HypMic.......is a mess. A massive, massive mess. The dialogue is stilted, the tone bafflingly serious despite the premise, the lighting weakly considered, characterization inconsistent with numerous unearned turns, animation mediocre at best and empathetic context missing.
Yet, somehow, it manages to be a really funny time.
“So Bad It’s Good” is hard to truly quantify, since it depends on what can crack the spectrum to any particular person beyond average, everyday badness. However, most of the time, when applied to anime, it’s used to refer to something that tries to be dark and miserable but comes out as comedic instead; Assassin’s Pride, Mirai Nikki/Big Order, Ousama Game, Mayoiga and the early episodes of Arifureta as common go-tos. However, those shows tend to operate too much on misery to really hold any likable impressions for my part. Garzey’s Wing is a popular go-to for this category, moreso because of how absurd its entire conceit is than edge falling flat.
Hypnosis Mic, though, champions being so bad it’s good for the sheer WTF value nearly every episode. It’s almost impossible to tell how much of the show is merely being an advertisement for music CDs, and how much is the animation team trying to make some sort of grand cohesive tale out of thin air. This push pull between corporate ad and direction vision gives the show a distinct flavor of entertainment.
The core idea of the plot is that somehow, in some way, every normal weapon was banned from existing, except for microphones. An all female government is in place, which holds a rap battle tournament that four teams of three, who were once together in a group called “Dirty Dawg”, prepare to join.
Any worldbuilding required to make this all happen is borderline nonsensical. The idea of an all-female government taking power, getting normal weapons totally banned (when most people IRL can easily slip illegal marijuana) and standing being asserted by rap dominance naturally only make since by Yu-Gi Oh/Jojo logic, but that just makes things more exciting. The sheer absurdity of these facts plastered onto what’s otherwise a fairly normal setting leads to some hilariously goofy moments.
HypMic’s first eight episodes are essentially prep to get viewers to know each of the four teams, titled Buster Bros, Mad Trigger Crew, Fling Posse and Materno. Aside from Buster Bros they aren’t even in careers associated with rap, some being doctors, salarymen or military men. To get the audience to pick favorites among these Sonic Heroes, the show runners decided “let’s throw these pastel colored fujioshi avatars into deafeningly serious plots that’ll have nothing to do with anything else!” The plots tend to have a lot of threats thrown each team’s way, with the power of corny camaraderie to save the day. If nothing else, these episodes do a passable job showing why each team cares about their respective members.
But remember, weapons are banned in the world of HypMic, so how are all these conflicts solved! RAP BATTLES! Scenarios where guns and grenades would exist are replaced by microphones because that’s just how the world works and everyone completely accepts it. The sheer power of rap allows teleportation, and it’s a sight to behold.
Bank hostage situation? Rap Battle.
Yakuza caper? Rap Battle.
Mortgage scheme? Rap Battle.
Illegal drug deals? Rap Battle
Murder framing? Rap Battle.
Terrorist bombing specifically to prevent one team from participating in a rap battle? Rap Battle.
Only getting a B on my college final?! Rap Battle.
These rap battles are the only times the show gets to add flair where there generally IS none. Most scenes have no flair; the animation is choppy, the lighting poorly implemented and garishly bright enough to make you think all the available colors got used on the character designs alone. With realistic backgrounds featuring absurdly costumed characters, you get the type of wacky dissonance that can elicit a chuckle all on its own. That said, the scenes before one of these conflicts get going with flat exposition are some of the only times the show is actively boring, little but basic partnerships to pass the time. Once the conflicts get into full force and get solved with a rap at the end, then it’s a blast.
So how about the raps themselves, likely the main reason you’ve checked out this anime?
I’m happy to report that they’re absolutely wild. If you’ve watched Epic Rap Battles of History before, they provide a good sense of what to expect; killer beats with over-the-top visual effects in conjunction with mad disses. Given the language barrier, I can’t tell if the animators took influence from them, but it catches a similar vibe. At some points it’s more effects than animation, with different filters thrown about, kanji and battle effects splattering the screen during the rap. 2D characters swap into CGI and back and forth, but the timing of the rap music videos is on POINT. It’s clear this is where the most effort went, for good reason, but it contrasts greatly to everything else in the anime. Props to the translators for creating subtitles that seem to fit into rhyme scheme. It’s hard to tell how well the seiyuu ACTUALLY sing the lyrics as someone who doesn’t understand Japanese, but if I could judge, the Buster Bros have the most amount of oomph and flow to their lyrics while Materno seems like they struggle with nailing lyric flow the most. The raps slap, and when they don’t, they’re so silly it’s hard not to laugh at them.
Of course, the galaxy brained writing doesn’t stop once the division rap battles in title begin. If anything, the presentation gets even more bizarre.
There’s attempts to add some angsty spice by implying that one character was involved in what happened to another character’s sister. Of course, this drama lacks the punch it needs without proper context. Because there was no time to build that up in the 8 episodic segments before that.
Shonen battle mechanics get introduced! Now every character has specialized “traits” that only appear as they rap! Once again it’s spontaneous, poorly built up, and means nothing outside of specific scenes, but it adds to the general madcap nonsense that is this show’s existence.
At around the same time, one character rather inexplicably appears to be a twist villain, with a more sinister grin and complicit goals. Yet, before the episode is even over, they’re instantly talked out of it. It’s almost incredible how the show decides to hold off on its conflict. This is then doubled down further by having two morality turns in incredibly quick succession for events the audience never got to see, only to have neither of them mean anything soon after. You can’t make this up.
Despite all of these issues, the big conspiracy plot keeps rolling, with a repetitive background score of funky fresh beats even in the serious scenes. It’s fitting at times when things are more lowkey but only makes sillier any attempt outside of that. Like trying to understand its attempts to tell a story and remembering; we’re watching working professionals stuck in the rap circuit.
Hypnosis Mic is a respectable anomaly of confused existence and cloudy vision. In this bizarre place where it’s narratively, tonally and structurally nonsense, but it somehow works to be entertaining. What makes the show so bad it’s good for me is that I just can’t tell what they were really going for with this story, beyond an attempt to show off seiyuu vocal range to mixed effect. The characters have light chemistry with their team members, but any attempts to develop anything fall hilariously flat. Its plot goes through every spectrum of tense you can think of under a weak production that gives it no gravitas. It’s a 3/10 for serious merit, but a 7/10 for enjoyment, so 5/10 is a fair way to place it. You might not find it hilarious, or just be interested to see all of the raps out of context, yet for me it hits the perfect spectrum of unintentionally intentional comedy to make it worth something.
