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Robin Williams famously said that poetry and beauty are what we stay alive for. They are what make us human. Carole & Tuesday builds a world where this poetry and beauty, in the form of music, are ironically mass-produced by non-humans, and then it presents us with two girls which stand up against this world.

The greatest success of C&T is in its world-building. From the first few moments it’s easy to note the futuristic setting, with AIs being used even by our main characters. This continues throughout the anime where we see many side-effects of interplanetary colonisation, such as the political climate of Alba City ... as well as characters being androgynous due to Mars’ atmosphere affecting their hormones. It’s a great refresher from other stories that take place in a unique setting just as a backdrop and then keep it generic or never really use it as a point of interest (I’m looking at you, isekai’s).

Another point where this show shines is its art. It’s always visually pleasing to look at, character designs are good and even the strange ones aren’t too far-fetched, and instead tell us about the kind of people that exist in C&T’s world. The animation feels occasionally stiff in minor scenes but it’s balanced out by impressive dance sequences.

Throughout C&T, the cast tries several ways to make it big, from channelling their creativity through yoga to filming a music video. Individual episodes are entertaining to watch unfold, but as a whole the events aren’t strongly linked with each other. While this makes it feel like anything could happen next, it also means the show doesn’t have a good sense of direction. All we know is that it’s building up to the “Miraculous 7 Minutes of Mars,” as narration promises us at the start of every episode, but it’s hard to see how much of an effect just 7 minutes out of 24 episodes will have.

While other anime might use plot-twists or character deaths to make the audience feel something, C&T uses songs performed by the characters. The music in C&T is good, but if you don’t like the given song being played it can feel a little awkward watching a girl sing for 2 minutes and seeing everyone praise how she took their breath away when really, you probably lost focus halfway through. Not to say the singers aren’t good but I find that it relies too much on music that is just slightly above average.

There’s also a huge focus on pop music while other genres get heavily overlooked. I’m oblivious about music but I can tell that the songs that get booed and don’t even have proper lyrics sound different from the ones that Carole and Tuesday and even Angela sing. It’s like the anime is deciding what’s good or not instead of letting the audience decide for themselves.

The characters are likable but conventional. Tuesday is naive and worrisome and idealistic, Carole is more street-smart and practical and a little ambitious. The two balance each other well but I don’t think there’s been enough screen-time to show their individual quirks without involving music or singing. Another important character is Angela, the girls’ main rival. Behind her confident outset, she’s suffering with a kind of identity crisis and low self-esteem caused by her controlling manager and mother Dahlia, making her the most complex character in the series.

Other characters are pretty basic, only existing as either to help the duo or stand against them, and barely any of these get fleshed out. It’s not a good idea to have a 5-episode “tournament” arc with 8 contestants but only put effort into half of them. One interesting character is Cybelle, a girl with an infatuation with Tuesday. She kind of portrays the unhealthy fanatics that some musicians suffer with (see: Perfect Blue), but she was not developed and, like other characters, eventually became a plot device to hinder the two.

In conclusion, C&T is a pleasant show that likes to play it a bit too safe, but it’s definitely notable for having a great setting.

JUNJI ITOU COLLECTION (24/3/18)

This anime is to Junji Itou’s work is what Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender was to Nickelodeon’s Avatar series. It’s an adaptation so crude in its execution that the original’s fandom will deny it ever happened.

ART (0/10)

The Junji Itou Collection has what is easily the worst “animation” I have seen in anime, that is to say there is barely any. Most of the shots are static and the illusion of movement is created by camera pans or sudden shaking. What little animation feels obligatory, like adding a couple extra frames to make a character’s mouth look like it’s moving, and often looks convulsive ... and unnatural. Characters will either shake violently to make it feel ~scary~ or if the animators are feeling especially lazy then some characters may slide across the floor instead of walking.

The art style is vaguely like Junji Itou’s, but it’s so watered-down that it’s offensive. While Itou’s manga is characterised by the intricate details that make the experience truly captivating and beautifully grotesque, this anime aimed for the bare minimum and missed it by a few miles. The otherworldly creatures that Itou is famous for come to life as something out of a children’s bad horror book and... what looks like CGI? I don’t know, not even CGI in anime has looked so unintentionally comical. The only time when the anime looks good is when it directly copy & pastes a panel from the manga and adds colour to it, but even when it redraws scenes it makes them absolutely devoid of the atmosphere and horror that the original is so rich with.

CHARACTERS (2/12)

As the stories are short one-shots that usually span 10 minutes there is obviously not much time to flesh out any characters. However the anime never makes even an effort to go beyond what the source material gives it. Although the characters in Itou’s work are only secondary to the horrors that each story recounts, each character still has some sort of motive. Sometimes it’s to become independent, other times to satiate their curiosity, but most times to survive.

But again, the Junji Itou Collection fails on this front where the characters don’t seem to be passionate about anything and most of their decisions seem to come out of nowhere. This is because the anime decides to leave out some parts that may be unimportant to the main storyline but give us insight into the characters’ heads, leaving the audience with an abridged version of the original, and not even a good one.

The only thing I can give this aspect of the show is that it doesn’t add unnecessary characters to the show, which is something that always bothers me. But it’s not like they had the initiative to.

SOUND (2/6)

The theme songs are good to listen to and suit Itou’s style. The opening gets you excited and the ending lulls you to an almost suspicious rest. Unfortunately none of your anticipation is met.

The OST is basically nonexistent and I cannot remember a single piece that I heard watching this show. Even some stories that require a good sound design to make any sense at all were neglected in this part, such as an episode where characters lose their mind over an unbelievably good music CD, but, AGAIN, the show fails to make an effort where it counts to make the CD sound at least good. The voice-acting is subpar and when combined with the badly drawn facial expressions it makes a lot of the characters’ reactions unrealistic and therefore impossible to relate to.

STORY (0/12)

Another defining feature of Itou’s manga is its bizarre premises and how, with careful pacing trepid developments, what may be an unrealistic reaction becomes understandable. However this adaptation rushes the stories and completely misses their point and what makes them effective.

The biggest offender is the much-anticipated story Painter, featuring Itou’s most famous character Tomie. The story requires previous knowledge of the main character, which isn’t a problem in the manga because the chapter is published after the chapters that introduce us to Tomie. Seems obvious that you need the start to get to a side story, right? Not to this anime’s staff.

Another issue is that in the manga chapter the titular painter loses his sanity over Tomie slowly and steadily, whereas in the anime because the staff felt obliged to cram in two stories for every episode without exception, the painter’s descent to madness feels more like a leap.

OVERALL

The anime takes Itou’s ideas and throws them with as much power over a rock-hard road, then runs them over with a lorry and pours paint over them. It’s the very definition of doing the bare minimum. Don’t watch unless you want to pretend Itou isn’t a great author.

Final score: 1/10