Wow. When I had heard that a show being animated by Mappa and Madhouse was coming out, I was instantly hooked. Even though I don’t love everything the two studios put out, they certainly have stellar animation, so I was excited to feast my eyes on some great sakuga.
Well, the show started to come out and it started out pretty strong with a pretty decent first episode, I was thinking to myself "man, this is it, best anime this season." but then the show continued.
Unfortunately, with each episode I found myself liking it less and less (with the exception of episode 6). But why was this so bad you Fiend of the festering fries you fanatically fawn over you may ask? Well, have no fear dear reader for I will elaborate.
Let’s first talk about the one good thing and that was the art and animation. Like I said I knew going in that the animation was going to be great and I wasn’t disappointed. The show has some great moments of action and scenes where the animation and lighting really shine. The fight scenes look awesome, and I actually really liked the style too. These two studios collaborating on something is a dream come true, sadly it had to be wasted on a bad story with terrible characters. (Why madhouse couldn’t help Mappa with attack on titan is beyond me).
The story has a very interesting premise. Basically, a quiet place but instead of noise its music. Music being entirely gone from this world is a cool idea and it attracting the monsters is also neat. plus, the only way to beat them is by using these musicarts is also cool. This is where the good stuff ends because a lot of stuff is left unexplained. Where did the D2s come from? Why are they attracted to music? While some of these might be elaborated on in the future it would have been helpful to get some hints. Another thing that really bugs me is that a lot of the times (with the exception of episode 6) people are constantly telling and not showing. They constantly tell you how music is awesome, how music impacted them so much, how they will find a cure for a certain character, how they will rule the world. We aren’t shown that stuff. SHOW how important music is, show us how this person is constantly struggling to make an antidote (outside of the last like 2 episodes). The ending also leaves so many questions unanswered and its extremely rushed with no explanations. The main villain literally loses to the MC because the MC just tells him that he is stupid. There were so many places this story could have gone but instead they just introduce tons of plotlines that go nowhere.
The characters aren’t helping either. First is the main character. takt. The son of a famous conductor, who is also a piece of garbage. He is so unlikable and yeah yeah I get they're trying to go for the whole kinda Tsundere or person who is rough on the outside and soft on the inside. But you have to actually make him somewhat likable for me to care. His companion destiny/Cosette doesn’t help much. They aren’t unlikable but they are very bland, and they have one trait: they like food and sweets. This is because they can make people go: OH MY GOSH SO QUIRKY I LIKE FOOD TOO HEHEHE. Lenny is actually likeable, and he does have some good moments, he might just be the only half decent character. Unfortunately, he isn’t a main character. There was also this one character called anna who tagged along but she is just kinda there and then she kisses takt without any romantic buildup. Finally, the villains have no real motivation and are just kinda evil because well, you wanna see the hot waifus he has, right? All of these characters are so underdeveloped, and they go nowhere so it’s hard to form a connection with them.
as for the other things like sound, voice acting, music, etc, I really can’t comment besides they were all average. I think the music being average is really bad because the whole point of the show is to prove how awesome music is but oh well.
All in all, Takt Op. Destiny seems to have been only OP in the animation. the story and characters go nowhere, and the ending leaves more questions than answers. I was really thinking a show like this needed to be longer but then I remembered other shows that had 12 episodes like Mob psycho 100, kaguya-sama, and the promised neverland and how I got so attached to them in such a small period of time. This just goes to show that this show really needed better writing to actually succeed. If this show gets another season ill watch it and I actually do really hope that it gets better. I don’t hate this show but I see the potential for greatness and I hope later on we can see some of that.
