstars, but the references wouldn’t lead you to believe so. This makes me question references to MBV and Robert Johnson, I mean does the type of music Kevin Shields produces exactly scream “rock star?” People under the supposition that this show has consistency in terms of what music it chooses to pay tribute to are gravely mistaken. Additionally, artists like Kurt Cobain who famously repudiated this degree of blind idolatry have flagrant references strewn about like kitschy decor, which is stunningly ironic.

It would be one thing if all these on the nose winks and nods to popular music acts from back in the day were for the sake of aesthetic (take Jojo’s for example), but it couldn’t be that simple, this shit is intrinsically tied to the narrative. Everything from “Teen Spirit” to “The Wall” has some form of off-the-cuff functionality in the world-building that lives and dies with whatever episode it was mentioned in. Also, I have to question the rationale behind making the Jimi Hendrix (widely recognized as one of if not THE single most important black musician in the history of music) stand-in, a generic pasty-skinned rock god catch-all. What kind of optics are these? Who the fuck co-signed this shit? The same dude who tried to cast Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman?

The CG models for the mechs are chunky and distractingly out of place which makes for some of the most awkward action sequences I’ve seen come out of an anime in this year. Give this concept to Trigger or David Productions and I’m sure they’d at least be able to cobble something together with the visual panache to distract from its cliched sensibilities.

Yeah...so...Listeners, that was a thing, I guess? Alright, listen (okay...I’ll stop), perhaps this show wasn’t made for someone like me who is cognizant of most if not all of the musicians it proudly flaunts, but I have to question if this show even really has a target audience I could recommend it to. If you’re someone who is completely oblivious to all or most of the references, what leg would this anime have to stand on? There isn’t a compelling story, not a single noteworthy character, or even just a brief cut of decent visuals that isn’t just lazily aping the music it pays tribute to. It’s just utter nonsense and sci-fi gobbledygook.

Needless to say, this anime made me foam at the mouth, and not in a good way. This show is so eye-roll inducing that my sockets have ballooned by at least a centimeter over the course of its 12 episodes. Fuck you Jin.

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In a Nutshell
Set in a post-apocalyptic world that has been terrorized by shadowy creatures known as Earless for far too long, the humanity is now to battle their inhuman enemies. The series focuses on a boy called Echo, who wants to join the fight against the Earless.

FLCL on Shrooms
It is quite obvious that something like ‘a boy finds a mystery girl and together they save the world’ sounds way too overused. Here, however, the show at least gives the girl with amnesia a personality. Let us see if this show even tries to be ‘somewhat’ unique. The boy is your Takkun (FLCL), or Simon (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann), in other words, weak, nerdy boy, who want to escape and change something in his life. The problem, however, is that he shows even less development than Takkun and Simon, he is just your average Joe that you have seen 100000 times already. The girl, μ, has an amnesia (I am not going to stress the fact how many times it has been used in other series). She looks like a big human amplifier, do not ask me why, Japan is weird, yes. While she does have 0 recollection of what she is, she does not care about it and keeps fighting. People like her are called players, and they are known for bringing music into the world. Unfortunately, players have been banned from the town Echo lives in, because earless monsters might destroy it, if they were to cooperate with any players.

It Is Just Way Too Generic
The show does focus on music, which is something you will rarely see, ehem Macross, ehem and it does manage to be somewhat unique, but it just fails to be anywhere entertaining. A series that focuses on music, has such a weak OST, please. Listeners does use mecha fights and does it quite often, I must say. But these action scenes are just way too boring. I mean, mecha fights must be epic, mecha means epic and here they are just anything but epic.

Too Many Things Going On
Listeners is a great example of a show that tries to be everything, but fails to be good. You are introduced to the world of Listeners, however, you do not get a normal explanation about where the Earless came from, what the mechs are exactly, where Players came from, who are the Earless, what they want and so on. It is perfectly fine, if you do not want to focus on the actions scenes, no problem. But do pay enough time to the world-building and characters. Already the main protagonists, let us be honest, are nothing special, but the show introduces more and more characters that do not receive enough development, as well as the screen time for the viewer to like them, to understand what they are and what they are trying to achieve and many many more.

Not Recommended (5/10)
But it does not mean that you should not watch this series. It is not bad, it is just average. I will not try to deny the fact that it did try to be unique and it could have become quite a successful show of this season, if more attention has been paid to the characters. However, this show is just way too generic, it shows way too many things, I have seen too many times already, so seeing it one more time was not quite what I was looking for.

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Ok, top 3 reviewers of this original anime, obviously don't have any love for this and IMAO, they basically have no appreciations for the music and art that this original presents......Now, I don't know if any of them reviewers around here notices that this was the original creation of a guy whose name is "Jin" who created a lotta musical composition in a lot of anime, so basically this was his only anime creation and yet IMO he did a good job. Ok, here were my ratings:


Story-Good 7: Ok, so the story maybe the usual guy finds anthropomorphic girl and from there their adventure begins, but in this original anime, the adventure wasn't your typical one , cu'z it was more like an adventure of self discovery when involves a girl who has no idea that she's the baddie around here and a guy who save the day and manages to save the girl in the end.

Art-Good 7: Well, given that the motif of fashion and illustration, it was kinda good when something from the 70's was blended with something from both the 80's and 90's.

Sound-Very Good 7: that's for the opening ""Into the blue's" by ACCAMER" and the various ending theme and the soundtrack that were played around this original anime.

Character- Decent 4: There wasn't much about the characters around here, when we talk about Echo and Mu as usual Rick Echo was this weakling guy who gets to be on the receiving end of Mu'z tsundere thing , everything else were just the usual baddie and ally thing....

Enjoyment-Decent 4: Well, it wasn't a chore to watch given that this was more on the musical side.

Overall-Good 7: Not bad at all........IMAO...

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Listeners (2020)

First off this is a show that will be slated and in some cases for good reason but at the same time, it is a bit harsh. I think this would have benefited having more than 12 episodes but not as many as 24. Perhaps the ending should have been an OVA immediately released to allow it to spread more of the story.

The show itself does contain a pretty basic plot and it is also one that does a full 360. In this I mean we have an event that causes a war-like scenario which is then repeated to have a different ending. The ending is more representative of the 1960-1970 era of the hippies and love.

The show started off really strong and it was building itself to be a real show breaker coming out of the generic storyline to actually build. Problem is that it faltered about 6 episodes in. Personally, I believe this was due to it being only 12 episodes. If it had a few more it would have been able to portray itself much better.

The art of the show is actually pretty brilliant. It is a high standard throughout and really shows the symbolism that it wants to give. The CGI used on the mechs is also of a great standard.

Sound in the show is good, not quite as I would have hoped since the music it was based off is so iconic. I guess there must have been some legal reasons that dulled the authentic feel down.

Characters mainly Mu and Echo the protagonists are really good. To begin with, you believe Echo to be the soul main with Mu then coming to take over and then it is shared.

A few other characters of note make for an interest situation. Nir is very interesting since she actually gets an episode purely for her which was so unusual.

We must remember most characters are based off someone generally.

Best girl tournament in this for me:

1. Nir
2. Sally
3. Roz
4. Mu
5. Janis

Mu is a great girl but she develops in a different way and her Tsundere personality is handled a bit weirdly.

Remember in episode 12 you see 'track 13' so it sort of has a short ending episode with a short OVA you could say.

In the end, I would say honestly the show is good. Nothing more and nothing less than good. It would have been a solid 9 had the show not been rushed to cram in content and possibly a 10 if the music was that little bit better and more authentic.

The show is an enjoyable ride as something casual to watch. I would recommend it since the ending is pretty nice and a cliff hanger. Saying that I don't expect to see it renewed, I actually don't think it needs to be as it left on a nice note.

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