Generic. The story involves 5 boys who have auditioned and been put into an idol group within their school and must compete to be placed into the music department. This means they’ll be evaluated on their performance growth to see whether they could make it in the schools official elite musical.
Generally, you would assume this would mean competing against the other groups of performers for a place in the department. While this is true, it’s only to an extent. Ive counted over 20 different groups, and we only saw one group besides our main group ever perform, which they only did twice. This means there is almost ZERO tension when they are ranked as we dont see what any of the other teams did to compare them too! We dont even get to see much of the technical side of rehearsing, as we mostly receive still shots of stretches or poses. Whatever.
Sound: 7/10
Going back and listening to the tracks, they actually werent bad. I think my favorite voices belong to Kaito and Kakkeru. Voice acting was pretty solid but I cant really recall much background music.
Characters: 5/10
Generic Tropes. We have the stoic, blue haired “perfect” boy with an Onii-san complex, Red-haired and arrogant uppity boy, a timid motherly type who just wants peace, The purple other-stoic but also edgy artsy one (he plays piano!), and the BORING upbeat brown-haired protagonist. Red-har was the most entertaining, as I appreciate the arrogant ones a lot plus, his cat stuff was cute.
However, the character interactions just dont feel right. After watching it, the kids barely know shit about each other and I really barely feel any substance tying each other together aside from being on team Otori. I suppose Nayuki became more outgoing from being on the team and being around MC-kun, but it want really focused on. The characters barely reflect on their past or talk about their feelings so I really dont understand why I should care.
Art/Animation: 3/10
Art: TERRIBLE. The character designs are so uncomfortable to look at. Almost every frame had me cringing just at the faces. Seriously, what were they thinking. It’s easy to see almost all the faces are identical to wear I feel like im watching the much-better Osomatsu-san. Everyone’s haor had this weird splotch of (root?) color at the top making it look like they all had bad dye jobs. Even the bodies have mostly the same shape. This designer should be fired. Some of the backgrounds during the songs looked nice I guess.
Animation: Ugh. Some of these episodes would have at least a third of the scenes shown in still frames. It’s almost like they didnt try. Theatre is a very visual and moving art, but it feels so stiff, just like most of their dance sequences. Also, please fire this animation director. Overlaying ugly still images over simple repetitive movements doesnt look nice, it makes it look like you got lazy. There was also an extreme over use of sparkles. Come on.
At least I got some good laughs at the over the top performances. Nayuki rode on a dolphin through the sky. That’s good shit.
