This was definitely one of the most anticipated shows of this season, and one of the year. Bones hit it out of the park last season with the sequel of Mob Psycho 100, and they’re showing their animating chops again with their newest two-cour show by Shinichiro Watanabe, Carole and Tuesday.
The first episode’s title is a reference of Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors”, the song and artist that inspired Tuesday. It makes me wonder if all the episodes are going to be named after actual songs, though this one was very important for Tuesday so I feel they might switch it up.
There’s a lot of good things about this show, very good things. The production quality is out of this world. The character designs are great, though I do have to admit that Tuesday’s obviously seems out of place with that Victorian style of hers. Either way, the characters look great, their facial expressions and body movement are incredibly fluid and smooth, and the colors. They pop and makes the setting look even more beautiful than it already is. I’m kind of back and forth with the setting. If it wasn’t said, you would just think it was a futuristic Earth as you see Carole running away with her robot suitcase, going on the techy train, and watching a bunch of drones and AI robots around Alba City. Alba City itself just looks like a more advanced New York City, with the poorer area looking like regular NYC. But they’re on Mars and it makes me wonder how that’s going to affect the story in any way? The Mars thing was mentioned very briefly, but with Carole mentioning that she’s a refugee she could either be a refugee from some other part of Mars, or a refugee from a failing Earth? Would be very cool if it was the latter.
The story so far is pretty simple. The show basically gave it away that Carole and Tuesday are going to be making history, so we’re going to see their journey to that point. Tuesday is a rich girl that runs away from a controlling home to become a musician, Carole is a poor girl with no family making it by after losing one job after another, but she has the freedom to play her music, even when no one notices her. No one until Tuesday as she walks by, sad that someone stole her luggage. She senses the beauty but emotion in Carole’s melody, and the two girls meet. Then run from the cops.
The girls have really great chemistry! They have completely different backgrounds but they both see they love music. They get to know each other and bond over music and end up jamming together, and it was quite beautiful. That said…as much as the singers’ voices are gorgeous, it’s really jarring to have the singing be in English. The singers’ voices aren’t similar at all to the speaking voices and the change in language itself is just really strange. It takes me out of the immersion and, again, while it was beautiful, it was strange. It’s like when I would check out English dubs of music anime they don’t dub the song, so the show plays the original Japanese song out of the blue, with obviously different voices. It’s not that fun. Sometimes it can be funny. And it makes me wonder if the singers are going to dub the girls in English, or they’re just going to get female actresses with similar voices to the singers. In that sense, it feels like a dub of this show would probably be the most enjoyable experience then. But that won’t happen for awhile so I’ll make do with this and hopefully I’ll get used to the drastic change. At least the singers have pretty voices. And speaking of music, the OST is fantastic but I expected as much.
And while Carole and Tuesday have great chemistry, I found their meeting to be a little forced and rushed. This is a two-cour show so there would have been plenty of time for the two to officially meet up and agree to play music together. It didn’t have to all happen in the very first episode, so the meeting didn’t feel totally natural. Though I wonder what kind of journey both girls will have.
I’ve had my ups and downs with the show. I don’t dislike it or anything, I still enjoyed this premiere. I love the atmosphere, the characters, the music, and Angela also catches my interest as well. Can’t wait to see what kind of role she’ll play. Also the futuristic setting with all the robots and AI singers being the norm, I feel like that’s totally something that will happen in the future. I mean so far some jobs right now are being replaced with automation, and self-driving cars, so we’re not too far off from this kind of future. Kinda makes me nervous lol.
It wasn’t a perfect premiere but it was still a really good watch. There’s lots to love from this show and I’m looking forward to checking out more. I just wonder about the pacing of the show. This first episode felt a little fast but I can easily see the show maybe taking it slow sometimes so maybe writing about it could be tough. I sure hope not, so I’ll stay optimistic.
Possibility of watching: Guaranteed
Possibility of blogging: High
Also, the girls actually have a real Instagram account so you guys can follow them! Should be exciting to see what else they’ll put up. 😀
Looks like this might be my generation’s version of Nana.