The story tried to be a combination of a mystery anime and a lighthearted slice of life music anime. The idea seems nice at first, but it didn't turn out well. The music part ended up being a backdrop and had no actual impact on the story. Just take any musical element out of this show and you'll barely even feel it's missing most of the time. The lighthearted comedy relief moments were nice, but there were times when they were just out of place.
If there is something I like doing while watching a mystery anime, it's trying to solve the mysteries myself before the big reveal. In this anime the mysteries were impossible to solve. They were so ridiculously hard that you had to wait for the characters to solve them for you, because the writers wanted to throw you off as much as possible and had kept unnecessarily crucial details hidden from you just so you don't outsmart the characters by accident. This made the story unpredictable in a bad way, it was trying too hard to surprise you. Granted, this wasn't always the case, but the mysteries were so pointless and the solutions were so anticlimactic and uncalled for that you didn't even care.
One thing this anime did do right is not shying away from any subject. This anime tackled real-life problems very often; like sexuality, death, the struggles of adopted children, running away from home, disability and even war and PTSD, all before the half-way point. However, most subjects weren't taken seriously enough or didn't get enough screen time, almost canceling the effect that tackling those subject had in the first place.
Add to the fact that most episodes followed pretty much the same structure, not to mention the large timeskips between episodes, and you get a poorly written, poorly paced, repetitive story that gets boring really fast.
When it comes to characters, the show didn't do much better. The club has many members and they couldn't give everyone a fair share of screen time, but instead of focusing on 4 or 5 main characters, they decided to introduce as many characters as they possibly could. The result was that most characters were overlooked and neglected.
The show followed a structure in which a student presents a problem to the main characters, the main characters try to solve it, Haruta comes up with a solution and presents it to said student and said student ends up joining the club. The character backstories played a big part fo the problems that were presented, but they were completely half-assed and usually were never talked about again.
The only somewhat relatable character was Chika. She was cute and funny and she could barely follow the investigations. Her job was to be the dumb airhead that needs to have everything explained to her, so the viewers could follow the investigations more easily without getting bored. However, the way the show treats her makes you feel like you're being pointed and laughed at for being too stupid to follow along. It's like a big middle finger to the viewer.
Also, there's no character development whatsoever. Even if a character shows some semblance of progress, it'll devolve and go right back to square one by the next episode. The only exceptions are 2 or 3 characters that changed completely after the episodes they were introduced in, but they had no development since then.
The characters themselves weren't bad and they actually had very good interaction, but they were underdeveloped and neglected. The characters were just wasted.
The animation was good at the beginning. The designs were nice, especially the eyes, and the instruments looked amazing, but there was a notable decline in the animation's quality towards the end (with the exception of the final episode).
Since this show (supposedly) revolves around music, I expected a more memorable soundtrack. It wasn't bad, it did a good job and the pieces preformed by the students were beautiful, but it was nothing special. The opening and ending themes, on the other hand, were very good in my opinion. Definitely more memorable than the rest of the soundtrack.
As for the voice actors, they weren't bad, but most of them didn't get many opportunities to do anything noticeably different than usual.
I know I bashed this anime quite a bit in this review, but it doesn't mean it had no good in it. This anime tried too hard to be unpredictable, but sometimes it was done right. The ending was surprisingly satisfying and came to a good conclusion. But in the end, even though this anime had a good start and a satisfying ending, it's barely worth the mess that was the middle. You can try watching it if you're curious, but this show is entirely skippable.
