The first half of the series, I was very engaged by what I felt was the overall theme of the show: the technologic advance of society changing the way we engage with the world, specially it's influence in the creation of art. There's a heavy emphasis on how Carole and Tuesday write without the use of AI, and I was actually pretty curious to where this was heading -- mostly because the series didn't imply that the AI songs where neither bad nor soulless. Rather, I felt that the series was making a point to find the humanity behind the advance of technology, as a way to get advancing forward without losing ourselves. This was particularly interesting to me in regard to Angela: as she slowly is copied into an AI, she finds that the music the computers are writing are actually expressing the feelings that she herself is unable to. I was really into this strange story about how a girl finds herself through technological assimilation, but there was not where the series was going.
Halfway through the series -- after some American Idol episodes, stalker plots, and movie-making shenanigans -- we start to get into the politics of it all. What was, at first, a series of doppelgangers of artists, singers, producers and all, turns also into a series of political characters who actually pivot the series completely. After this, I feel like the theme of the series becomes something else altogether. Jumping off from the well-established understating that what the AI in here does is a reproduction of the emotional response of the people -- and this is why it is so successful at writing pop songs --, the series put this AI to use in a populist politics scenario. And we get it all: the Steve Bannon asshole manipulating the candidate into more extreme and racist attacks on immigrants from Earth while following a mass response from the electorate. Although this all happens as a kind of third narrative arc -- the first being Carole and Tuesday journey and the second Angela's arc --, it seems as the most important thematic one.
I feel that the point Carole & Tuesday is making is that music is the opposite of political populism. Music is mass emotion being captured as a way of getting together, of uniting people in a intimate and humane matter, while Populism is mass emotion used to bring forth anger, fear, discrimination and so on, in a very intense divisive way. This is a very weird point to make, sure, but also surprisingly timely? I actually have not seen that many series engaging with this real contemporary discussions at these depths (the political dispute over the emotional response of the masses), much less expected an anime to go out of his way and make these points. Is it a strong point? Somewhat: the real world is infinitely more complex, for one. We have hate much more ingrained in our history. It seems unbelievable naive to believe a song can chance the world. That being said, there's such a pure (and justified) love for a perfect pop song's power that I find very difficult to deny it without feeling like the biggest and most asshole of the cynics. A single song may not be that powerful, but any music lover can vow that a perfect song does go a long way.
Loose thoughts:
- I think the series is pretty messy overall, but this kind of works in a roundabout way. A lot of storylines seem incomplete, but as the series gets where is going, the messiness feel a little lived in, in a sort of snapshot way. It could be a lot tighter, but the objective of a world of people getting affected by their music does get achieved somewhat.
- Watanabe does some of the best comedy. IDEA, the lying, beer-fueled robot, made me spent literally the last 7 minutes of the episodes laughing out loud. Such and unbelievably stupid joke that hits me so, so well.
- Imagine getting so famous that you, as an anime director, write that you need some songs and them Thundercat or Denzel Curry sing them? This must be fun.
