Hhmmm, the art....,I wouldn't say it was terrible, but for a 2006-2007 title, I'm pretty much underwhelmed. Barring the character designs, which were lovely, there is absolutely nothing interesting about the art. The backdrops were generic, the sceneries were boring...actually anything that went beyond the characters was boring and inconsequential. Oh and be prepared for lots and LOTS of still shots like when the characters are playing their instruments, a lot of the time you'll just see still shots of them holding their instrument of choice with some serene look on their face. It doesn't happen all the time, some of the animation is nice [it's nice to see the fingers moving on the strings] but the static images do appear very frequently. And I feel, the topic of classical music is already boring enough as it is, they could have at least put some proper effort into the animation. Also expect to see the same audience for ALL FOUR concerts, there is a lot of recycling of stock images.
Not much I can say about the music either, since I'm not a fan of classical music...I might have a vague interest in Baroque and some piano works but that's as far as it goes for me. I'm sure it's all lovely but it did nothing for me. Which if anything made me like the anime even less, but before you jump down my throat and say stuff like “then why did you pick an anime about classical music if you don't like classical music???” But like I said, from my own experience, anime titles in the past have taken topics I've had zero to little interest in and made them fascinating. I hate sports, but liked Wild Striker, Prince of Tennis and totally LOVED Big Windup! I hate Westerns but loved Gun Frontier, I hate talking animals and god knows how many of those are in anime? So I expected an interesting [if at the very least informative] story about classical music, but there was none of that, so I'm still pretty much an outsider when it comes to classical music.
I also have mixed feelings for the intro song “Brand New Breeze” part of me likes it but the other part of me think it sounds a little bit too much like a commercial for some kind of laundry detergent or feminine product....[just keeping it real, sorry]
Story....hhhhmmmm, one word: ABYSMAL! OK so the story is about a girl who was magically chosen [for some reason or another, which is irrelevant since it's only some thinly veiled premise to get her surrounded by a bunch of hot guys] to participate in some sort of classical music playoff. But the contest is not the central theme, the actual theme is music appreciation and each character's relation to it...which, yes, may sound deep but none of this came across to the viewer. There was nothing that really drew me into being interested in classical music like I felt when I watched a baseball game with Big Windup, for example. There's no humour, there's no romance to speak of, they didn't even get into the technical aspects of classical music. In Hikaru no Go, they made moving those little game pieces on a board seem so exciting and dramatic and they also informed me about how the game of GO is played and even certain strategies and tactics. There is none of that in this series, except maybe if you want to count the fairy at the end talking about Bach and Beethoven, which I don't.
This series seriously spent the better part of 24 episodes to talk about how each of them loved music or played their music [which to be honest sounded just a little more than pretentious “Ah this sonatta is so brilliant and the strings are so vibrant and so transparent”....yeah bull***t] There’s nothing else to this anime besides this and maybe some minor romantic innuendo [FAIL]. It's only after episode 20 when all the B.S. goes away, such as the magic violin and all that reverse harem kitsch that she, Kahoko, has to really deal with the fact of being a such novice violinist does the show even have any sort of merit.
So Like I said before, the character designs were lovely. I can't really complain there! And to be honest, that's the only real selling point of this series: very nice character designs and a lot of time spent on character development. That being said, it's not like we're going to discover anything new with these characters, they all pretty much follow the typical anime character templates: The Femme/Bishie Heartthrob, The Sporty one, The Angelic/Loli one, The Loud Comic one, The Posh/Stuck-up one, The Glasses one, etc... It's all pretty much colour-by-number, isn't it?
My Verdict: The cast is PRETTY, but the show's BORING so overall it's "pretty boring"....get it? Hey, gotta do something to entertain myself cuz god knows this anime ain't doing it for me.
