Takt Op. Destiny

"Had a lot of plot materials, barely established any of it."

It pains me to rate this so low but, at the same time, I have to admit it doesn't deserve a high rating anymore. This was my favorite Anime from the FALL line-up. It was my most prioritized one. The story was making me feel like it's gonna be an emotional ride to the end. All of it now... WAS.
The "needed more time" and "It was rushed" excuse could be used, but none can justify how they didn't even manage to send one single message properly by the end of the story.

At first everything was ... looking great, with story seemingly focusing on one main point: Reviving Music. The story was focusing on Takt whose entire character revolves around music. Most of the side-characters will be mostly in support-mode for him, or even share his goal of bringing music back to the world who now fears it. Even the romance between him and the female-lead felt like it was only there to be his character motivation. Add to that the very lovely OSTs and everything was going great story-wise.
Unfortunately, the plot eventually divided the attention to multiple other things: World-building, multiple Villains set-up, and the heroine's existential crisis.
While it's a great idea to setup everything, and a lot of things to make a story interesting, it's not that good of an idea when you only got 12 Episodes to spare, and the only thing you managed to do in 4 episodes was setup the MCs backstory, and barely solidy their character motivations yet.

By the latter half of the series, Takt didn't feel like he was on a journey to achieve something. Story-wise, it's because he still wasn't aware of the real threat. But realistically speaking, it was bad writing. He was just made aware that there's a reason why "D2" monsters shows up. But then when they reached their destination, he was still clueless. And that made it a bit hard to care for the next events that occured as it felt like it was completely unrelated to his goals even when it does, it just that it wasn't properly established yet.
Unmei's (Female MC) character development was far from a bad idea of course. But maybe it shouldn't have strayed away too much from it's purpose of being Takt's motivation for his goal. The existential crisis felt like a filler instead of a necessary development because it wasn't really explained how they (MusicArts) existed in the first place. They felt very much like normal people, except with deadly powers.
Anna, while I appreciated in most parts of the series, shouldn't have played too much of a part in the story, as it also just took some attention away from the "Music" plot, and even amounted to nothing by the end.
There's also the villains. The first one was basically just a delusional psychopath who, for some reason was jealous of Takt. Accompanied by a very devishly sadistic Musicart named "Hell". For a while, they felt threatening enough to be the main villains of the story. That was until the villain was replaced with another... who's basically the same darn thing. And imo, that one was disappointing. They didn't have enough time left to set him up so he ended up being just another delusional psychopath, but with 2 monstrously strong Musicarts this time. You'd expect they be more threathening, but nope. They were not. Pointless I say.

Art wasn't that good to be honest. I liked the character designs but, quality was really inconsistent specially for fight scenes. At first it worked just fine with the story still leaning on the Emotional, Music-driven Drama. But when Action started, it began to noticeably look bad.

While it had a lot of lovely BGM, they didn't do enough for an Anime who's main story revolves heavily around music. I do have this Anime to thank for introducing me to "Pathetique" Symphone no.8 2nd movement by Beethoven. Been playing that a lot in this past recent months.

Overall, I don't hate this Anime, I'm just disappointed. Heart-broken even. I fell inlove with it during the first half to the point that I even recommended it to some online friends and made them watch it. I was excited for every new episode. I wasn't asking for it to be anything extravagant, I just expected it to tell a proper great story. But after watching the last episode, I feel like I've been lied to.

Story: 5/10

It's basically a road trip to new york with the occasional plot of some bad guy manipulating things. It's not impressive or anything and the revelations aren't that surprising either. Near the end it does start to feel like they were more interested in trying to promote good looking girls and promoting their game then making a great one-off story.

Art: 8/10

This is basically the only reason you are going to watch this show. The character designs are great, the American settings looks great and the fight scenes are awesome. This show is purely style over substance.

Sound: 6/10

I am severely disappointed in the music in ... this show. The story has a main character who loves music and wants to bring it back but the actual music in the show is boring. The opening and ending songs are pretty good though.

Character: 5/10

Every character apart from our main duo, Takt and Destiny, are underdeveloped or ridiculous cartoony in motives. It is quite a shame as these characters look great but they are difficult to invest any care into. The series also ends with some characters not even having a proper resolved story.

Enjoyment: 5/10

Just watch it to see good looking girls do cool stuff. If you're interested in the game then the anime is a prequel that can get you more invested into the world which is all this anime seems to be bothered to focus on anyway.
It is slightly disappointing as this series definitely could've been great.

Every review is subjective, so is this one.

You know sometimes you hate to be right. At the beginning of this season that this show was looking good, but that being about it. And I feel confirmed.
This show does one mistake from the get-go. In fact the entire first episode is a mistake. For some, definitely not financial reason, they decided to make the first ep pretty much a promo for what is to come. It is ok wanting to present action in the first episode, as a lot of shonen jump series do this too, in order to get good ratings for the first ... chapter. However it becomes problematic when that first episode is not ever referenced again and at the same time spoils the second episode, which is btw the only interesting plotpoint in this series. Anyways, off we go:

Story:
There isn't really much to say here. It is a surprisingly boring story with not much driving force. Now this could work with the right characters, but we'll come to that. It is relatively slow paced, but feels slightly accelerated towards the end with some questionable plotpoints to spice it up, but pacing is not the big problem anyways.

Art:
Well this is MAPPA X MADHOUSE so it is quite good but not the best each of them could do. If you know how MADHOUSE does fights, then you will recognise them here. MAPPA seems to be responsible for the rest here and it shows. You might think that there shouldn't be any problems with them taking over the rest, but oh boy. So positive first: extremly well done scenery and you got your typical MAPPA shader slapped onto this. But negative: the characters don't always move fluently, the perspective always looks kinda flat, there's never any attempt to make them look hq even when standing still, face shadow isn't really a thing and so on.

Sound:
The best aspect of this anime. As this is an anime about music, you can expect that, but really. As music is pretty subjective I can only say that the ost never destroyed the mood or felt unfitting in any way.

Character:
The worst aspect. While two of the three main characters are actually quite likeable, that's about where it stops. The third mc is one of the most annoying characters in the last few seasons of anime, and so is the rest of the cast. I get easily annoyed with bad characters but this really ticks all the boxes for presenting annoying characters, that wouldn't even have to be so annoying in order for the story to work.

Enjoyment:
I liked the fights, but that's about it. As you can tell I didn't really enjoy anything besides that. But gladly there's a lot of fights in this anime. I never got my hopes up when I saw the trailer, so it's not an disappointment for me.

Takt Op destiny was one of the most middle of the road things i’ve ever watched. I fell in love with the Mc and that was the only reason i could continue to watch it. The art in this anime is amazing i didint expect anything less from MAPPA and madhouse. But the story was full of plot holes and simply bad writing. This anime was basically promo for the mobile game with the same premise i like to believe they wrote the best story they could with limited material. The music in this anime was ok they over used well know classical music for ... fights. I wished there was more music made for the show but there wasn’t. The ending was lackluster and simply confusing. Nothing was resolved except the “main villain” situation. If a second season came out i still would watch it because i would like to see where the attempt at a “cliffhanger” would end.

A better produced "Listeners" with a better reputation due to being made by MAPPA and Madhouse.
They used a tryhard non-original unsuccessful formula for the setting. Animeys with that kind of "world without music because we have cratures that hate it" just don't work. They could at some point, but with that kind of idea with too much focus on battles against mindless enemies seems like a total failure.
Way too visual appealing and only that. There's no substance just visuals.
Also, generic and boring characters. The best one at the time as Lenny but he's kinda mary sue.
For something made with music on focus, its OST is ... meh.
There's also zero emotion even though they try so hard appealing to the heart of the viewers.

Whoa MAPPA and MADHOUSE collaborated to make an action music anime. Welp from an animation standpoint I had nothing to complain. The characters looked amazing as well as the fight scenes.

Even though the fight scenes is the main factor that kept me watching the show, I actually didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have liked to. Most of the time it’s just Destiny shooting her big gun and missed. There’s not a lot of variation in fighting styles, making the action repetitive after a while.

I found the main duo fairly decent. They had some good development, but they didn’t go anywhere ... that surprised me. My main problem is the villain. His motive is convoluted and questionable. He could have achieved his purpose without sacrificing many innocent people and causing havoc.

Overall, it’s not a horrible show, but it’s not good either. 5.5-6/10

This show just went nowhere. Entire premise is an odd and interesting one. Not sure we've had something like this before and I quite liked the idea of this weird post-apocalyptic world without music where musicians are sort of soldiers.

Then nothing happens for 12 episodes. We have male main character which doesn't develop one bit from episode one. Then we have female protagonist who keeps claiming she's the best only to get smacked in the face very next shot. Some additional characters are introduced and nothing happens with them either. And that's about it. Animation is good, sound design is good which is quite a ... strange contrast to pile of dog shit that is story and character development.

Show is so bleak and uneventful I keep forgetting am watching it. Only when it pops up in feed I go "oooh right, I am watching this thing".

Should you watch it? I don't know. It's animated by Madhouse which means art is good and they don't like taking shortcuts when it comes to that. Sound is good as well. But story is entirely forgettable.

A waste of animation.

The art is awesome and at times stunning, the animation is good enough and at times amazing, the concept is also pretty good, but man, the writing...

Like how... It's obvious that the director assumed people don't care about quality here or are simply not experienced enough to see what's going on. Because it is an anime that takes popular concepts from other anime and just throws them together, adds some pretty animation and emotional elements and thinks it will sell a mobile gatcha game. It gives it a stunningly obvious fake AF feel, even if the concept is original... like How.

The opening ... and ending songs are good and the fighting scenes are fun to watch. Also the girls (musicarts) are well made (combined with some good VA), but man the main character... I don't remember when I've last seen such a dreadful character. He just illogically snaps at random situations and is edgy for no reason at all in order to fulfill the teenage fantasy of being rude.

Overall, hard to watch.

For those who saw all the episodes one after the other, noticed the difference in animation quality + story in the transition period from episode three to four.
The first three episodes saved the desire to watch until the end, but the fourth is a beautiful disaster, 25 minutes of cliché and nothing interesting.

With that in mind, I have an opinion that Mappa is the most dogshit animation company in terms of stability, the animation difference is extreme, from one episode to another the art decays ridiculously. Not counting the story that affected a lot, the fourth episode is the total opposite of the first ... three.

Started out well, but then the writers remembered "This is just an ad for a mobile game". (6/10)

Full Review:
I knew it was a cash-grab anime just to advertise for the mobile game, but with Madhouse x MAPPA being heavily mentioned in the advertisements for this anime I would be lying to say my expectations weren't high. And I can honestly say some expectations were met. Others weren't. Did it make me want to play the game? Actually, yes, so it technically did its job. Aside from that the anime as a whole was somewhat disappointing.

A quick overview of the show: Monsters who hate music are ... taking over the world and terrorize cities where they hear the music. Musical entities called Musicarts are equipped to fight these monsters with the help of human Conductors. Our MC is paired with a Musicart and they road trip to New York to meet with the organization of Musicarts and Conductors.

Story:
Basic, full of fluff. At points it did try to give itself a serious story, but it was mainly "hey monsters are here" "Oh really?" (fights) "OK Let's keep going to New York". It does end on a cliffhanger, which may lead to a new season or into the game (likely the latter).

Art/Animation:
Gorgeous and one of the only redeeming thing in this entire show. The fights were top notch and the style of the world and characters were great. The design of the Musicarts were unique and stood out from the normal humans, which I quite enjoyed. Seriously, this is the best part of the show and if you just wanna turn your brain off and watch gorgeous animation, this is a perfect anime for that.

Music:
Fantastic and the best part about the show. Listening to classical music during some intense fights, some that are even familiar to a classical pleb like me, honestly made the show bearable and almost convinced me this was the best action I've ever seen. This is completely my opinion but this, along with the art/animation, made the show

Characters:
Most characters were boring aside from Lenny and the Musicarts. Our MC is a moody boy to the likes of Sasuke, Todoroki, etc. Anna was the big sister whose character gets ruined by a certain scene (which kinda gets explained at the end but yeah...) The villains were boring and there was no motive for what they were trying to do. Side characters do absolutely nothing unless they are a Musicart.

OVERALL 6/10. This anime could've been great if it had better writing. It really started out well but got lost in the fact that there will be a mobile game next year.

[This review is spoiler free!] TL;DR: For a music anime, the music isn't really the forefront of the show. It has a standard dystopian plot with cute girls that can fight and a side of character development, which is kinda rare these days. If you like the sound of that, you might like Takt Op. Destiny. If nothing else, I really enjoyed watching it.

By reading the MAL reviews, you would think that this is the most bait-y fanservice-driven show to come out this season. It's honestly far from it.

It has a few cute girls that are appropriately dressed and little, if any, time ... is given to fanservice. There is no romance, no harem, no nothing. It's just a bunch of teens/young adults trying to travel to New York and fighting some monster things that show up here and there.

Going into Takt. Op Destiny, I knew nothing about the show. Didn't have a single clue about the studios working on it, plot, or anything of that nature. I knew it was a music anime and I started with that.

The story is somewhat basic and predictable, but not in a way that left me mind-numbing staring at the screen with my brain turned off. The art was engaging and I really liked the character designs for all characters, including the background characters which I thought was nice. At times, the art could be blatantly CGI, which I don't mind, but it was certainly more noticeable at times.

For a music-action anime, the music was rarely at the forefront of battle. However, if you're a classical music enjoyer, you might be pleasantly surprised by the music at times. That being said, Takt Op. Destiny's music was nothing to write home about.

For me, the most enjoyable part of this show was seeing how the characters grew within the 8 episodes I watched. As of right now, Takt Op. Destiny is labeled as still airing, but I feel like 8 episodes was a good point to end season one. If there are future episodes, I would definitely consider picking the show up again.

06 ❁: Although it has some minor issues, this is still very good. If you are someone interested in the genre, you'll definitely like this.

Looked great. Sounded great. Interesting setting. Road trip through America? Yes, please. But the soul of it was not quite there. It aimed to be serious and dramatic but couldn't quite reach it. Oh yeah, and this was supposed to be a prequel for a mobile game.

Story 6/10
All the ingredients were here for a really good tale.

There was a good setting: You got the overarching theme of classical music. They had to do a road trip through anime America. The team was composed of a pair of lovers and the girl's older sister.
There was an alien invasion that was mitigated but resurged. ... Our heroes had to investigate and deal with it.

It didn't come together though. The aliens never seemed to be that big of a menace. They just randomly popped up to provide some excitement.

I really liked the road trip aspect of the story. They went from setting to gorgeous setting, met some people, fought some monsters, and moved on. Good stuff and fitting for an episodic show. We got a sprinkle of the main bad guys halfway through. Interesting stuff.

Once they got to New York and met up with the Symphonica organization, there was some tomfoolery. Decent fare.

But somehow, all of it didn't add together to create something better than it's parts. The characters didn't grow. The situation was revealed a little bit but wasn't developed. Maybe they were saving the story for season 2. I don't know. But the story felt like events were just bolted together. They were decent events to tell a story about but never had a cumulative, cohesive effect.

It felt like the characters stepped on their marks, read their lines, did their thing, and moved on to the next scene.

Characters 4/10
The main man was not interesting. He was just kind of there. He seems like a bunch of traits. He didn't have a personality. He liked music. His girlfriend died when he was playing the piano with her so he got scarred. He was mostly quiet and just does what needs to be done. He had a disease. Boring guy.

Cosette was cute. I liked her in her street clothes - the dress with the hairband looked good. Her Musicart form was stunning. Character and personality wise, she was sparse. She was mostly cluelessly innocent, loyal to a fault, self-sacrificing, and totally obedient. And she likes snacks. Is that even a character trait? She was a cute shell of a character.
I guess it may not be completely fair to her to describe her that way. SPOILERS -- She was a human form before the meteor strike turned her into a Musicart. It was an early episode and I don't remember too much of it, but I remember her being a bit of a standard sweet girl who loved music and was in love with the MC.

Then there was Anne, Cosette's older sister. Another very cute character. I loved her character design. She had the long pony-tail, the choker, the jacket, the tube top, and the flares (nice throwback to the 90s). Personality-wise, I guess she was the responsible one of the group, the mother figure. She drove like a maniac. She was always good for a quip here and there. Basically Misato.

The supporting characters are there too. There was the other conductor who was buff and fruity and his rainbow Musicart. They were older good guys who understood the situation and did their best to support the MCs.

The bad guys were bad guys. Again, interesting character designs but not much else going on. They did make an interesting appearance somewhat early on in the show. I like it when they show off the bad guys and allow their force to be felt along the way.

On the whole, I'd say that the character designs were the best part of the characters. Personality traits and dialog were weak.

Art 10/10
The art was absolutely beautiful. The characters, the setting, the backgrounds, and the landscapes. Wow. Everything looked splendid. There were frames from each episode that you could blow up into a poster.

The ED art was top of the mountain stuff. Absolutely gorgeous. I liked the song, the story, and the storybook painting style.

The fights were well-animated. Direction-wise, the fights were not as compelling as they could be. I mean, the girls shoot gun and do sword fighting. I was hoping that they'd be able to weave the classical music angle in some way. The conductors somewhat directed their Musicarts, but not really.

While I'm on the subject, I'll say that the entire Musicart-Maestro relation felt very artificial. It was just an excuse to play up the relation of the characters. Not quite as eggregious as the doggy-style pilot position in Darling in the Franxx, but still pretty hokey. The story would have been the same without the relation. Even without the conductors, the Musicart girls kicked ass. They were doing all of the work! I really didn't see what the conductors did to help the girls fight.

Sound 7/10
Music is a central theme in the story so I was hoping that the music would be good. And it is. Symphonic music for the BGM. It sounded high quality. I didn't like the OP. It was a slow, non-rhythmic, and sounded wonky. I found out that it was sung by someone famous, so I guess there's that. The ED was a ballad sung by some chick. I liked the ED because of the art.

It sounded pretty good overall.

Enjoyment 5/10
I'm not even sure why exactly, by I wasn't feeling this one. I wasn't engrossed in the story. The plot points seemed good enough but didn't grab me and hold me.
The art was amazing. I found myself getting through the entire season to see what part of the USA they'd animate into something amazing. I wasn't let down. It's an understatement to say that show is visually stunning.

There is the waifu factor. I'm all about pretty anime girls doing their thing. And this show delivers. But it felt forced as hell. It was partly because the maestro-Musicart connection. It was partly because the getups had nothing to do with anything. The costumes were just shoehorned in.

I'm guessing my gripes mostly result from this anime being created to support the mobile game. Regardless, I can't say that I had a good time watching this all the way through.

Overall 5/10
The production quality was there. The animation was flex-level. The music wasn't my thing but I have to admit it was high quality. But the plot, the story, the way characters played out weren't there for me. This was eye candy.

Let`s start by saying that if you want some good action and really good soundtrack, then this show is for you. If you also want a good, well paced story and interesting characters, then you will be disappointed as most of the people were.

I`ll talk without spoilers. It`s really beautiful anime... sometimes. Not every episode was animated godly. One or two episodes looked straight up ugly. But fights that were good were really good. The other problem the anime had was pacing. It started of good and then it was really slow for few episodes without contributing anything to the story even tho most ... of the things were still unanswered, and unfortunately, they remained unanswered. Then they just rushed the last few episodes and it really shows because things went from 0 to 100. The other strong point of the show other then animation and fights is music. Soundtrack is really good but that`s as far as it goes. It`s never explained why is music so important except that it gives people hope. Like how are musicarts born from music or how are their powers connected to music since they just swing their swords and shoot guns. What powers do conductors have? Or why do D2`s hate music so much. Anime just ends without giving any explanation to any of that. Music is just their so fights would have good music following them and because MC likes music. Characters and loveable but nothing more. They have some personality but it`s all one dimensional and character development is really minor and kind of forced. Villains are just bad. You could have replaced them with D2`s that look a little human and don`t talk and it would be all the same.

All in all, Takt Op. Destiny was a big disappointment because a lot of people were hyped about it. After few episodes most of the people came to realization that this is just an average show that was carried hard by outstanding fights. If you have some free time and want to see some good fights then watch this anime, and if you want something more, you won`t get it here.

This show is not as bad as the top reviews will have you think but not as good as the MAL score. It may have the best two episode hook I've seen in a long time, but then it falls flat on its face with out any good payoff. If you want to look as some real pretty s*it with cool music this show is for you. Its a shame that "emo piano protégé controlling wiafu to fight aliens" didn't come with more than just the tag. Worst part is you can't even play the game its selling in the states.

***********SPOILERS*********************

The worst part is the ... second episode actually got me invested in the girl but then they killed her replaced her with a robot and used the "shes never coming back" heart pull once an episode. Real shame the show really was a 10 going into ep3.


Art: 10

Characters: 4

Story: 2

Music: 10

Massively TL;DR of why this show will make your inner (potential) artist ache:

It's a shame. A huge shame. Simply put, the first 5-6 episodes are incredible--like, really incredible. You had amazing characterisation; you had amazing set pieces; you had amazing pacing; you had a soul-creaking 1min30 Intro; you had suspense, mystery, a unique palette for a landscape (American 50's), an amazing Hook to grab you in, and even the music or the passion behind at least being a pianist or a composer, was purely palpable. Heck, look, I gave Story/Art/Sound a score of 8+! SO HOW DID THIS GO SO DOWN-HILL?! (No seriously, how? gjhsgjdhgsd).

Takt. ... Op: Destiny... Well: Inspiring, even. It was; up until a point.
But then we had the final 5'ish episodes (it's hard to pin-point where the tone-shift began) and it felt like their slow-burn of a deliberate & well-articulated atmosphere & musically-characterised plot, picked up the rocket fuel and blasted off into 'Here's A Template' territory.

Here. In my mind, this is the impression I have of how things began to go wrong:
It's kinda like someone gave the studio a plan - which was followed to the T - only for NASTY-BADGUY X to barge in mid season and tell everyone, "Wooow, wait, why are you only up to here in the plan! Don't tell me you're all so stupid you can't read a simple plan? You're going at 1/4th the speed you were meant to! Sigh, I understand, you're all new & incompetent [*palpable irony*]--but don't worry! Now that I'm here, we'll get this plan back on track! *cough, fuck I hate stake-holders, I can't believe they changed their minds mid season and don't want to fund a 2nd Cour [season], what am I even meant to fkin' do! ... *beep Email*... The CEO sent me a How To Write Shounen for Dummies.pdf... Fuck".

You get the gist? This show had tremendous potential. For a former musician, I found the first 5 episodes inspirational enough to want to take up piano again after 10 years. (Spoiler: I will be)
The beautiful selection of classical, jazz, and rag-time piano pieces, along with the Protagonist's smug attitude towards his craft & how he constantly taps his fingers on objects around him whilst envisioning music with every tap, I can confirm: pianists are EXACTLY like this!

...But things were brought to a boil midway through & served as a Shounen Template Buffet. Every evidence of shounen-contradition that'd happened till said point suggests that this wasn't the direction they initially set off towards, so it's confounding how things ended up this way (esp. whilst the animation remained nearly untouched, budget-wise).

What a distorted melody. A melancholic disappointment. Oh well. Once again, mobile game adaptations prove to be an insufferable waste of time. As someone who swooned over the first half of this show: I'm so mad.

Now, this is rather mediocre advertising if you ask me. Takt Op. Destiny is an anime solely focused on advertising the game that will be coming out soon, and every anime fan, including myself, had to be somewhat intrigued by the collaboration of MAPPA & Madhouse, and yes, they did deliver, to some extent, just not the most important aspects of a show.

My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Comedic/Romance themes /20

STORY: 8/25

First of all, that's a weird futuristic America there, I would have appreciated some cultural references to America, but aside from the food, didn't see a whole ... lot of it. Aside from that, the show provided a rather bland execution of a plot that had some promise. Now going into this, I didn't expect a mind-blowing plot at all, but this was certainly disappointing. The plot revolves a futuristic American society where music does not exist anymore, because monsters called D2s, despise music and annihilate any city that produces any sort of music.

The story also focuses on our three main characters, Takt Asahina, Destiny, and Anna Schneider. Takt is a withdrawn, rather uncongenial piano player, son of world-renowned conductor Kenji Asahina, who had his music felt worldwide before the D2s put a stop to his music, and took his life. Destiny is the Musicart of Takt, a rather robotic girl turned from a previously energetic girl, Cosette, who also met her demise by D2s, and Anna is Cosette's big sister, and in a way, Takt's big sister too, the caretaker of the group. The three strive to save the world and rid the world of D2s while uncovering the darkness at the Symphonica in New York.

The story fails at drawing in the viewer as most things are extremely underdeveloped, especially the villains. I failed to see any sort of motivation besides "Saving the world" from anyone at the Symphonica, and with the rather poor character development overall, the story felt like a confused mess that only hit the surface of what it could achieve.

ART: 9.2/10

Excellent animation in the fight scenes, definitely a highlight of this work.

MUSIC: 9.1/10

Very solid opening and ending, combined with a rather pleasant and exciting OST. Definitely captured my attention during important scenes.

CHARACTERS: 7/20

We do see bits and pieces of character development, but nowhere near enough for it to be truly engaging. The relationship of Takt and Destiny was intriguing that Destiny changed from being robotic, to having a little bit of a personality. The romance between them was a bit out of place I feel, and so was Anna's weirdly timed kiss towards Takt. The most intriguing duo had to be the Musicart-Conductor duo of Leonard "Lenny" Flyheart and Titan, the "mentors" to Takt and Destiny. Titan was a joy to see, a highlight being that she mentioned she would smile for other people, which was rather beautiful.

Where the show does not shine, is the development of villains. I struggled to find a purpose for their actions other than "saving the world", and in the end, what is the Symphonica? Why do they release D2s? A lot of questions are left unanswered, with the rather static villains such as Heaven, Hell, Felix, and Sagan. I could argue Sagan had a little bit of backstory, but otherwise, a very bland, uninspiring showing of villains.

ENJOYMENT: 10.3/15

Cheap storylines and bad characterization didn't take away from the decent fight scenes, I'll give it that.

COMEDIC/ROMANTIC THEMES: 9/20

Perhaps comedy wasn't the main point, but any semblance of comedy just took a nosedive in the second half, and the romance felt extremely, extremely forced, like what was that kiss from Anna even for? I would have been ok with more subtle romance between Takt and Destiny, but with poor character development comes random forced romance scenes that left me scratching my head at points.

OVERALL: 5.26/10

Not the worst show the season had to offer, but certainly far from the best. A high budget blown on a mediocre show, and while some things were enjoyable, this show continues to teach us not to put all the faith in the world on an advertisement for a mobile game, and not to get misled by big company names. Watch the show if you want to, but know that it's not anything spectacular.

The first two episodes of this show had me hyped. The animation was fantastic, as were the characters, choice of classical music, etc. And it was really cool to see the transition from a more action-focused episode (ep 1) to a more calmed-down music & character focused episode (ep 2). After that, it dropped heavily.

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The calmer & artsy side of the show remained decent, but it quickly became repetitive. It re-used the same two classical pieces repeatedly to set the mood. The choice of Beethoven's 5th as well as his Pathetique sonata in the first episode were awesome.

But then they literally use those same ... two pieces like 10 or more times throughout the future episodes. It came off as pretty lazy, given that there are like a million classical pieces to choose from. And I was honestly dissapointed, because I was looking forward to the show whipping out new classical pieces to set the tone. But nope, let's just do Adagio Cantabile for the 10th time to make this scene sad.

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As for the other side of the show -- the action & story focused side -- that just straight up dropped hard, and it pulled down the quality of the rest of the show. The plot from episodes 3-6 were just boring. And for 6 onwards it was just awful. I won't spoil anything, but the antagonist for this season was one of the worst I've ever scene, as others have commented. The writing for that storyline felt amateurish and forced.

Also, characters' personalities in this "mode" of the show also are really inconsistent with how they are in the calmer side of the show. Takt goes from being sullen & music-obsessed, to then being: energetic, motivated, and ready for action. It literally feels like two different characters.

Oh, and the animation drops hard too in my opinion. Like in later episodes it's a bit jarring to see people using shotguns while having no recoil or visible/satisfying impact.

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Anyways, this show really disappointed me. And it honestly feels like the first two episodes were just a trap for them to introduce future gacha characters ("musicarts") in the later episodes. I hope that's not the case, but man the show just dropped off tremendously.

Why is it I was so disappointed. I had been looking forward to seeing this classical music type of anime but...😡 The very first episode were good and honestly I rewatched them around 5 times. I like the background music, Op, Ed and Takt's piano but around the middle of the story I thought it didn't have any valid reason of the conflict between that military guy and his characteristic was not clear and every character should had more background. Actually, I could watch it till the end because I want to hear some of Takt's piano and beautiful classical music but the very end ... episode has only such a heedless story and solution. Overall, give it 6/10. (Music is good but story sucks!)

Combination between Madhouse and Mappa turned out to be a massive mess.

A game's show helps us know that don't be expect so much about this.

I can't say story is good when half at it are bad, the rest are good, so was my enjoyment. The ending didn't make me satisfied when the combat was boring, story telling got serious problem making me hardly empathize with Sagan - villain of T.oP.

Too many faded chacracters. I love Titan, the lightest character in this anime even more Takt or Destiny. She's so cute, lovely, always smiling, and scary at the end.

Even though art and sound are awesome, Takt ... Op. Destiny made me disapointed so much because of the two studio's name.

*SPOILERS AHEAD - DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED TAKT OP DESTINY

Let me mention the elephant in the room before I get started with this review - we all knew that this anime was a glorified advertisement for a mobile gatcha game. I knew this before watching, and yet Mappa and Madhouse are two well-renowned studios, so I knew the animation would be top notch. What I mistakenly thought, however, was that there would be at least SOME semblance of a story, some reason to care aside from the pretty frames. And boy was I wrong.

The writers for this show did not ... even remotely try to create a cohesive plot, and it shows. The plot holes in this show...God I lost count. What the hell is a D2? Why do Musicarts exist? What is the connection to music, and why do sentient beings named MUSICarts have really nothing to do with music at all? The D2s are the most non-threatening beast-like incarnations that I have ever witnessed in a battle anime. I never once believed that the characters were in any danger facing these creatures, as they were the furthest thing from threatening. The Symphonica...where are they through the entire show? The final battle shows so many conductor-less Musicarts that we meet for the very first time, all who have unique looking abilities that would have been so cool to learn about. What is the purpose of conductors? Take is the only conductor who ever physically fights, where he displays ass-pull speed and power, which is never even remotely explained, considering no other conductor ever does something similar. Destiny and Titan constantly fight by themselves (Titan fights just as well after her conductor literally dies) but Destiny fades away even though Take is technically still alive? What kind of wishy-washy writing is that?

Don't even get me started on the villains. You have Schindler, who falls into the same useless conductor category as Takt when it comes to controlling his Musicart Hell, who turns out to not even be his Musicart. He summons D2s just to wipe out the poor and less fortunate, feeling as though the world needs less bottom-feeder people in order to rebuild...or at least that's what I surmised, no ambitions of any character have any substance at all in this show. At least Schindler had some ambition, because the "big bad" Symphonica leader Sagan is a complete waste of space. He is the embodiment of evil for the sake of evil, which the writers try to add development in the final episode by giving us some bs sob story about his love for the world. It's a villain with zero motives, who is given zero screen time, who the viewer gives zero shits about, and the writers try to cram some emotional background into the final 10 minutes of the show. Really, really solid storytelling.

The character development in this show is horrible, and practically non-existent. I wanted to like Takt, and to be fair, I kind of did in the beginning of the show. Until he truly showcases how flat his character is. The only time he shines as a character is when talking about what music means to him, which is well fleshed out in some scenes, but becomes extremely annoying in others, as it is all he talks about. He has such a tragic past with the death of his father that is mentioned a lot but barely touched upon aside from maybe an episode and a half. The show tries to get you to care about Cosette, but aside from the exposition dump in the beginning, she is no more than a memory. Destiny has a very flat personality and only speaks about fighting D2s and eating sweets. Anna could have been a decent character, but she is relatively useless in a combat-focused show, and her grieving of her dead sister is often pushed aside and rarely explored. There is not one single well-utilized and developed character in this show. There were plenty that had potential (Lenny, Anna, even Takt) but they all end up either one-dimensional or criminally underutilized. Some "mentor" Lenny is for Takt when they only spend time together in like three episodes.

I don't want to write too much about the ending, because I don't want to make this review more spoiler heavy than it already is, but I will say that the ending is the pinnacle of everything wrong with the show. The big bad is defeated in a moment where the show tries to make you feel sympathy for him, despite never even trying to develop his character and that character's feelings, all the D2s seemingly vanish along with the mysterious crystals which are never explained, and Takt and Destiny...end up on a beach? It is here that Takt and destiny have an extremely bland conversation, in which Takt (in typical fashion) insults Destiny multiple times before "taking a nap." Destiny proceeds to KISS HIM, and declare her love for him before vanishing (for no good or explained reason I may add!!). Sure they had some nice moments together, but romantic feelings were not really explored that much between the two besides maybe a forced episode when they first get to New York. The love confession feels so arbitrary, put there to tug at your heart strings but it falls completely flat when you feel no real connection between Takt and Destiny romantically. Jesus, the random ass kiss that Anna gives Takt the episode before IN FRONT OF Destiny makes more sense than this to me. At least Anna seems to give a shit about him outside of combat. It just doesn't make any sense to me, which maybe it would have if the anime told a story in which their relationship developed, but this felt so forced for me.

There is not much for me to say about the art and animation that I didn't already expect. Fight scenes were animated briskly and fluidly, and the visuals were very appealing to me. The OP and ED were enjoyable, particularly the OP. The OSTs, for an anime based around music, kind of fell flat and got stale for me, but overall the sound was decent. Character designs were also quite good, although I wish they utilized the cool designs of the unnamed Musicarts we see in the final episodes a lot more. But none of these things save Takt Op Destiny.

I wanted to love this anime. I wanted it to be good, and I wanted to really enjoy it. When I first started watching, I looked forward to it every Tuesday. By the end, it felt like more of a chore to watch each new episode. A 6 for entertainment is actually quite generous, with the battle scenes and animation really saving the overall score from dipping insanely low. The story, Musicarts, D2s, the Symphonica, the unique conductors... this anime had so much freaking potential, and had two great studios at its disposal to be one of the best anime of the season. It may, instead, be one of the most disappointing. Do yourself a favor, and watch the battle scenes on Youtube or something. Trust me, you aren't missing anything important in the story department. Overall: 5.4/10