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As someone who´s been a big fan of this project since it started, I was very adamant about starting this anime. Usually, anime that gets adopted from gacha idol games ends up being mediocre at best and this was certainly one of those cases.

Art and Animation:
The moment that the A1 pictures logo popped up I knew exactly what to expect. When the characters are standing still and not moving, the art looks fine, but the moment something moves the quality drops significantly. The characters themselves are quite colourful and flashy, but even that isn´t enough to distract someone from the awful 3D animation that ... is mixed in. I´ve never seen the need to animate the rap battles in 3D as the characters most of the time just stand there flailing their arms about.

Music:
So, this was an incredible disappointment for me…Why they felt the need to make all of these new anime-exclusive songs that sound so soulless and boring, is beyond me. In my opinion, all characters have great VAs, the songs that were written for them in the anime just don´t do them any justice. There was maybe one song that stood out to me (Shibuya Ghost Night), and the others were pretty much forgettable and honestly not something I can see myself listening more to than once. This should´ve been the main focus of the anime, but they failed to capture the feel of other HypMic songs. Accompanied by the awful 3D animation the rap battles are a chore to sit through. They already had all of these perfectly fine songs written and recorded already so why ruin the main selling point of the franchise like this…

Story and Characters:
The story is an interesting aspect of this anime. While it works in game form when you only have it written, it turns really weird when it´s accompanied by visuals. Fighting crime and pointing at knife-armed criminals with a microphone just does not look right. It makes the scenes where they talk about criminals and drug use all that more insignificant. There is no world-building, so whatever nonsensical situation happens you just have to accept it. Either the anime should have been a bit longer or focused more on just one thing. I don´t think the one episode per division thing worked well to introduce the viewers to the society, characters or the whole mic system.
The characters are what saves the anime for me. They all have their own unique quirks and personalities and while these were not as fleshed out as they could have been, seeing them interact with each other is pretty fun. The designs fit the characters perfectly and while colourful they are not obnoxious to look at. The mics and speakers are ridiculous aspects of their designs, but I think they were incorporated in a way that doesn’t make them stand out too much.

Enjoyment?
I probably wouldn´t enjoy this as much if I wasn´t already a fan of this project. Not something I would recommend as an introduction to the franchise.