Tonight is one of those nights where I remember this anime and my utter disdain for it. It appeared promising: a story about a group of boys that, one by one, make up a choir led by a renowned conductor. One would expect brilliant music and production from a promising concept. Kawagoe Boys Sing falls COMPLETELY flat with lackluster and often annoying characters. The conductor is by far the most insufferable guy in the whole thing. Arrogant, apathetic, narcissistic. There's not a single redeeming quality about him. We do not learn much about him as the show progresses. The best part about him is his
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baddie grandma, an absolute diva with a pet skunk?? badger? thing? that follows them around and gets into random shenanigans.
The students all fall into various and stereotypical archetypes. There's a set of twins that have nothing going for them besides being twins. Gentle giant. Guy with glasses that's an obvious nerd. One of the best friends of the main character - which is never referred to by name, they ALL call him Cardbocchi-kun because his thing is singing in a cardboard studio - is what I like to call a "me three!" guy. The best side characters by far are Adachi, a delinquent-type who wears gothic makeup at school, and Kobashi (better known as IT-kun) who gets a random??? yet very enjoyable lore drop shortly before the series ends. He ends up having to leave the school because of his idiot dad, it's a whole thing that unironically becomes one of the better aspects of the show.
Everything is riding on the choir's formation as well as a performance at the end of the show that will redeem the conductor's reputation. The boys all suck at singing at first. They all get their own individual songs (Adachi's is AWESOME, btw) and a group song or two, the biggest one being the one they spend half of the episodes making. After spending an agonizing amount of time forming the group and training their vocals, they head out to some cabin in the woods to work on making a song with someone that the conductor knows. I would rather watch paint peel than tolerate the pacing of this show. It's slow and awkward and awfully clunky. ANYWAY. They finally make their stupid song. There's a random plot in between where they beef with a school we never really see again.
OH! I forgot that they're competing against another school. There's one notable character that goes to that school and it's a guy from Cardbocchi's childhood. It's an interesting route that doesn't go anywhere until the very end. I wish they had focused on what the two of them had, because it was far more interesting than what the main group of guys had going on. They do the competition. Also, the music is all really mid, which you think would not be the case for an anime centered around music.
The animation....oh boy. It's pretty bad. I wouldn't call it abysmal, but it's close. There's not a lot of movement happening, but the still frames still don't look good, even in close-ups where you would expect to see finer detail. With simple character designs, the art SHOULD be slightly better, but it just isn't.
The music stinks, the plot stinks and drags on, the characters are boring. AND the visuals are difficult to look at. So what IS good about it?
It's over. Well, mostly over. A stage play is out/coming out for it. I don't know where the audience for this came from considering that the series isn't very well known by anyone. Trying to look up anything about it is like roaming through foggy mist in a ghost town. It honestly would have been better had it been released that way, live performances of the theatrical pieces would have been a hundred times better than the slop put onto the screen. It's worth noting that there is a black character (Magic, duos with The Doctor) in the choir that is handled in a very non-weird way, something that was pleasant to see considering how the other characters were portrayed so oddly AND how POC have previously been portrayed in anime.
I remember seeing posts blowing up online when the stage play was announced because everyone was pleasantly surprised to see they had cast an actor that would accurately portray Magic instead of pulling the racism card. It took everything in me to not go through all of the quotes in warning like a town crier, begging everyone not to get too curious because, inevitably, their searches would lead them to this abysmal dogshit. I don't know how I finished this series. It's only getting a few points for Adachi, my darling angel who I want to take to a better series, the entertainment and fear factor of wondering how bad it could get, and one last point for that weird skunk thing.
Do not watch this. PLEASE do not watch this.
Oct 23, 2024
Kawagoe Boys Sing
(Anime)
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Tonight is one of those nights where I remember this anime and my utter disdain for it. It appeared promising: a story about a group of boys that, one by one, make up a choir led by a renowned conductor. One would expect brilliant music and production from a promising concept. Kawagoe Boys Sing falls COMPLETELY flat with lackluster and often annoying characters. The conductor is by far the most insufferable guy in the whole thing. Arrogant, apathetic, narcissistic. There's not a single redeeming quality about him. We do not learn much about him as the show progresses. The best part about him is his
...
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