TAKT OP.DESTINY

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA Actiontakt op.Destiny: Haruka Tsuioku no Anna - Harmony of Hope
MANGA Actiontakt op. Bara no Kuchizuke de Ute!

REVIEWS

• 

  ZNote

  29/100
  It made me, derisively, ask what the point of it all was, and not even care enough to hear an answer.

  SPOILER-FREE!
  Most anime, in some form or another, is a form of advertisement. That does not necessarily mean that it’s meant to draw attention to an adapted source manga or light novel, though. Anime as advertisement could also be for the studio that made it, as certain studios have established clout or reputation, and thus naturally have more attention drawn to their works. Other times, an anime could act as an attractor for a new enterprise altogether, serving to drum up enthusiasm and hook in a new audience to the emerging property.

  takt op.Destiny was a Fall 2021 anime that served to draw attention to the takt op franchise. As a new collaboration between studios MAPPA and Madhouse, a show like this has a two-fold mission that it must complete – succeed as a standalone piece of media, while also being good enough to make people think to themselves that the mobile game it’s helping to market is also worth their time and energy. Making an anime is already hard enough especially in the current anime industry climate, and these extra expectations upon the show don’t exactly make its job any easier.

  ---

  In an apocalyptic future, monsters known as D2s violently attack any location that plays music, as music is the only thing that can hurt or kill them. To battle the D2s and attempt to bring peace and music back to humanity, various individuals called Conductors are imbued with the power to command Musicarts, superpowered beings that use music as a combative force. The Conductor Takt Asahina and his Musicart Destiny start a journey with their mutual friend Anna to the New York Symphonica, hoping to learn the truth behind the D2 appearances, all while trying to stop them and allow music to be played freely once again. Along the way, they will meet other Conductors and Musicarts, battle D2s, and struggle.

  The series starts off well by integrating its exposition with actual events. Takt is well-oriented as being the odd duck out in this post-music world, being so drawn to the piano that he plays it, despite knowing the danger it would entail. Destiny’s laconic personality clashing with Takt and Anna’s impatience at Takt and Destiny paints a good foundational tableau, establishing the chief dynamic among the three. With an action sequence to show the power of the D2s and Musicart concept, takt op.Destiny manages to convey most of its information effectively. The intriguing premise behind Musicarts and the D2s, and the comedic moments with Takt, Destiny, and Anna, gives the first episode a strong first impression as they travel on their merry way.

  But the potential fun of a road comedy action series gets derailed quickly once more time is spent with the main trio beyond the first episode. Takt’s personality is so disenfranchised and aloof that unless someone is having a discussion related to music, moments just seem to mostly bounce off of him. He’s cold, and while that might make sense in a post-apocalyptic landscape, it makes getting endeared to him far more difficult. Because she is neither a Conductor nor a Musicart, Anna serves as little more than the means to get the group to the Symphonica by driving them, or is trying to make contributions to the relationship between Takt and Destiny.

  As far as Destiny is concerned, it is revealed very early in the show that she used to be a human named Cosette, that she was Anna’s younger sister, and that she also likes music. Her relationship to Takt is, at best, incredibly vague and at worst is stunningly underdeveloped. The idea that they are bound together by their Conductor-Musicart connection reads more as a flimsy attempt to give Cosette characterization without actually going through the effort of doing so. Any character development that Destiny would undergo, or that Takt and Destiny would undergo together down the line, becomes too rickety and forced because not enough time is taken to make Cosette a more rounded character beyond being adorable. Whether it be through Anna attempting to make Takt and Destiny get along, or Destiny realizing something about Takt, herself, or the world around her, it reads as clumsy.

  And the bit of development that we see from Destiny isn’t that engaging, either. Since she functions as a robotic or emotionally blank character, she falls into a lot of the common trappings associated with such an archetype. Calling something a “creature” instead of a “cat,” or a “tool” instead of a “hammer,” Destiny’s bed of knowledge seems almost completely centered around fighting D2s and food. The latter of which is mostly used for comedic purposes, even if it’s supposed to refuel her to continue fighting. Aside from a character obsessed with food not being inherently funny, Destiny’s actual switch from emotionally blank to a more-complex emotional palette doesn’t have a solidified point of orientation. The result is that the shift is abrupt and crammed.

  Also crammed is the idea of how music factors into this story. takt op.Destiny offers a lot of proselytizing about how great music is, but largely without probing it further. Music is, supposedly, more-engrained in the show’s DNA both in regards to the plot and the characters, but is kept bizarrely at a distance throughout most of the run. This even impacts moments where music is meant to take centerstage. There’s a sequence where Takt is playing jazz piano and Destiny talks about what Takt’s music does to her, but so little of the music actually plays that it never got the opportunity to enter myself as a viewer. Destiny’s discussion happens in a setting completely divorced from Takt’s playing. This sequence, and others like it, insinuate that music’s contribution to the story is limited to being a plot device or gimmick, rather than an actual force that moves things forward. This also factors into the series soundtrack – despite all the famous classical pieces, we so rarely hear good quality recordings or re-orchestrations of the works, which takes away from the sense of raw power that they allegedly have.

  That’s not to say that the show doesn’t try to incorporate music, because it does, albeit not very well. One other Conductor-Musicart duo, Lenny and Titan (which is probably a Leonard Bernstein reference), meet with the main trio and they try to train Takt and Destiny. It ultimately boils down to Lenny saying, “Feel the harmony,” without actually explaining what that means. I can readily accept that becoming adept at battle requires practice, just like music requires practice. But the idea that a single phrase or battle somehow manages to put Takt and Destiny in such synch together makes little sense. I wanted to believe that it was going to go for an angle that their synchronicity was a sign that Cosette was within Destiny somewhere. It would have helped salvage the ambiguous relationship between Takt and Cosette. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen, nor is their relationship ever put in its proper limelight.

  Visually, the series manages to be just adequate on most fronts. The action sequences are alright, but never blew me away despite their fluidity. The landscape depictions are decent, and the designs on the D2s crazy forms and the Musicarts show creativity. Speaking of the Musicarts, just like music’s ability to take on different forms and genres, the various Musicarts all have distinct designs that establish them as their own individualized beings, emotional content notwithstanding. Some of the ways they’re able to incorporate their forms into attacking are fun, although takt op.Destiny misses an opportunity to make even fuller use of this. Each Musicart is named after a piece of classical music, yet it never seems like the piece of music serves as an actual influence on the attacks themselves or their personalities. The composition names are framed more as namedrops instead of having a deeper, symbolic connection to the character. “Destiny” as a designation is indeed a reference to a Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony nickname, but it doesn’t extend any further other than implying that Destiny the character is a protagonist, “destined” to stop the D2s. I guess I’m just confused as to what this show was trying to accomplish with all its musical business.

  And that, in a sense, is why takt op.Destiny doesn’t work; it’s a series confused about what it actually is trying to do. It wants to be a mahou shoujo action piece, but also wants to aspire to more meaningful discussions about what music means to people. It wants to be a road comedy, but the comedy dries up so quickly that it breaks down rather than cruises. It wants to make the D2s out to be malevolent, but leaves them without direction. Not knowing what the point of the D2s or their attacks was remained until the final episode, making the show’s building to the climax come across as ill-conceived and desperate.

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  takt op.Destiny fails as road comedy, action romp, and thought-provoking show about music. Its characters are never given enough time to fully flesh-out their personalities beyond small quirks or emotions, and the true aim of the antagonists is kept in the dark for far too long. The action pieces are merely passable despite some decent individual moments, yet do not salvage the languishing story. Its discussions about music cannot move beyond simplistic blanket statements about how wonderful the art form is, and it never sufficiently explains the connection between Musicart and Conductor. This show committed the cardinal sin of art – it made me, derisively, ask what the point of it all was, and not even care enough to hear an answer. It may have been a glorified advertisement for the mobile game, but that is not an excuse for poor execution.

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• 

  SpiritChaser

  10/100
  A poorly made anime showing that everything Gacha touches turns into sludge

  The fact that Takt Op. Destiny was made to promote a gacha game was all you needed to know to not expect much. Everything gacha touches turns into sludge. The result is yet another series that is all animation and cute girls but nothing else. Not only that, many times the animation looks hilariously ugly, and still frame power point presentations make an awful lot of appearances for something that's been getting praised so much for it's animation. Here's an anime about music even though there rarely is any. They could have at least tried using some lesser known works to be more unique. Even rarer than that is character develop.

  This series is a prime exactly of how not to do character development. Takt is an annoyingly bitter piano player who is also stinky. I did develop a bit of a soft spot for him because of his struggle to write a good song, but mostly I felt bad because his character was overly poorly done. His character goes nowhere in the series from beginning to end. All that build up to write a song they only showed you 3 seconds of. It's like they ran out of budget or time to compose one more piece; and it was the most important one, in fact. Ana somehow became one of the most useless and irrelevant characters I have ever seen. They cheated by making her relevant out of nowhere at the last second. Near the end they decided to have her do something that made no sense because there was no build up to it, and she still had no development other than being reduced to a piece of fan service. It was the writers last ditch effort to make her relevant. It's hilarious that the whole time the viewers thought Destiny would consume Takt but it was really Ana who consumed Destiny for the sake of the plot in the end.

  Then there's Destiny. She is yet another boring and bland Violet Evergarden rip off done wrong. After having no development for a large part of the series, they rush through it towards the end and her emotions flipped 180 degrees so fast it was executed terribly and felt awkward. After that she goes back to her apathetic ways. Her personality is so deceased it became annoying. Cossette was a much more likeable character that sadly got barely any screen time. If I was to try and justify it, maybe emotional Destiny was so bizarre and out of character because it was Cosette coming out. A split personality would have been better for this character. Destiny and Cosette were truly a tragedy. It felt like an insult to them for the writers to just toss them away when the romance between her Takt was what actually had development and build up. Of course Ana had to come out of nowhere, and Cosette sadly became a ghost forever after episode 2.

  The plot itself is a boring road trip across the United States. They couldn't even make that fun and instead infested the series with irrelevant side quests. It felt episodic, and episodic anime feels mostly hit or miss most of the time; at least in my experience. Sakugan is another series suffering from this.

  The D2 represent something that annoys me about several series: The inclusion of nonsensically written villains that are too easy to beat, and thus there are no stakes or risks. They appear aimless and are there for the sake of animation and just being something for the protagonists to fight. They feel so hollow as they have no clear motivation, goals, or proper backstory. Monster writing in To Your Eternity and Wonder Egg Priority fell this way also. By the time they try to introduce bigger villains who were actually in control, they come off as hilariously badly written and bland. Hell was amusing at first, but with no development, since not doing any is this series' specialty, her character got too hollow and eventually too annoying with her over the top personality.

  Was there anything good or respectable? Titan and Lenny were, and they deserved better than what this lump of coal of a series gave them. They're much better than Takt and Destiny as main characters and should had been the main ones. I have little complaints about Lenny besides him rarely being there, and Titan at least had character unlike that pale ghost with the pretty colors. An amusing fact about Titan and Lenny's voice actors is that they worked together before in The Aquatope of White Sand as Kukuru and her boss. Now that I think about it, I've been enjoying Scarlet Nexus and Deep Insanity: The Lost Child more than this.

  This is a series that almost offends me. The only thing it really excelled in is being one of the biggest disappointments of the Fall season, considering how much many viewers were looking forward to it. It's a soulless disaster hardly worth talking about. Speaking of this promoting a gacha game, have fun playing it; it got indefinitely delayed.

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• 

  liliphobic

  45/100
  it did far more things wrong than it did right ... a disappointing show with an unsatisfying ending

  SPOILER FREE

  takt op.Destiny did far more things wrong than it did right. The animation and character design were easily the best parts of the show, but that really doesn't mean much. The pacing ruined both the plot and the character development, and the show as a whole said very little about music as an art form despite being a music anime. Many individual elements were subpar, leading to the entire show being far from good.

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  The character development was done incredibly horribly. If you asked me for an example of good development, I’d point to this show and say, ”Do the exact opposite of this.” Everything was so rushed that by the end of the show, many actions felt unnatural. Though there were many moments where they were obviously trying to develop the characters, it didn’t flow with the plot, seeming out of place and forced. While there was plenty of room for good development in each of the characters, there just wasn’t enough time for it to come naturally.

  The explanations of crucial elements were lacking as well. The D2s received far too little explanation, and many other important aspects did not get expounded upon—the Musicarts, the Symphonica, even the motivation behind the antagonists were all very poorly explained. It made it hard for the audience to relate to their universe and understand it, and even if the citizens of their world didn’t fully understand everything, the lack of information given to the audience made it difficult to enjoy. The show didn't explain its name, either; I think it means something like "Takt created Destiny," but I'm not even sure if that's correct since the show never elaborates on its name.

  The pacing was also some of the worst I’ve ever seen. I struggle to think of an anime with worse pacing. It affected the character development and the plot; things felt rushed, forced, and unnatural. It landed somewhere between episodic and not, and I found myself checking the time every few minutes to see how much longer until the episode ended. It also took far too long to introduce the main antagonist, to the point things were dragging only a few episodes into the season. I’d like to think that some of these problems would get fixed if they had another 12 episodes, but I’m not even sure that would solve things.

  The music was a huge disappointment too. While the music itself wasn’t horrible, I’m not the type to pay attention to the music unless it’s really good, and I only noticed it during fight scenes or when I was really trying to. For a music anime, that’s a little pathetic. Additionally, musical references like “feel the harmony” didn’t get much explanation (once again) and the show seemed to use music more as an awkward plot device than as a genuine force in their world. The best thing I can say about this show’s music is the concept of Musicarts, which I did find intriguing, even if they weren’t explained very well.

  As for the good parts of the show, the character designs for the Musicarts were some of the most interesting designs I’ve seen in a while. The animation was also quite good. While it’s not on the same level as shows like Demon Slayer, I’ve also seen far worse. Even though the backgrounds weren’t anything outstanding, the fight scenes were animated well.

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  Overall, takt op.Destiny is an anime I struggle to even call “average.” It was a very disappointing show with an unsatisfying ending—an especially huge let down since both MAPPA and MADHOUSE worked on it. Due to rushed character development, minimal explanation of crucial parts of the world, and pacing that was all over the place, I have to say that takt op.Destiny is not worth the watch. Learning piano would easily be a better use of your time and an infinitely better way to appreciate music than watching this show.

  *a 4.5/10 on my rating scale is "below average and unenjoyable"

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