Takt Op. Destiny

Over 10 years ago, studio MAPPA was founded on the grounds to make a show called 'Kids on the Slope'. Madhouse has an even more extensive history tracing all the way back to the 1970s. Fash forward to 2021 and the rest is history. When you put these two studios together to producer a quality show, what can go wrong? Well, let me tell you. A lot.

Since the announcement in March this year, the franchise didn't really spark much hype at the time. After it was revealed that studio MAPPA and Madhouse would handle the production, the show got boosted interest. The previews and promotional ... material speaks for itself, at least on a technical level. With a mixture of 2D and 3D artwork, Takt Op. Destiny did on some levels, take the world by storm. That doesn't make it an anime of the year contender but does bring in more eyeballs. But yet, somehow, they couldn't completely capitalize and became a shell of its technical accomplishment.

Watching Takt Op. Destiny first felt like seeing a cinematic movie, at least for the first few episodes. The flashy fights, cinematic sequences, and overall chereography makes an impressive debut on the screen. Then, there's the plot dealing with a fictional enemy to humanity known as the D2. The show makes it clear that music plays a prominent role against them, and hence, we have two type of resistance: Conductor and Musicart. The story follows two prominent characters who play this role known to us as Takt Asahina and Cosette Schneider (aka Destiny.)Joining them also includes a girl named Anna, who plays a valuable role as an ally. Together, these three try to make a difference in the world as evidenced by their actions.

At a fundamental level, Takt and Cosette shares a somewhat personal and professional relationship. Both characters get the job done when it calls for it but it's also clear that the duo has some interpersonal issues. For instance, Takt takes music perhaps too seriously and is generally considered anti-social with an indifferent attitude towards almost everything but music. Cosette can be brutally honest although she appears to be more friendlier than Takt when dealing with people. While the two are compatible, they form a peculiar character chemistry that I find to be confusing. It's hard to get emotionally attached to the pair when everything seems like clockwork. Almost every episode have them fight the D2 and the story rarely evolves from its base premise. There's some occasional background storytelling for them but ultimately, the show suffers from an engaging plot. Character development is limited as well when the majority of the show focuses them on taking missions. They work like robots day and night and even during off-time, following their adventures quickly grows into a chore. You may get entertained by Cosette's sharp tongue, witty humor, and sensational appetite towards sweets at times. But is that all the anime has to offer?

Looking deeper into the anime, it feels like the show has little personal connection towards the main characters when they are doing their work. Every episode falls short in developing our cast. One somewhat unique element I do want to mention is the realistic settings of the modern world. Takt Op. Destiny almost feels like a futuristic dystopia at times but retains mostly a real feeling of familiarity. Settings such as Las Vegas are what we are familiar with while New York has its metropolis vibe. There's not too many places our characters journey across the world but it's safe to say that the anime has a degree of realism, despite all the otherworldly shenanigans.

Outside of Takt and Cosette, the rest of the cast are ambigiously underdeveloped. I say this because it's difficult to feel invested about the characters. Even though they have their reasons for fighting (Lenny being a noticable example), they are often overshadowed by the plot's purpose or Takt and Cosette. That is to say, they are still somewhat important to the overall story but it's obvious from day one that the anime is mainly about Takt and Cosette. And for for better or worse, Anna feels more like a main supporting character than the middle girl of the trio. Acting as a big sister type for Cosette, the anime does go into some depth to show her kindness. The overall character chemistry is unfortunately, meek at best. Oh and before you ask, this anime does not have any real romance. You may get a surprise at how Anna responds to Takt near the end of the story, but overall, don't expect any sort of love to bloom between the main characters. Takt and Cosette aren't in this show to start a relationship. No way.

Even though it's been mentioned already, Takt Op. Destiny's most outstanding feature is its technical accomplishment. It's one of the few CGI/2D art mixed anime that I've been impressed by in recent years. The colorful visuals sometimes reminds me of ufotable for their high level production. This is especially true in the first few episodes that looks and feels like a movie. Character designs are also highly decorated for the Musicarts with Cosette/Destiny being the poster girl. Even the D2 in this anime inspires a sense of fear with their monstrous look and impact of their actions. And overall, the road-trip like story adventure takes us to realistic places around the world. Take some notes, Tesla Note.

Takt Op. Destiny is the type of show that had a fantastic start but began to degrade over time, with each episode, to the point where it never managed to truly recover itself. Maybe some people set higher expectations than me after watching the promotional material. However, I stand firm and say that the anime is average at best, being that it's not breakout anime of this year yet also watchable and on some levels, recommendable to those seeking for some popcorn entertainment.

FULL SPOILER REVIEW

After completing the show, the only thought I had was "So this is what it looks like if Vivy: Flourite Eye's Song failed." Then I started analysing the story, art, music, characters, the lot. And what I found was most of them are either very good or very bad.

STORY (3/10)
What was Takt's original goal again? It is to save the young girl. But halfway through the show it seemed like the show forgot all of that. 2 villains appeared. First one was a one-dimensional, power hungry villain who got defeated in 1 episode and was never heard of again. The second one is ... a guy whose motivation did not serve any purpose to Takt's journey and goal whatsoever.

The plot is all over the place. Every episode felt disconnected. We were given backstories that create more questions than answers. It felt like the writers came up with the premise and then struggled to think of what to do with it. And the result is a story that felt like the first draft and a plot full of holes.

SOUND (9/10)
The music is incredible. As expected from a musical anime.

CHARACTER (6/10)
I feel that they managed to do the bare minimum to make me at least root for the protagonists. Takt and Destiny had good chemistry. The characters themselves are just barely decent. Destiny was totally emotionless at the beginning but start to develop feelings especially to Takt. And Takt had at least the determination to save the world and music.

Other characters are written terribly. Especially the villains. The fight with the first one felt like a side quest. It had no connection to the story. It's just a guy who is jealous of Takt and he is power hungry. No emotional threat. Same goes with the 2nd villain. I know he caused the death of Takt's father and Lenny, but Takt killing him felt empty. And despite the long conversation between Takt and the 2nd villain in the final episode, I had trouble trying to understand what the villain's motivation is.

PLOT HOLES
What happened to Destiny?
What happened to the 1st villain?
How does the crystal that controls the D2s work?

We will never know.

OVERALL (6/10)
It succeeds in animation and music. The duo protagonists have good chemistry. But the story is not good. The villain backstory in the final episode felt like it was made up in the last minute. Episodes felt disconnected, and the villains are terrible.
This show is the best representation on HOW TO FAIL AT VIVY: FLOURITE EYE'S SONG.

<~No spoilers~>
Let me be honest here , this is a series that's going to be forgotten the minute next season anime comes by a storm. Maybe I'm stupid and didn't understand the intricacies of the series but to me the only selling point of it was MAPPA × MADHOUSE and Music, and still I couldn't differentiate most of the times which music is a weapon and which is just background music. Characters were very bland none left long lasting impression, maybe Cosette/Destiny but she too will be forgotten. That's my take, if I offended someone then that's that. Music was good i love piano ... so yeah. Art was good well it had to be with the production houses behind it.
Overall not recommended if you value your time. If you play the game go for it but i think you'll be disappointed.
6/10 ( for the kiss scenes cuz I'm a sucker for romance +1).
Well thanks for reading. See you later.❤✌

This is my first time to review an anime.

Takt op. Destiny is marketed as an Original Music anime by Mappa and Madhouse, one of the biggest collabs you can imagine in Anime.

Takt op's pacing is slow and their travels where they meet other people was supposed to make the main characters grow but they obviously didn't, wherein the animation can't even ease the boredom you can feel just by watching this anime. Everything doesn't make any sense until they came to New York.

My biggest concern is the "music" part of the anime. Earlier this year, an Original Music anime also dropped which is ... Vivy. With that I was expecting the Music part of the anime to be integral or within the story's core. The title and some hints in the anime made me think that Takt op. Destiny must be Takt's music title once he finally completes his musical composition, but what we get is just a couple of hums in the end. Also, aside from that the only time you'll hear the music is when they fight and the music is just classical music playing in the background with no direct connection to what is happening, and the Musicarts dont actually have powers that produce music. Which clearly suggests that the "Music" part of this anime is nothing but just some words on the tags.

The Villain's motive is also vague and dumb, I mean why would he gather all the d2's inside a heavily populated city if his goal is just to seal them all?
The ending isn't also fully explained, did Anna became Destiny because her VA is the same as the game's Destiny VA, which means you need to play the game to understand it which is to be expected as this is also an advertisement for their game.

Overall a very mid type of anime with the "mappa hype".

If you enjoyed it it's okay. No anime is perfect and don't let other's judge what you like just dont judge other's if they like something you hate.

THIS ANIME IS A GACHA GAME PROMOTION. "There may be some spoilers in this short review".


I can't remember when the anime was announced but when I learned that Madhouse and MAPPA will be collaborating on it I was a bit hyped and later knowing that it was an upcoming gacha game I had thoughts of giving it a shot to watch it.

Let me put it nice and short, The pilot episode showed a lot of promise, it showed the base plot of a world without music and the so-called Musicarts saved the world from destruction from D2's. I mean it started really fine not until ... the next few episodes where it left a big hole and a lot of question marks story-wise, let me give an example. Who was the whistleblower on why the D2's appeared is it Takt's Dad? and What is Cossette's connection to the musicarts? or in General why is Cossette the only one turned into a musicart in her family? or maybe I'm not paying that much attention to the story.

It felt like the story was rushed especially midway thru the series and somehow I understand why, BECAUSE ITS A 24min GACHA GAME ADVERTISEMENT maybe if we play the game the story will be clearer I guess. the only thing likable here is the musical score, the animation and some of its characters.

Another top notch waifu anime, another let down. I had high hopes for this anime especially since I was a fan of Supercell and the animation for the anime is just spendid all around with MAPPA and Madhouse being the studios working on this project.

But alas, this anime has one glaring weakness! The poorly written storyline and characters!

It pretty much comes down to the antagonists for the anime, Sagan and Schindler. They are literally just pointless villains that does nothing for the story and better yet, you do not even see much of them throughout the entire run of the show. Heck, their ... motivations for why they are being villains were just terrible and had only a few episodes to even give any background on it.

Thus, with such crappy villains that I could care less for, this just makes the all the challenges that the Main character have to go through to save humanity from a bunch of music hating monsters seem so insignificant.

What a waste it truly is because, the animation, the fight scenes, the music was great throughout these 12 episodes. What made me invested in the show from beginning was takt's beautiful character design, all that bright red coupled with her fighting alien invades gave me RWBY vibes. I also loved the road trip adventure style that they were doing with them having a new experience in each new town.

I honestly feel that they should have made maybe a 3 part movie or even 24 episodes for the anime which would allow more time to make a better storyline and help flesh out the characters personalities and motivations because the way that it was done for the anime was just poor and it did not allow me to be invested in the series in anyway.

5/10 (AVERAGE) because of purely the animation, the music, the lovely musicart character designs coughs WAIFUS, and the first seven episodes of the show which was decent.

The latter half of the show with all the plot reveals for the antagonist was just pure bitter dissapointment.

- The universe:
The universe takes more or less image on IRL, huge mistake imo.
Ravaged cities, global consequences for a global catastrophe? You will never see it. Yet they mention cities like New York. No more armies, no more planes (which would be very useful for the protagonists)?
Too much things that are not showed or illogical to believe in this world.
**It's like trying to make you think there's a forest by just showing you a tree.

- The bads:
. We are bad because we are bad. Maybe it is justified later, but in the meantime, it looks like it was written by an elementary school child.

- Musicart ... and Maestro
. The two are on battlefield but the maestro is useless, but they feel forced to explain us that the maestro is necessary. Once again, it just makes it look ridiculous.
. The power ratio between each fight never seems constant to me. This is problematic, especially when the Musicart draws his energy from Maestro's vital energy.

- The animation
Fairly good, a remarkable effort during the fights

- The music
Correct, but disappointed for a story about music

Now look we all know the whole premise of Takt Op destiny is pretty Wack to say the least

But it does what it intended to do pretty well

Sell the goddamn mobile game and in the process,
Rake in all that good japanese yen for madhouse and mappa for their future projects ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Note:- (i mean this is probably a win win for all of us they make good money and then they are able to make chainsaw man all the more better with the revenue they generate , AND ACTUALLY , THE ANIME IS NOT MERELY A CASH GRAB).

Yes yes I know I did not give it ... a great score and since I did admit my bias above , I guess we can all admit another one of ours too?
Most of us WATCHED THIS ONLY because of Mappa x Madhouse.

I honestly was not interested in this anime , the synopsis made my head hurt and i felt like it was gonna be something in the lines of dokyuu HxEROS but yes I will admit I am pleasantly surprised with what takt op destiny has to offer, But the only downside being it only delivers in two things while the other important aspects of what makes anime great have been pretty much buried in the coffin.

Lets go over the goodparts first,

1)The art and animation is certainly up to the mark and delivers on the hype and anticipation we all had one we saw that “mappa x madhouse” , the fight scenes on the other hand Are magnificently done , fluid movements ,proper impact being felt on each attack ? special move? Music ky thing ?that is on screen, clear vibrant colours and a good soundtrack to keep us pumped. There is noticeable CGI while animating the characters playing the Piano but, that is understandable since animating precise finger movements in 2D is hell of a task.

2)The VAs do a pretty good job but they are greatly overshadowed by the music in this anime HAS TO BE TOP TIER , I mean of course it is about music but also looking at the budget one can be assured they spared no expense on making the music be probably the best this season , be it the fight scenes , the OP , or the slice of life moments ,THERE IS ALWAYS GOOD MUSIC TO LOOK FORWARD TO …………

But this is where we start getting into the problems ….. THERE is seriously nothing else other than the wo above to look forward to

Now the Not-bad-but-very-generic parts



The characters are very generic , seriously this and its story is where this anime falls apart
There is nothing interesting about the MC , nothing at all just some dumb kid loving doing something that will endanger everything around him lke any shounen protagonists ,and yes we can all tell the rest of the journey will be about him making up for his mistake of letting cosette die? Go into comma? Become an android waifu? . yep cosette as a hole is just a cute waifu android with a little bit of osananajimi (childhood friend) thrown in the mix for more spice.he onee chan seems to be alright so far , I did not like her reaction to the whole ordeal but it was still believable .

Oh man is the story giving me and many others deja vu , The story is awfully familiar and generic to most shounen sob story melodrama , I mean i understand this is not mapaa or madhouses fault THEY WERE not given much to work with. Hell the project is probably just a go fund me for them ,yet they are giving it their all in the animation and music department so this not a complete cash grab

So basically a fund raiser anime , that was just made for the purpose of selling the mobile game , The hype has made the expectation go to a level of no return but , If you keep expecting more from this show other than music or animation you are in for some heavy disappointment . This is a good show to watch only if you aren't looking for a story rich or character driven anime and I still think it's a good watch but will probably recommend waiting for the hype to die down, and reducing the expectation one might have , the best way to do that ? wait for more episodes to come out.

Takt Op. Destiny is a show that has no tact to it.
And I'm not talking just about the 'waifu bait' people keep bringing up, I'm talking about everything else that it represents. It's by far the most generic trash anime that I've seen in EVERY single characteristic. Sure, there's the whole part with using music as it's main theme, all music anime have some sort of ground to stand on even when they are accumulated crap within a clogged toilet, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The art... It's NOT GOOD. I'm tired of people assuming that these studios animate well, when in ... fact they do the bare minimum. I get it if stuff doesn't look perfect, but everything here is done in the cheapest way possible; The cut corners everywhere... They end up making triangles out of their walls. And it's not even a thing that happens rarely, it's in the DAMN opening. Art looking zoomed in for no reason, backgrounds with inconsistent lighting, Characters with missmatched framerate in the same shot, characters teleporting after 3 smear frames of them in their initial position. Nothing has bounce, or look, or style, or anything for that matter, except an abundance of trash frames -or lack of them, randomly-. It's trying to trick you into thinking it's got good animation the same way they often do. They try their hardest to make everything MOVE. More movement doesn't mean better animation! The fact that characters move from one spot to the other in singular frames 5 times in a row doesn't make a visually stunning scene, it only makes for some confusing visual trick that gave 5 frames to something that needed 20. If I can't tell what's going on during the battles, you've done a bad job as a story teller. Maybe you animate real good, but making stuff clear is the bare minimum.

The characters? the protagonist: Generic guy, looks like Joker from Persona 5 which is SUPPOSED to be generic. He lacks an arm during most of his appearances, because apparently symmetry is not a concept this anime understands.
The main girl: Silent robot girl with white hair and red highlights and she likes to eat sweets a lot. Wow, that's unexpected, her personality must be so deep!
The other main girl: She looks like a boring version of Athena Sykes, except she's even more slapped on to the story.
The only character I enjoyed was a dude named "Lenny", and mostly because I'd make fun of how his abs are designed so badly it looks like he's got four pecs.

And if the characters are bad... Do I need to tell you what the story is? Probably, but I don't feel like it.

The only thing that is kinda commendable in this show is the sound design, at least the piano recordings are human, which just means they probably got it from a stock music place, because classical music is so common, you don't even need to get new assets. I guess the 3D animation team did a great job syncing the piano sounds with the hands, but of course, that won't get any recognition because it's 3D....

I'm was bored of this show after 2 episodes, now it's been 5 and I'm just uninterested. This isn't an enjoyable show, it just banks on trying it's best to make everything seem larger or more impressive than it is. Don't be fooled by the studio names on the credits, this is a cheap product made by people who know how to make cheap products that don't look cheap.

Takt Op. Destiny initially delighted me and had quite high expectations of this production. Nice graphics, great music, story and characters looked pretty good as well. Expectations increased even more when it was revealed that MAPPA and Madhouse, two powerful studios that had produced more than one anime that deserved the title of a masterpiece, were to be produced. Then what can go wrong?

A lot. Let's start with the plot. The action focused on "developing" the main protagonists and adding new characters, but they did not develop the presented world anymore. We haven't learned many details about the creatures that the main characters fight - ... D2. We don't know how the rest of the population deals with these monsters. Instead, too much screen time is taken up by fights or little story-driven dialogues. The plot does not have many plots, and the existing ones do not get sufficient development.

Now let's move on to the two main characters. The first is Takt. We get to know his character, history (by the way, it's one of the few things in this anime that in my opinion has been 100% developed) and what he has in common with the other two main protagonists. He cannot be called a weak character, he is firm, brave, but at times reckless. In general, I don't rate him badly, he's a good character. Destiny is a bit worse. I did not necessarily like this character, I missed its story, additionally forced under potential waifu. The creators tried to expand it a bit, even at the end it had a love theme. The biggest disappointment is the figure of Anna, who accompanies our heroes on their journey to New York. She was not developed, after a few episodes I treated her as a supporting character, I even started to get irritated by her constant sighs. And she, too, finally got a love thread, which in my opinion was very tight. The worst character of the entire series, or even the entire Fall 2021 season. What about supporting characters? Some had a big impact on the story and were well developed (like Lenny), and some were not developed and had minimal impact (but still more than Anna). The antagonists, in turn, leave much to be desired. They often do not have a specific motive and purpose for their actions.

Graphics and animation is certainly a strong point of this production. The fight scenes that this anime is rich in are nicely done and carefully elaborated. It is similar with the characters and the scenery themselves. The opening is very catchy and overall the music is nice too.

From the first episode, my rating went down by four. Maybe I wasn't counting on a masterpiece, but definitely something much better than what came out in the end. Still, it wasn't even that bad, I think if the series were a few episodes longer, it would definitely have been better. The creators could develop undeveloped plots and characters. For now, I believe that the Takt Op. Destiny for mediocre anime. Ultimately poor storyline and average characters, but great graphics and very good music. 5/10.

Aside from the high production value, there's really nothing spectacular about this show. Everything just doesn't have any depth to it and just comes off as incomplete. I feel like there's something that could've been done better. But I can't put my fingers on to what it's missing because there's a lot. I can't really list them all of cause spoilers.
But I'll try to at least give out the general problems and missed potentials it have. First, the story. It already failed on expanding it's world building because of how out of focus the episodes are. The direction is just jumbling on the characters, the ... circumstances of what's happening, and the "mystery" is just there as confusion. The resolution for the problems is generally underwhelming and it makes you question why they hide it to the audience in the first place. The direction and pacing is pretty bad too, having only 12 episodes to tell a grander story than they could handled. Each episodes comes off as either too fast or just a waste of time. There's no perfect balance cause the show can't decide if it wants to have character moment scenes or scenes that moves the plot forward.
The power system was handled pretty abysmal. It doesn't have any proper explanation on how it works or what differentiate other Musicarts from each other. It's just pure mess.

Next, the characters. I've yet to see a decent character from the cast. They are either too one-dimensional or just there to exist. The main characters are some of the weakest main cast I've seen this season. They are neither interesting nor well-developed. It's mostly because of the show's abysmal direction that this problem exist. They didn't give out reasons or character moments that makes me wanna like them or even relate to them. The side characters aren't that much better since they don't really do anything. They serve no purpose other than to be a plot device to move the non-existent plot forward. Then there's the antagonists who I argue have better character than all the cast combined. They at least have motivations and personality.

That's probably enough bashing around the show's problem. Let's move on to it's strengths and prob the only reasons you wanna watch it.
The animation. I'm generally not a fan of MAPPA's animation due to how fast pace it is and how there's no breathing room for the audience to understand wtf is happening, but here they absolutely nailed it. Probably due to Madhouse's help and their incredible direction. The animation was easy to understand even though it was incredibly fast pace, and the effects they use to each fights have great color combinations that makes the art of the frames looks better than it already it.

Then the music. The ost is fucking Godly. There's only a few tracks that made me eh, but other than that everything else are bangers. Though the opening and ending is just decent compare to the Godly OSTs.

Overall, it's probably better if you don't watch this anime. It's too clusterfucked to even be recommended. If you wanna see the animation, I suggest just looking it up from AMV's or just short clips in YT or something.
(4.8/10)

The more I look back on this anime, the more reasons I find to dislike it. I wanted to like takt op. Destiny from the very beginning, and for a long time I really did! I loved tuning in every week to see how the plot developed and the characters progressed. Honestly I was pretty content with this anime, the animation is breathtaking and I really liked a majority of the characters... that is until the finale.
When I had finished the final episode I sat and really thought about my thoughts on it as well as the anime as a whole for a few ... days and then it finally dawned on me. After 12 weeks I finally had my answer... this anime was bad. Okay well maybe bad is overkill but it definitely was NOT good. The finale really put into perspective just how paper thin the plot was. Character motivations were flimsy and never fully realized or achieved. The world building was confusing and poor. But perhaps my biggest problem with this anime was none other than the titular character; Takt. He is an unbearable protagonist. Just a pain to watch and at no point did I ever root for him. He's unnecessarily unkind to the ones closest to him and always dragging things down. They tried to do the grumpy main guy trope but just made him a complete asshole. He also doesn't grow in the slightest from episode 1 to episode 12. No change. Just the same stagnant uninteresting character. Thank god Destiny and Anna are part of the main cast because otherwise this would not be an easy watch. At first seeing Cosette's very charming personality be stripped into the husk that is Destiny was a bit of a letdown. but overtime I really learned to appreciate Destiny as her own character. And Anna, her sister, and the rest of her family accept her as her own individual person and welcome her with open arms. A lot of her development revolves around "serving" Takt which sucks but aside from that, I love her character. Another favorite for me (or favorites) is Lenny and Titan. These two were so fun whenever they were on screen and were just so pleasant and nice, unlike Takt's hating ass 😭. I especially loved Lenny since character's like him are so rarely seen in such a respectful light. They never overdid his more flamboyant qualities or made him a caricature that the other characters would be weirded out by. Too bad this anime hates me personally and kills both him and Destiny off at the end. Speaking of:
My next issue with this anime is the villains. The first one, Schindler just gets told off by Heaven in a very admittedly satisfying scene but after that, we never see him again. It's like the writers completely forgot he existed. You'd think after that he'd come back and swear revenge or something but no. Sagan seemed like a cool idea for a villain as well but is also very unceremoniously taken care of. His motivations are kinda weak and I wish they expanded upon or fleshed it out better.
It became very clear that this anime was basically just a commercial for their upcoming mobile game, seeing as it ended pretty open endedly and it's library of colorful fighting girls called "musicarts" seem perfect for a anime battle gacha game. If they were going to go that route I wish they would have put more care in the anime's story. After the anime leaving a sour taste in my mouth I have no intention in seeing how the story continues in their gambling anime girl cash grab. The anime served it's purpose in showing cute girls fighting monsters controlled by men with no agency of their own and did nothing else.
Lastly, for an anime about the love of music, you'd think it'd have a more memorable soundtrack. The best thing to come out of this anime musically was it's OP by ryo (supercell) whose music I already enjoy. At least the one significant cultural impact this anime had was the return of such a prolific producer.

𝙄'𝙡𝙡 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙗𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙘 𝙨𝙤 𝙢𝙪𝙘𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙞𝙩.

Unnecessary fights, no character depths, hazy cinematography and hideous backgrounds.
Like dude why would you blur the backgrounds, AGAIN and AGAIN, just because you want to make the foregrounds more attention-worthy?
it's one of the few things we watch anime for. I just started it because of MAPPA (AOT and JJK) and MadHouse (Death note and Monster) and ended like.......🤢🤮

𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆: 5/10
𝗔𝗿𝘁: 3/10
𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱: 7/10
𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿: 2/10
... 𝗘𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: 6/10
𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹: 5/10

If the writing was good, the villains and the story could have been a lot more better....a lot. All the craze after watching the 1st ep flushed out into nothingness in no time.

I hope they don't make the same mistake again.

Takt Op. Destiny had no reason to be an actively bad show, if I were to make an apt musical comparison, I'd liken it to an orchestra that starts with a beautiful melody.
However eventually, as the performance goes on, many of the individual performers begin to mess up individual notes, until eventually, not even the conductor can keep the performance together and it fades into an incomprehensible mess.

At the beginning of this show airing, I thought it had a lot going for it, the setting in midwestern America felt like a refreshing breeze compared to the usual setting of "random small town in Japan", ... even as someone from the east coast I much preferred this to the later scenes in New York. The music went in a unique direction too, adding small flourishes of piano to the battles, and the opening was my favorite of the season. The character dynamics were basic and predictable but enjoyable to the point where I could say I was having fun whenever a character opened his/her mouth. Takt and Destiny's beginning antics as foils to each other worked well, and Anna served as a great character to ground the audience. The worldbuilding was the least impressive part, a basic apocalypse setting with the added quirk that all music is banned, or at least extremely dangerous to play. The concept held promise for future character drama in the lives of some of the civilians Takt and Destiny have to protect.
Where does the show go after this? After the first 2 episodes, the show begins to miss notes, Takt and Cosette's backstories are unremarkable and with very little drama that can't be found in other anime, the setting begins to feel more like a basic apocalypse, and the realization that the show's shtick of "no music" actually doesn't change all too much hampers the engagement of the show. After Lenny and Titan each character introduced is actively bad, I could describe each in about two words based on their tropes.
"But none of these blunders can ruin a show, as long as the core concepts stick". I thought. "And this is a mobile game adaptation, they'll probably throw about 20 characters our way, maybe something else will stick."

The show then proceeds to double down, seemingly intent on focusing on the absolute worst parts of itself. Revisiting this show for this review I thought it was 24 episodes instead of 12 because each one dragged on so long. Every interaction is just similar tropes repeating over and over. Fights no longer hold meaning, no technique is used, it's just colorful characters swinging blades and/or shooting at each other.

The same tracks are repeated for the same "dramatic" moments, souring the overall OST. For a show focused on music there was very little variety to be found. Takt and Cosette undergo some basic character changes in the middle of the series, but then stagnate in the final few episodes. Their characters near the end of the show are 10 times less interesting than the ones we saw in episode one. It's like the show goes out of its way to destroy the likable relationship between Takt, Destiny, and Ann. Major character development happens in the last minutes of the show between Takt and Ann, which is not foreshadowed, makes no sense in canon, and destroys their fun character dynamic. And if you have watched any number of action anime, you can probably guess what happened just from my vague description.

All of these complaints are just exemplified by the fact that the overarching plot doesn't create any suspense. Each objective is nothing but a vague goal that matters only to the characters, and not to the audience. This is especially bad in the finale, where the main antagonist is so vague and unthreatening that there was nothing to keep me motivated to watch the show.
There was only one real character arc that could grip me throughout the show, and that was Lenny and Titan's, however as soon as that arc ends, the characters go on and never mention it again.

At the end of Takt Op. I just wished I could go back in time to when I knew less about these characters and the world they inhabit. The potential shown by this series vastly outpaced what it was. And the potential wasn't even anything spectacular.

Overall score: -high six- (6.7)

first of all ep.1-3 & 10 was a absolute masterpiece starting from the godly animation and amzing music is just *chef kiss* but then from there all the other episode just fell off starting from plot, directing, explanation of how the worlds works and just overall explanation of why the fuck is this or that happening.

Music:
Absolutely fantastic, mafu mafu and ryo nailed the opening song and it was a banger till the end. The ending was also a really solid song which was really nice to listen to after finishing a episode.

Plot:
The premise was fine musicart that descended from heaven ... help human fight monster that came to earth by meteorite. But then they say that musicart is actually artificial and can only be man made??? what was that all about? and maestro apparently can be anyone as long as they have a maestro DNA, i thought maestro and musicart descend from haeven TOGETHER therefore making them a non human but now anyone can be one?

=SPOLIER SECTION & PROBLEMS WITH THE SHOW=

1. when lotte was about to explain why destiny and takt is equally link she STOPPED!!! when THAT explanation is what we needed to understand the mechanics of this world and how the world works AND SHE STOPPED *facepalm* so now all we know is takt have this "mysterious thing" that link both of them equally and until this day (ep.11) it was yet to be explained WHY cossette's stone that was given by her mother could awaken a musicart WHEN MUSICART IS MAN MADE

2. it was never told how this "maestro" DNA that allows you to corporate with musicart actually works. Like how that move that lenny pull off at his last moment actually works was just there to be there.

3. The antagonist here is really plain boring without explanation. "AH YES I THE HEAD COMMANDER OF MUSICART HQ IS THE REAL VILLAN THIS WHOLE TIME AND I ONLY WANT DESTRUCTION AND A WORLD WITH NO MUSIC, why you ask? i just feel like fucking the whole world that's all. *proceeds to kill himself for no reason* like dude there is SO MANY Unexplained mechanics and plot hole that is presented it's just crazy.

4. Anna's confession at EP.11 have no build up, hint no thing it was just there randomly. The one that even left Takt and destiny to enjoy there time alone is anna herself but she shows NO sign of hesitation, regret OR jealousy towards takt & destiny's date and relationship. I can with confident say that is one of the worse confession scene i've seen in my whole anime watching career.

5. at ep.11 how the fuck did hell and heaven just merge? it was never told hell could o that and the relationship between hell and heaven is being left on a cliff here just to be forgotten and just to be there to rot and forgotten.

6. The animation between episode just kept on going up and down, up and down. The story is in shambles and most of the time failed to capture the viewers interest.

Do you want an anime with a setting several steps away from the usual? Do you want an anime with great sound? Do you want an anime with characters that grow? Do you want an anime that is goddam gorgeous? Do you want an anime that makes no fucking sense? Well, do I have the anime for you!

Takt Op. Destiny has an interesting premise, and some of the absolute best art I have ever seen. The characters are decent, and they actually change relative to their experiences. Unfortunately the episodes seem to be missing coherency, the motivations are all over the place, and each time ... you think you're about to get answers instead more questions come up. Watch this for the visuals, not the plot.

Takt. Op Destiny seemed pretty intriguing when I was looking at the Fall 2021 lineup, but at the end of the day it was just a subpar anime promotion of a delayed gacha game. The concept seemed interesting enough and the art seemed good, but Madhouse is Madhouse, and they continue to disappoint. I personally don't give a damn about the game, but I do have plenty of thoughts on the anime.

The story of Takt. Op. Destiny was a swing and a miss. Well not really a swing, that implies a bit too much effort. It was overall pretty substandard, it started fine, peaked during ... the flashbacks, and just went downhill from there. It felt generic and simple, without too much uniqueness. Especially halfway through when it stops being about the journey to New York and instead goes for an evil bad guy plot that was much less intriguing.

The characters of Takt Op. Destiny were just incredibly mediocre. None of them were particularly interesting or even that original. This mediocrity contributed to the overall boringness the show has, which is less present in the first half. The fights themselves were decent enough to prevent the show from being a slog, but the story and characters really didn't help it in this regard.

The areas where Takt Op. Destiny actually succeeded were those of art and sound. This show was quite great visually, with some really nice colors at work. The soundtrack was also pretty nice, as it should have been for a show about music.

Overall this show was bland narratively and great visually and audially, all nicely rounding out to a mediocre 5. Making Takt Op. Destiny another example of Madhouses terrific trend of continuing to disappoint, except for the one absolute banger they churn out every once in a blue moon. Hopefully their next work is one of the greats, and not another pillar of mediocrity.

Takt Op. Destiny is an anime carried solely from its animation. Everyone was hyping it up because Studio Bones and Mappa were animating it. But good animation doesn't translate to good anime. And whooo boy these studios tricked people into watching a very mediocre anime. The story has tons of wasted potential, it takes the most boring route when dealing with D2s. Takt the main character never changes from being a depressed whiny child. The main villains are just cardboard cutouts with the dumbest plans imaginable. The ending which is arguably the most important part of a story, completely fell flat on its face.

Its a ... confusing and frustrating show especially towards the end. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed in the show. Please, don't waste your time there's better anime to watch.

Cool, this is cool. Music in the form of badass girls that shoot laser guns and swing swords like, damn. What a cool concept but DAMN... what a poor execution.

So you got this world where music can no longer be played. Why, you ask? Weird fecking crystal monsters birthed from a space rock don't like music and they kill all in sight. So what do the people do? Make fecking music girls who will kick the shit out of the monsters of course! It isn't the worst plot point for a fictional universe, and you can roll with it until it just starts barrelling out ... of control all of a sudden.

The story follows Takt, our little piano boi with an icicle so far up his ass he makes Jack Frost look like a fecking joke (now, admittedly his personality gets somewhat better, but sweet balls I just want to tea-bag his corpse). Takt is a "conductor" as we learn and he has this... thing...? Person...? IDFK what you should call it other than it's a "musicart" called Destiny, which is like an embodiment of a classical song complete with its unique weapon (which I don't remember if that ever gets explained).
Honestly, now that I think about it, I can't remember if there was an explanation for half of the shit in this anime. As a matter of fact, WTF was Takt's goal to begin with? The story goes from him trying to save a character who I GUESS was important to him (this motherfu^ker is so cold and emotionless sometimes you can't tell who or what is important to him other than he has a hard-on for pianos) and then seemingly switches to some kind of whacky "Save The World!" plot. Not to mention how fecking rushed this all felt. You'll get to the last two/three episodes and be like, "How can you possibly be ending it already?" It's fecking weird man... it's like I only watched half of this anime. There are so many things in this story that don't get explained, and at this point, I don't even care since this probably won't have another season (this is apparently being turned into a mobile game so I'm gonna agree with the masses on this one, that this anime is just a shitty trailer for the game).
Characters. F^ck don't get me started. You already know I think the protagonist, Takt, is such shit. The kind of shit a cat would forget to cover up because it's too busy throwing up its motherf^cking guts. Yeah... maybe that's being really harsh since in reality, he is not the worst character in the wide world of anime (FFFFFF^CK you Kirito), but I think I hated him so much because I wanted to like this series so much. I think it could've been so much better if the protagonist was different and had a more interesting, clear achievement they were after. Other than him, the other characters were fairly average but some of them just did weird shit that made no sense. I say this because the character development seemed to be happening in the background. Like in the week that I waited for the next episode, two characters were suddenly closer than the previous episode as if they hung out the entire time off-screen... like WTF. Or two characters that share absolutely NO development between each other, and they suddenly have a fecking kiss scene??? Were the creators just trying to appease hopeless romantics, like, WTF was the purpose of this? It really was just so sad how the characters (who had the ability to be interesting) were uninteresting despite how cool some of them were. That sounds weird but that's how it feels to me right now after finishing that God-awful ending like 20 minutes ago as of writing this.
The animation and sound were the only things I enjoyed most about this. The animation fights were cool, but it didn't blow me away. The anime would've been better off with more of them in my opinion. Regardless, the animation throughout was smooth, clean and the fights didn't look like a slideshow.
Naturally, the music was great since that is technically what this is supposed to be about. Other than that, nothing special.

Would I recommend this? No. It's not that it was horrible (like the protagonist was), it just wasn't all that enjoyable. I was left with confusion, disappointment, and ruined hopes for what seemed like a great idea. Plus whiplash from how fast they pulled that ending like holy f^ck knuckles I would've been happier with dragging it out to another season so I could at least process the bullshit you fed me MAPPA/Madhouse... So if you like the pain of not understanding what the f^ck is going on, characters that change overnight, and a shitty protagonist similar to Kirito (I'm sorry SAO fans)... then Takt OP. Destiny is a watch for you.

p.s. don't waste your time. watching your dog take a shit in the yard is more entertaining than this show.
p.s.s. no, I am not encouraging you to watch your dog while it takes a shit, that is f^cking weird and I feel bad for your dog if you already do that.

Having just recently watched Arknights: Prelude to Dawn before seeing this, I have to say it kind of made me like that show more by comparison. That's not to say that takt op. Destiny is terrible, or that Arknights: Prelude to Dawn is perfect (it's definitely not), but the former is just one of the weirdest ways to try and hype people up for a mobile game (that still isn't released yet lol) I've ever seen.

Almost everything it should need is there: fun characters with arcs, nice animation, some VERY nice character designs, and cool music. Sure, the plot is pretty substandard, but that ... can be made up for if everything else is good. The problem is, it all feels rather hollow; the whole thing lacks a real emotional core, and thus nothing else really has the impact it should. I never felt any kind of emotional connection at all to these characters until about episode 8, and even then it was more of a "aw good for them :)" than any kind of real investment. This is a huge shame because the show had the potential to do something legitimately interesting, by way of its main superpower girl, Destiny, having effectively possessed the dead body of someone very close to our other main characters. This is a great setup for some emotional conflict, but instead, everyone just seems to be totally okay with this fact, and it gets mostly forgotten about after episode 3.

Other characters just sort of come and go, never really developing much past their immediate surface-level traits. Obviously-evil characters are evil, mysterious nice supporting characters are good, and I probably could have predicted the entire plot of this show after watching the first episode. That's not to mention the show's strange aversion to world building; we only ever get a very vague idea of what Musicarts, Conductors, and D2s are. It definitely feels like the board room meeting was just "let's do Fate but with classical music instead of historical figures, and generic alien things instead of anything interesting". Also, have to say, I did not understand at all what was supposed to be happening in the last 5 minutes if the last episode. It's totally ok to show things in a more artistic way to make it interesting, but don't make it confusingly so. I had to go read a summary online to understand what was supposed to have happened.

There's some good things, of course. I did think our main trio had some nice chemistry, and Anna was a lot of fun to watch (it does give me some hope that she is obviously intended to be a central character moving forward in this franchise). MAPPA does a great job, as they have with most everything over the past few years, and the show looks really nice when it wants to. The character designs, or at least those of the superpower girls (who obviously had a whole lot more work put into them than the others), are vibrant and gorgeous. The music ranges from "ok-at-best" to pretty damn good, the opening in particular being great imo. I also thought it was pretty neat that the show was a bit of a road trip set in America, something you don't see too often in anime.

Overall, it's one of the saddest things to me when I finish watching a movie or show and realize that I feel basically nothing about what I've just watched. This show is fine, but being just fine is kind of worse than being bad. I doubt I'll remember anything about this show in a month, save for some of the music and character designs. At least the game looks mildly interesting...?