“WOOOOOOO! MUSIC IS A BANGER! BEST WAIFU THIS SEASONAL. GOT A COMBINATION OF SIESTA AND ZERO TWO!”
Clearly, I liked it a lot. So why did it jump down to this seemingly mediocre score of a 7? Well this can easily be explained by poor writing, and I mean disappointingly poor writing. This then slowly had turned my reaction into more of a;
“So, I’m confused. What the hell did I just watch?”
And I wish it wasn’t.
{HEAVY SPOILERS}
This anime had a lot going for it. The excitement towards the start and ecstatic qualities shining through the eyes of countless watchers everywhere, glowing up and gleaming above and beyond with both music and animation quality. And yet, it mishandled itself like a nervous robbery in the middle of a parade. They fumbled the weapon and tossed it in the air, only to catch it by the front of the firearm and not the handle. They’re lucky they didn’t completely shoot themselves. So, what went wrong? Let’s start first with a small summary and characters.
A Short Summary & Characters:
In this anime we have our main 3 characters, Takt, Cossette and Anna. Takt is introduced as someone who consistently loves playing on the piano and acts like a social outcast to all. Then we have Cossette who later dies and becomes Destiny, is a loving sister of Anna who likes to try and help get (and mainly annoy) Takt out of the house to show off his piano skills. Anna on the other hand is the mother of the bunch, taking care of them both whenever possible. We’re left with this continuous and clear plot line after Destiny’s forthcoming into existence of “We have to get from A-B in order to help Cossett- I mean, Destiny!”. Which by itself, I liked the idea of and sat for the ride.
With our overall characters, we have a decent bunch of generic characters. Takt is the edgy kid who lost their parents/ father in a supposedly freak incident where D2’s ended up attacking and Takt himself barely escaped with his own life. In terms of development, he experiences next to nothing in change and only the ability to come to peace?, with the loss of his father and Cossette. Oh and he can also make a song I guess now. As if that was really of any importance considering the story sidelined it towards the end, making him seem as if he’s been the same character the entire goddamn anime.
Then we have Anna. What was her point? Being there, existing? She’s a character alright and a decent support/ main for the both of them. Although, I’m concerned as to why she isn’t also a main in MAL as she is there every episode and does have highlights with specifically her constantly. Doesn’t matter. She certainly has more substance than Takt because she has a deep complication within herself with trying to accept Destiny’s transformation from Cossette, and coming to terms with her complete and utter death. Which I liked as a plot point that consistently carried throughout episodes until she finally blew up because she couldn’t handle the guilt of it anymore. THAT was development, but she did barely pass the line with only a single complication and nothing more than being okay with Destiny and loving her for who she was, as her own sister still.
Of course, we still have our helpful side characters that I didn’t mind too much, some I did.
Titan, Lenny, Sagan, Schindler, Heaven, Hell. (Also Valkyrie.)
Lenny, I liked. He was actually surprisingly a good character and I preferred him more of an existence of development in comparison to Takt, because he had an interesting back story. His back story was enveloped and shown off, he revelled in his guilt for Takt’s father’s death, constantly blaming it on himself and swore to protect Takt when the time came. I like how he was a depressed, sad and lonely man who only wanted to help others with music, given back to life by Titan. They were a really nice duo and perfectly fine support characters. Him dying, was not exactly justified in how he went out, but it was sad, it had some connection for me.
Heaven and Hell, I couldn’t care less about. They were just annoying Musicarts that broke the law of logic and character rationality a handful of times. They both, apparently came from some gem or something? Story didn’t exactly explain in the end how Sagan got them.
Schindler, he was boring and annoying as hell. His purpose was mind numbingly dumb. As surprising as this would actually be possible, hurts, but it goes to show spite doesn’t always win against the one with some handy powers (which I think don’t detract from the story) and a bit of plot power.
And oh god, Sagan. I don’t understand the point of this character. Was he supposed to be a villain, or did he know he was being a villain? Did he see himself as a hero? Was he purposely being malicious? I’ll talk about the dumbness of this further down. God, was he a bad a character. Even Takt couldn’t stand him. Self inserted myself inside Takt whenever he was near Sagan, could feel that anger broiling within him.
NONETHELESS, there was thankfully positive and actually non-excruciating development with 1 character.
Destiny. I think, all the brain power in the development and writing studio only went into her. All of it, 200% of it, bothered putting it all into Destiny.
It’s difficult to compile all of this. But I love Destiny / Cossette as a character. She’s obviously a bait waifu, but, even then, she’s such a good character in and of itself, she has the most development and personality curation out of everyone in this anime. In the start of the anime, so many symbols of dialogue and metaphors are thrown out, and many of them together towards the very end with Destiny and Takt. At the start, Destiny is nothing but a dutiful, sensible and hard working Musiccart with the sole aim of destroying D2’s. But it’s with growth that she evolves into this witty, yet responsible and sweet-sugar-cake loving maniac who does everything she can to complete the mission and keep Takt safe. The love that grows between them makes sense, the inner ability and love that resided from Cossette stays and finally shows itself as a resemblance to her when Destiny gives her goodbyes. The lines she utters during those scenes are magical and by far bring back connecting symbols to call to Takt. She had so much personality development. From being a seemingly hollow shell, to a character with traits of Cossette still inside her and forms of caring and traits developed from being around Takt and Anna, helping others whenever she thought to in her own time and off screen. It was just, pleasant to know she was changing like this. Whereas we barely saw anything different with any of the other characters, because there wasn’t enough time to develop them all fully. But it was more or so made up by the animation, music and close to great and enjoyable story/ plot before it fell on its face. God, Cossette is such a sweetheart. She’s not like the Detective from last season, by far. She might’ve been witty and cold hearted, but Cossette was robotic and dumb at times, not thinking ahead or doing everything based solely on needing to remove the enemy immediately. The Detective was different despite her small amount of development. It’s why she’s my favourite character in this anime.
Now, I AM REQUIRED TO TALK ABOUT THIS SPECTACULAR THING CALLED THE MUSIC.
Music / Sound:
The. Music. Is. Stellar. Stellar. I need to repeat myself, this music, the score is absolutely stellar. It is out of this world in quality. The OP song is FUCKING INCREDIBLE. Not to mention the OP is an original made just for this anime, and lord does it encapsulate everything in this anime to a T. All the lost emotions, memories, broken hearts and lives gone, it’s all squeezed nicely and quietly like a puzzle piece fitting together within the melody of the opening song. And they barely even used it in the anime, which I say was a good call. It would’ve over saturated their abilities to make an incredible opening song like this and made the song overly repetitive. But. I can’t forget the music they played at the start and in the middle of the anime. I was so surprised by the stellar quality of the songs I was hearing bring pleasure to my ears. Music to my ears at its fitting quality to a comfort of positivity. I wish, I wish so hard that the anime was entirely about the MC, Takt using pianos or any other fitting instruments to fight the D2’s continuously. Not abandon the concept and idea of this in the last 3 episodes. I wish even, in the final battle, not the messy fight it is now, but somewhere they had Takt playing the piano and blasting Destiny’s abilities to the sky in strength as she might’ve marauded through enemies after enemies. Hearing (I believe) Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin songs all be played was fun as heck to hear. Especially as even in the music world they all reside in, many remember the classics. I would’ve for the anime to continue to carry on the tradition of playing classical music during battles, as it always had this mystical sense that I haven’t ever seen done before in anime the way they made use of it.
Animation:
This is by far the greatest element in this anime. Alongside the stellar score and overall music within this, we have this superb literal piece of animation. I am so completely and utterly disappointed by how well they used their animation abilities and killed the anime in the end of it while still displaying fantastic animation skills. It’s like watching a bit of Madhouse share it’s life blood as they compile it together with J.C Staff to make this glorious animation wonder with a piss-poor plot line of an ending. (Only checked later to realise it is Madhouse and MAPPA animating this piece. I blame the writers for butchering the ending.) Straight from the first episode, the pilot episode, the anime was no stranger to showing of its highly qualified animation. From the smooth movements of Cossette and flow of fingers and hands in some the subletest movement’s, I could see every frame in its fluidity. It surprised me to what I had been expecting. The OP alone already gave me enough of what I hadn’t been expecting in the very first 10 seconds with Destiny running out of the house. So much effort, care and delicacy dropped into so many frames wether they’d been pointless or crucial to the story. Further, with every single fight scene, ALL OF THEM, had consistently remained top tier animation with it rarely ever lacking fluidity and smooth frames of drawings all connecting with each other in the way Destiny swung her weapons, Takt waved his wand or played music, the twirls Destiny took to doing several times when battling D2’s, the massive giant beams of energy that continuously looked accurately realistic (as realistic as it could be at least) in how it could fire out slippery smooth like butter. It’s difficult to keep praising this anime for its animation without repeatedly saying “smooth” over and over again, because that is quite literally what it is. And even with this incredible of animation talent, it all seemingly goes to waste given the end of this. Despite that, I still love and admire the quality of this anime when it came to passion and hard work squeezed into it, even in the final episodes it outputted spectacularly with itself. Add On: Madhouse truly never fails to output artistic art pieces when it comes to these anime, wether it be a gacha grab or a stand-alone anime off by itself, it comes out with plenty of positive traits wether they aim for it to be good or not.
The Ending:
Look, I can understand the love, treatment, all the symbols of Cossette still resembling inside Destiny, her loving Takt, the lines she spoke at the start of the anime of how music is like love and how it ended the exact same way, the witty dialogue. But- logic fails me here. How did they get to the beach by the sea? How were they 100 kilometres away from Symphonica HQ? They were both on the verge of death, and somehow got out of the building while parts of it was collapsing nearly unscathed. Not just that, what was the point of the main villain, Sargon? What was his motivation? To destroy the world, or help it? Was Takt being a simple, to the point “shut the fuck up” person to Sargon as he was impaled showed that he knew he was wasting his time and was a dumb person for not realising his actions meant nothing? Why didn’t Sagan bleed when he was impaled by Takt with Destiny’s weapon? Was the combination of Heaven and Hell supposed to be explained? Why did they suddenly freeze up into a calcified version when fighting Destiny? If it was Destiny’s abilities and hands doing that, why didn’t she beat the shit out of her in hand to hand combat in the first place? What the fuck was seriously going on? AND ESPECIALLY, Anna apparently turned into Destiny? Or did she manifest Destiny to exist still? Did she take up her powers? It makes no sense and clearly isn’t going to be explained since there is literally nothing to make a S2 from there. They actually had something really incredible going for an original, and somehow, it fumbles the entire ending like a nervous guy at his first day in the office. Showing Sargon just crying over some broken buildings isn’t going to tell me his motivations. Was it showing he basically gave up on trying to save humanity because he thought it was pointless? Maybe. Was it showing he had enough of it? Maybe. Did he decide to just turn to the dark side and try to destroy families and hurt people instead? Apparently he did, but then why was he trying to “sacrifice” the continent for the greater good? Not only is he just being plain evil for the sake of being evil, he decides to act like a hero because he wants it all to stop, after causing it to be worse himself. Makes no sense whatsoever. And that’s just the villain, the ending itself is lacking so much.
We jump to Cossette and Takt on the beach of Ep 12. Somehow the most sense in this episode is there. Plenty of recalls to symbols and lines said at the start of the anime, made me a bit emotional. But, did Takt actually die at the end? Because Destiny, a Musiccart who was explained to be connected and only supported by Takt’s lifeforce, was supposed to disappear once he died. He did die, and then Destiny / Cossette disappeared after coming to complete peace with her love for him and giving him the sweetest kiss of the season. Now, even after a confusing ending like that, that was probably the only “good” scene in the episode if you separate it from everything else and it hadn’t been rushed like it is now.
On the topic of being rushed, the ending was by far clearly rushed. This anime had the potential of going to a 2 cour (24 episodes), making the plot super deep and invested rather than making it a quick 10 minute-shove-it-down-your-throat-villain arc. They could’ve made it about them going to space, going underground to destroy a mother hive of them, finding out the cause behind them all, etc. But no, they decided to throw this dainty, lack of logic ending at us, with no compatible rationality. Which is honestly more disappointing than it is painful.
Plot Error:
I also want to add on to this confusing ending, one of the main plot points that threw me off was the fact that D2’s were still around, but also not. It’s confusing because multiple times in the anime they seemed have stated that “D2’s are long gone here and they don’t exist anymore after 2 years ago.” But then it immediately cuts to D2’s appearing for some reason, and the only explanation made clear is that Schindler is behind it, and then Sagan is too. But- the D2’s were happening all over the country of USA. So, more confusingly, do they actually exist any more, or is Schindler and Sagan these godlike beings capable of moving at sonic speed across the country to summon the D2’s? Are all the D2’s actually dead or buried underground and they’re bringing them back to certain locations through using the Diviner? It’s truly confusing what they’re trying to picture here. Do the D2’s even remotely exist, or is Sagan making them all himself? Since, as a plot point, it would’ve been PERFECT if they had it as if Sagan was an evil mastermind after trying to wipe humanity as they know it using the D2’s. Like it was a whole underground enormous breeding operation.
Finished:
So. I’m confused. Not completely, but I am confused. The ending is a tad bit fucky wucky. Up to about episode 10, the anime was scoring a high 9 in my books. Dropped to 8.5 in 11, then to a whole 7-6 right off after the end.
One main thing, what the fuck was that ending? Seriously.
Final Words:
I had high hopes and wished for this anime to incredible, yet they somehow bombed this original near masterpiece to the ground. They could’ve had one of the best anime’s of the season but they cut it and burned it alive for the sake of nothing? Laziness? Advertisement towards a gacha game maybe, WHICH, to be honest most people won’t even understand a thing about what the gacha is about or trying to do. Out of the viewer base, you might get maybe 10% max of viewers to play this game as opposed to a possible 40% if they made this anime stick it’s bloody landing.
I personally loved a lot of aspects of this anime, but they just threw this anime in the bin when they got to the ending. I’m honestly shocked, it took me 2 days to compile this in my head because it was just shocking that this went down the way it did. So many spectacular things in this anime, so much that could’ve been taken further and beyond. May this anime rest in pieces, as good as it was, it was so close to being one of the greats this year.
