- Last OnlineOct 17, 7:19 PM
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- BirthdayApr 4
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- JoinedNov 4, 2011
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Oct 16, 2022
Honestly, I wasn't expecting to like this manga as much as I currently do. I literally only picked up this series because it lacked a MAL Rewrite synopsis and I could write one for it, but here I am still reading it a year later.
PPPPPP is written in a pseudo-sports manga style in terms of story progression and how the mangaka portrays the piano competitions throughout the series. Reading these competitions gives me the same feeling as when I read a match arc in another sports manga because they're paced in a similar way. There's a strange "hype" element that's present in each "battle". The
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art of the music scenes are just very unique. I'm the type of person who has a hard time with visualizing music, but the visuals that the mangaka uses to describe the feeling each piano player is trying to evoke is interesting. It's got a light and airy feel to it most of the time, but when it gets serious, the style seems to work for those scenes as well.
Lucky fits into that typical "I'm really bad at [sport] but I love it" sports manga protagonist stereotype with his love for the piano. The piano-playing aspects of the manga are a bit reminiscent of [insert supernatural sports manga here] and the goals/desire of the protagonist are quite similar to other revenge-driven stories. The rival characters (Lucky's siblings) all feel like those "insurmountable at first glance" foes that every generic sports rival character has. They're all quite unique in character design and personalities if contained within this manga. I specifically like Mimin's character the most since she doesn't take herself as seriously as the rest of her siblings and acts like an airhead 99% of the time.
I really didn't think this kind of manga would hit well with the general WSJ readership, but it's still around a year after it started serializing. It's not an 11/10 you need to read this, but it's also not a 4/10 either. In general, most sports manga hover around a 6/10 for being predictable and having characters that all have similar sports manga tropes and I would also rate PPPPPP in the same way. I don't think you should go into this manga thinking it's similar to other music manga. It's more of a sports manga, but the sport is piano competitions with slight angst angles and drama. As someone who enjoys sports manga, this is a really decent read to pass my time on a Sunday. This might not be for you if you're just not into that generic shounen sports battle-style manga story progression.
Overall, this manga is worth a shot if you're into sports manga, but want a bit of a twist. If you're not into that kind of style, it may be difficult to pick up this series. I think it's worth giving it a shot regardless, but your enjoyment may depend on how much you like a typical shounen battle-style manga plotline.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 3, 2022
What an absolute disappointment, honestly. Just read the manga. This is coming from a long-time TeniPuri fan.
ANIMATION: I'm over a decade deep into tennis hell and this anime is just awful compared to the stuff they used to put out. You can literally tell that the studio had 0 time to invest into this anime because they're so reliant on awful CGIs and stills. All of the "good" episodes only seem good until you realize that there was 0 animation/sakuga. When I saw all the seiyuu announcements for the Foreign players, I was like "wow, they have a huge budget if they were able to
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get [prolific seyuu] for this!"... Turns out the entire budget went exactly to securing the seiyuus and we get a measly $2 for the animation. At this point, I'm only watching this show just to laugh at the awful animation (hate-watchers or garbage anime connoisseurs, put this on your list).
STORY: This adaptation is so unfaithful to the source material. I am aware that the original anime was also not faithful to the source manga, but it was actually interesting with how they deviated in that series. I was emotionally invested in this specific arc of the ShinTeni manga and it was just painful to see them deviate so much from the actual story. To make things even worse, they condense so many storylines into less than 1 episode (yes, I'm calling out the Exhibition vs Germany and GS vs. Greece arcs). With how much content was in the manga, the Exhibition Match vs. Germany could've easily taken all 13 episodes this anime is allegedly contracted to run for. There is 0 suspense or anticipation for what's to come next episode. In the original anime, at least they ended episodes on cliffhanger points or in the middle of an important match, but this anime just ends when the match ends. You literally have no incentive to return next week to watch other than your love for this series. The manga has better pacing and actually gives us a reason to root for Japan.
CHARACTERS: I think I'm also particularly biased towards the execution of the story because I watched the musical adaptation of the vs. Genius 10 arc and that 3 hour musical was so faithful to the source material and didn't lose any of the character development along the way. This anime just cuts out a lot of the character dev that was instrumental in the manga for setting up the situations we find the main characters in. They cut out so much development from the GS vs. Greece match and crammed those 30-ish chapters into 15 minutes of anime. I don't know how anyone is supposed to like Ochi or Toono or Tanegashima's characters because they literally got shafted so hard in the anime.
SOUND: The OP slaps. The big name seiyuus they got for the foreign players (Hanae Natsuki, Midorikawa Hikaru, Kobayashi Yuu, etc.) was literally where all of the budget for this anime went.
OVERALL: I love this series but ShinTeni U-17 WC anime is a slap to the face to any long-time TeniPuri fan. Anyone trying to get into TeniPuri, please just read the manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jul 22, 2021
[Minor Spoilers]
I honestly just picked this up since it got recommended to me on the Jump+ app and I was a fan of the original Kuroko manga to give it a shot. I had no expectations and I felt disappointed by the end of it.
Story and Art: Robot x Laserbeam has a pretty typical sports manga setup (protag is somehow really good at the sport but doesn't care much for it, meets a rival who ignites his passion for said sport). The setup really allowed for this series to continue for longer than the 62 chapters it got, but WSJ is a brutal periodical
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and I can see why it got axed rather quickly. The problem with the setup is that it doesn't really go anywhere afterwards. The protagonist and his rival now have a goal, but then the story just doesn't do anything with that. There's a timeskip that essentially cuts out a significant portion of time that could've been used to develop characters. I'm still sitting here wondering why Fujimaki did that for seemingly no reason so early on in the series (there's no way he knew he was getting cut from WSJ at this point of the story). The rest of the series just showcased one tournament arc and then like 1/3 of one before ending (my guess is after the first tournament arc, Fujimaki heard he was getting axed). It was just lacklustre all around because there were so many characters being introduced in the chapters leading up to the conclusion; none of which ever end up being used or developed past just a copy/paste Generation of Miracles-esque design. The art itself is fine, but just boring and repetitive.
Characters: This is where I had the biggest gripes with the series as a whole. Almost all of the characters are just carbon copies from Kuroko no Basket and it's pretty evident with their designs. Even their personalities were almost carbon copies and it just sucks. It's difficult to develop characters for a sports manga that isn't repetitive/the same as another character from another series, but I felt that the character designs/development in this manga specifically were lazy. The protagonist was basically Kuroko but not invisible and played golf really well and a lot of the other characters had a mashup of personality traits from the Generation of Miracles/Seirin. You can really see the influences from Kuroko in a majority of the designs, which can be a good thing, but I just found it was repetitive. It's also not Fujimaki's fault that he introduced all these powerful rival characters only to have the plug pulled from right underneath him, but I could immediately match each character's design with a specific sports manga rival personality or draw parallels from Kuroko.
Enjoyment: The manga was pretty standard for the first 8 chapters and I felt myself wanting to continue with the series. I kept going with it until the end because it was short, but it was just one disappointment after another. The story loses its charm once you start drawing parallels and seeing how repetitive it is. I love sports anime/manga and I know there's going to be a degree of repetition in the genre, but Robot x Laserbeam was just way too similar to Kuroko no Basket and I couldn't enjoy it. The only thing I didn't mind was the lack of supernatural signature moves and things were more rooted in reality, but I feel like that would end up happening if this manga got a longer runtime than it did.
Overall, Robot x Laserbeam is just disappointing as a manga. There's just way too many missing story sections to make it something worth anyone's time. The characters just felt like a carbon copy of Kuroko characters and it was very hard for me to dissociate with that parallel once it was made. It's just kind of sad how it got cancelled by WSJ after 62 chapters and I feel like if it was serialized in a different magazine (Jump SQ for example), it would've been better for the story/pacing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 24, 2021
[Spoiler Free]
Honestly, I picked up this series mainly because I accidentally signed up to do the MAL Rewrite for the synopsis. I thought that it couldn't be that bad, given the fact that it was just a magical girl anime, except with boys, on the surface. Boy, was I wrong.
Let's start with the non-existent story. I don't expect anything from a magical girl/boy series in terms of plot because the formula is rather simple. I don't expect some deep-cutting psychological story or anything that isn't just your typical "enemy-of-the-week" kind of thing, but I found the time in between fighting the enemy to be wasted
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time. You would think with a magical boy anime, there would be a central villain the protagonists would be working towards to defeat. It is obvious that there is one, but you don't understand who they are or why they are evil until 11 episodes in. The entire story just gets shoehorned into the last 2 episodes and it just felt lazy. The first 10 episodes were just character introductions to the 5 protagonists, but they were done so poorly that they have no personalities. I don't understand how an anime takes 10 out of 12 episodes to poorly develop 5 characters and the villains when there are literally thousands of other titles that can do it in 1 episode. Hell, even other magical girl series had better plot and character setup in less time than this show.
The human character designs are quite bland and forgettable. The fairy designs were REALLY generous with the fujo bait fan-service (abs, big bulges, very well-defined muscles, homoerotic subtexts, etc.). I could not watch this series without doing a double take behind me to check for other people, even though I shamelessly watch other magical girl/boy anime and fujo bait series on a TV in front of others. There were a lot of questionable scenes throughout involving bondage and BL-esque situations and I don't know what to make of those, other than I felt mildly uncomfortable with it. The animation is fine for what it is. I wasn't expecting much from Pony Canyon and Studio Comet, so I had nothing else to base it off of. The transformation sequence is, by far, the longest one I have seen in any magical anime to date. The change from human to fairy form is a good 15-20 seconds and then there's like 1 minute of song every time with the fairy running/flying with no fighting or anything. I don't understand what that adds to the story and it just felt like filler because they ran out of things to animate. I started skipping the transformation sequence as a result because I'd rather have that ~2 minutes of my life to look at something else. The sound design wasn't bad. Most of the voice actors seem fairly new to the industry because I have never heard of most of them before (the most prolific VA is for the Queen, who did Yuru Yuri's Akari and SnK's Krista). They did what they could for this series and I can't fault them for that.
Overall, I don't know who this series is targeted towards and I did not enjoy it as someone who does consume magical girl/boy series and fujo bait material. It's way too mature/fan-service-y for children who enjoy magical series. The only thing memorable was how much I couldn't stand the BL-esque fan-service. Is it a good hate-watch? I don't know. Should anyone watch it? If your favourite pastime is to explain to your parents/roommates that what you're watching isn't hentai. Would I do it again? Only if I sign up to do the MAL Rewrite synopsis by accident again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jun 20, 2021
[Spoiler Free]
Drops of God/Kami no Shizuku has always been on my reading list and I'm so glad I finally got around to reading and finishing it. I originally picked this up when it was being scanlated, but after the group got a C&D, I never got around to finding out what happens next. I tried to read the French version, but I missed a lot of the subtle nuances since I don't actually understand French well enough to make it worth the effort. I got interested in the series again after doing the MAL Rewrite synopsis for it and decided to pick it up again
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(depending on when you see this review, the MAL Rewrite synopsis may or may not be up on the page, but it's been written). It makes me so happy that the ENTIRE 44 volume series was officially translated and published into English by ComiXology on Amazon Prime Reading. If you have Amazon Prime already, pick up this series and give it a go because it's free with your membership (not spons, but hey it's a legal and "free" way to read it).
I thought the story would be your run-of-the-mill "protagonist and rival face off in an epic battle to determine who's superior" kind of affair and it was, to an extent. The story revolves around Shizuku Kanzaki; a kid who resents his father and wine for reasons explained within the first 5 chapters, and Issei Tomine; a famous wine critic with his own ulterior goals also explained within the first 5 chapters, duking it out over the estate and extremely priceless wine collection of Shizuku's recently deceased father: Yutaka Kanzaki. It is one extremely long and convoluted family argument that involves a lot of wine, near-death experiences, sexual encounters, broken hearts and the universe dragging everyone together through the power of fermented grape juice. I found that the situations portrayed throughout the series have a sense of realism to them and are situations I feel like I can find myself in (or have found myself in before).
What surprised me the most was how spicy it got. I know seinen manga is targeted towards older male audiences, but there were a lot more panels suggesting sexual acts in this series than out of all the other seinen series I have read combined. The series was serialized in Morning, so all of the stuff was just heavily implied and as SFW as the mangakas could draw it, but wine is considered a sexual drink at times, so it makes some sense. The characters are well developed up until a certain point. It's kind of obvious to me that the mangakas intended for new characters that were introduced later in the series to be just as important as the main cast, but they quickly disappear into obscurity until the last chapters, where they suddenly remember that they existed and drag them back into the story. The relationships portrayed in the series feel real, but they aren't the central focus of the story and mostly exist to develop the main characters.
This story is one of those highly technical types of manga due to the central plot device being wine. I'm a lightweight when it comes to any alcohol, so my understanding of wine going into this series was just bitter, alcoholic grape juice. Within the first few chapters, that perception I had about wine was immediately turned on its head and taught me a lot about the drink. There is a lot of wine-specific terminology the series throws around, like terroir, noble-rot, vintage, grand-cru and tannins to name a few. The terms get introduced the very first time they are used, but the mangakas assume you'll remember the meanings as you go along. I found myself looking up more information on all of the terminology because I found the explanation in the story to be somewhat lacking, but I'm not sure if that's due to things getting lost in translation or if I'm just extremely dumb (likely the latter). The story does an amazing job showcasing wine and food pairings (called "mariages"), as well as a lot of fascinating wines from all over the world (France, Italy, Spain, Chile, United States, Australia, Japan, etc.).
I found that the technicality of describing REAL WORLD WINES in a fictional story to be a breath of fresh air when all I have been reading lately are stories rooted in mild fantasy or just your average teenage angsty romance. I especially like how clueless Shizuku was about wine because it allowed for the other more knowledgeable characters to give Shizuku and myself the Robert E. O. Speedwagon explanation of what's going on. The art and imagery to describe all of the wines is so vivid and rich that I felt like I could taste it at times. There are a lot of visual metaphors used in this series to describe wine, such as saying that a wine tasted like the conception of a child or the wine evoked the imagery of two ex-lovers passing by each other on the streets in the rain, not stopping to look back and check to see if it really was them. There were a lot of really beautiful panels throughout the series, especially the ones involving imagery relating to the "Twelve Apostles".
Overall, Drops of God/Kami no Shizuku is a fantastic manga that's worthy of the "cult classic" title it gets in France and within the culinary world. It's just the right amount of technical that I learn something new while also not alienating me with terminology that I don't get. The story is surprisingly more mature than most other seinen I have read and it really felt like a story that was targeted towards adults. The art is breathtaking at times and really helps you understand what the wine is supposed to taste like without having to actually describe the taste of it. Hell, I might even start drinking more wine now that I'm emotionally invested in this series. It was a wild ride getting to learn about the Twelve Apostles and Drops of God and I'm excited to start reading the sequel (if I can even find it). A solid 10/10 for me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Apr 17, 2021
I’m still in awe after watching this two-part ONA. I absolutely loved it and it really revived the passion I had for this series. Thank you to Funimation for getting the relicensing rights to the ENTIRE series. Without it, I would have been stuck trying to suffer through VPN-ing into Japan to try and watch it on U-NEXT. I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible and be as objective as I can.
The story is essentially written in a way to close out the entire TeniPuri and ShinTeni series. I’m glad that Komomi was the one writing/supervising the script’s direction. Objectively speaking, the premise
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is pretty mid and it’s just your typical “this is the last time I get to play with my senpais” story that you see in every sports anime based in a middle/high school setting. In terms of the story relative to the rest of the TeniPuri/ShinTeni series, it was surprisingly better than I expected. If you knew the backstories to the Hyoutei and Rikkai players, this ONA would be a very exciting watch. If you’ve only recently gotten into the series and haven’t taken in much of the material, asides from the manga and the non-filler anime, this will be a confusing watch. The story itself is set after the events of ShinTeni, so I’m excited to see what direction the rest of the ShinTeni manga will take after the release of this ONA (at the time of airing, ShinTeni is still being serialized in Jump SQ).
The visual metaphors for the new techniques were absolutely ridiculous. I knew a lot of it was just Konomi taking the piss out of everything and it was just trying to 1-up the other dumb supernatural techniques that were previously animated. I have to say, the visual metaphors were very well done and I was surprised that it looked this good. The rest of the animation is your standard Production I.G. anime. The CG usage wasn’t offensive. If you’re not looking hard, you wouldn’t even notice it, but there were some times where it bothered me slightly. It was pretty fanservice-y at times, which is fine if you’re into that. It’s pretty unfair of me to compare this ONA to its predecessors, since animation technology has developed a lot since the last OVA released (vs. Genius 10). That being said, if you’ve seen Kuroko’s Basketball and Haikyuu, it’s pretty comparable in terms of the animation. It’s very good for sports anime standards and it’s S-tier for TeniPuri standards.
I love the new original character songs that were used for the OPs and EDs. The voice acting in it was probably the best I’ve seen out of all the anime in this franchise. I’ve watched a lot of the livestreams on the TeniPuri Anime channel on YouTube with the VAs discussing the ONA and they all seemed super excited about being able to work on something related to the series again. Suwabe and Nagai were especially good at Atobe and Yukimura, but I have to give my kudos to Morikubo and Iwasaki for their Kirihara and Hiyoshi performances.
Overall, this is a great watch if you’re a fan of the TeniPuri series. If you want to get into this series, this might not be the best place to start, but it will give you a glimpse into how ridiculous one of the OG sports manga/anime actually is. Getting into this series will be a lot easier now, thanks to Funimation (and they’re going to redub everything too, which is going to be super interesting to see and I can’t wait to see who they’re going to cast). Hyoutei vs. Rikkai is a 9/10 in my heart.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Mar 14, 2021
After watching the rest of the series, I still stand by my original review. I don't even know what the point of this show is. As someone who shamelessly loves watching terrible sports anime for the sake of pretty boys/fujo bait, this show somehow managed to offer me none of that.
The main issues with Skate Leading Stars stem from the fact that the "sport" it's centered around isn't real. Skate Leading doesn't exist in real life. The writers tried to create some hybrid form of team figure skating with elements from single Men's Free Skate/Short Program, but you quickly find out that the writers didn't
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bother to expand on it afterwards. You get some sad excuse of an explanation at the very beginning of the series and then you never see/hear about it ever again. I'm not saying that the "sport" in a sports anime needs to be realistic, but if you're going to add that as an element, at least give it more attention than what you gave it in this show. The anime itself doesn't even show much of the sport in general. If you've seen other sports anime (Prince of Tennis, Slam Dunk, Kuroko's Backetball, Ace of Diamonds, Haikyuu, etc.), you know that one of the major points of animation is the actual sport itself. You can see that the animators show the movements and the game actually play out in those series. You don't get that with Skate Leading Stars. You get a shot of the five-man team spin around for 3 seconds at a time and random frame cuts to stills or scenes where there's minimal movement.
It's almost as if the point of the show isn't about the sport, but the relationship building that happens between the characters. That's also not what happens in this show either. The show does a terrible job of building any of the characters and their motivations for trying to win the Grand Prix. The main character, Maeshima Kensei, gives up solo figure skating because his rival, Shinozaki Reo, doesn't acknowledge him or his skill because Maeshima could never beat him in a competition. Somehow, between quitting his solo career and being in high school, he gets convinced by a classmate, Sasugai Hayato, that he should take up skate leading in order to beat Shinozaki, who also just happened to quit his solo career and join skate leading at a rival school. There's no rhyme or reason for any of these events to happen and you don't understand why any of this happens, other than for convenience. You get introduced to a bunch of "rivals" that have 0 background and are very 1-dimensional and boring. The relationships shown between Maeshima and his other teammates are also poorly developed. No one on his team liked him, but somehow, the very next episode shows that they're fine with him being on the team with no context/development in between. There's one episode where one of Maeshima's teammates transfers schools and they try to convince him to come back, but then the very next episode, all of the characters forget he even exists. The continuity is all over the place with random time skips. I'm honestly not even sure what the time is currently in the story because it jumped all over the place and skipped seasons in the universe.
I can't fault the art. The art is fine. It's inoffensive. It's competent. The character designs are quite boring. They also all have no personalities, so it's hard for you to become attached to any of them. Even as fujo bait, there's nothing that really draws you to any of them, since none of them have any attractive/interesting features. Looks are one thing, but if there's no personality, you're not going to be attracting the same people who like other sports anime for the sake of pretty boys with some personality.
I see this anime get compared to Yuri on Ice a lot and most people who are disappointed in it are the same people who thought it would be like Yuri on Ice. Skate Leading Stars is not supposed to be another Yuri on Ice. It's a sad excuse of combining Prince of Tennis/Kuroko's Basketball elements with a fake team figure skating sport. Do not watch this anime if your main intention is to fill a Yuri on Ice void because it's nothing like it. If anything, compare this anime with other team-based sports anime and you'll quickly see that it fails on so many different levels.
Overall, this anime is just poorly done, story-wise. It fails as a sports anime because the sport isn't real, the writers made the sport irrelevant to the story and there's next to no animation related to the sport itself. It fails as a fujo bait anime because the characters have the most boring, inoffensive designs with 0 personality. It wouldn't even matter if this anime came out during a different season because it's still bad. The 12 episodes it's getting is not enough to tell a decent story with sports as the main focus. If you tried to condense any other sports manga/anime into a 12 episode standalone series, it would be just as bad as Skate Leading Stars. If this show spanned 2 seasons, there's a chance that it would have a better story than what it currently has. As it stands, this is an anime you should skip if you like the sports genre or pretty boys. There's so many better shows out there for either category.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 13, 2021
After searching the internet for a while, I was finally able to find the 4 OVAs and watched all of them. I honestly wasn't expecting anything when I found them and I'm not even sure if I'm disappointed either.
The Best Games OVAs are just digital remasters of the "best" 4 games in the anime. Whether or not the Tezuka/Atobe, Fuji/Kirihara, Oishi/Kikumaru/Niou/Yagyuu and Inui/Kaido/Shishido/Ootori matches are considered the best is subjective, but they were some of the more interesting games that didn't involve Ryoma. I enjoyed the fact that they stuck true to the original source materials and it was a pretty big wave of nostalgia
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to watch these old matches be remastered.
In terms of story, you'd need to either read the source material or watch the original anime to understand what's going on. It doesn't make much sense if you watch it without at least knowing the source. It kind of falls flat on that regard, but most people who will end up watching these OVAs are people who have seen the original. The animation and art are a lot better than the original anime but it's pretty average for the standards when these OVAs were released (2018). They reimagined how to portray these matches and I liked that it was a bit different, now that the technological limitations of the early 2000s aren't really there anymore. I felt a similar level of excitement watching these OVAs that reminded me of my initial reactions when I watched the anime more than a decade ago. There were some awkward CGI moments, but I found you can ignore them if you don't look for them. The new character songs used in the OVAs aren't bad, but they're not that memorable either.
Overall, it was fine. Can't say I'm disappointed, but I'm also not impressed either. If you need something to satisfy the TeniPuri nostalgia, these OVAs would be the perfect thing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 10, 2021
The Hypnosis Mic anime was a very hyped anime within the HypMic fandom, but I can't help but feel like it just completely missed the mark entirely. As a fan of the original multimedia project, the anime pales in comparison and was just not a good show on its own either.
What is Hypnosis Mic? It's a multimedia project created by King Records with character designs from Otomate (Idea Factory). The premise of HypMic revolves around a fictional Japan run by women where weapons are illegal and men fight for territory using the power of rap. The story follows the relationship between ex-The Dirty Dawg members
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Yamada Ichiro, Aohitsugi Samatoki, Amemura Ramuda and Jinguji Jakurai and why they are are all at odds with each other. HypMic has been around since 2017 and has spawned multiple CDs, drama tracks and 5 manga series, each detailing the storylines of the main protagonists and what happened when they were still part of The Dirty Dawg. The so-called rap battles done in the project are an opportunity for fans to interact with the project and directly affect the outcome of the battles. Fans can buy CDs of the respective rap battle and inside each CD is a code that they can use to vote for the winner of the battles. This also affects the story of the universe, as each character faces consequences for winning/losing the rap battles.
The anime was hyped up to basically be another adaptation of the first division rap battle arc. Fans from the music and manga were aware of the results of the division rap battle being depicted, but were excited to finally see the rap battles be depicted visually with animation, rather than with static manga panels or audio. The animation itself was pretty standard. The usage of CGI wasn't too intrusive/distracting. The character designs are classic fujo bait material, which is the reason why I got into the series in the first place.
The raps were very creative and felt true to the original music style. Though they had to compose new raps for the actual rap battle part of the animation, the new songs echoed similar sentiments to the original music. I found myself enjoying a lot of the songs and still listen to them regularly on Spotify.
The story is by far the most disappointing part. Though the rap battle tournament was still the same in terms of the results, everything else about the story was a mess. The anime spent way too much time setting up character introductions and very little time on the relationships between the characters outside of their respective divisions. You don't really learn why Ichiro and Samatoki hate each other nor why Ramuda and Jakurai are at odds with each other. You don't learn about The Dirty Dawg rap group until the very end of the anime, even though the reason for the entire story stems from that rap group and is the central event stressed in the other media. These relationships are explained in the manga and drama tracks but failed to be captured in the anime. The anime introduced new original characters that were never seen in the previous media and they served little to no purpose until the last 2 episodes. The story diverted significantly from the canon that has already been established, which is a major disappointment for those who have been following the HypMic story for so long. Even as a standalone anime, the story makes no sense and suffers from "13 episode syndrome". There was just way too much source material for the animation team to condense into a 1 season anime and make it coherent and they did not manage to do that.
The HypMic anime is nothing more than a series to get your toes wet and a way for King Records to sell more HypMic merch. If you found yourself intrigued by the premise of the anime, then you will want to go out and seek/buy the music and the manga for more information. If you didn't like the anime, you may still find some value in looking up the source material, since the pacing in the manga and drama tracks are much better for telling the story. Overall, this show is just disappointing in terms of being an extension of the HypMic multimedia project and as a standalone show. It's just fujo bait without a coherent story and decent J-Rap music. I wouldn't waste my time watching this show if you're intrigued by the premise; just go read the manga or listen to the drama tracks on Spotify instead.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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