So we finally make it to the end of Hypnosis Mic’s anime. What better way to end it than with everyone rapping together? I mean, that’s what this franchise is about: rapping together and against each other. A kind of generic and expected ending, but it seems that the anime is teasing a second season hmm?
The episode was just fine, it went about the way expected. Secret Aliens (that name is still hilarious) save Fling Posse by using them to lure out the rest of the groups and Ichijiku allows it. They really wanted a fair fight with them all and that’s what they got. The situation with the children in the refugee camp ended okay since Saburo blackmailed them with a recording, to which there wasn’t any point to it when Otome called Ichijiku to leave them alone and head back. Things really did go well for all of them.
The interactions were really fun this episode, The Dirty Dawg came back together for a bit, and all the characters sang the second verse and chorus of the OP which was cool. It was awesome hearing Iris rap, and Rex’s lyrics…were not very good at all. But his dinosaur attacks were kinda sick.
The episode itself was fine, but I think the most interesting part was the ending! Hmm, whomst is this gentleman? While we didn’t get to see any of the other guys from Badass Temple and Dotsuitare Hompo, we at least did get to see Rei from the latter. The creator of the hypnosis mics! And he’s working with The Party of Words huh. I…actually knew this because I accidentally spoiled myself…again…and read that. And something else about him that made me scream but I REALLY can’t say but I still beat myself up over it. For some reason I’m an idiot when it comes to this series and spoil myself too much. Speaking of things I spoiled myself over, Nemu also comes in but with a different uniform. A uniform much more similar to Ichijiku’s and Otome’s, and it sounds like she’s going to be part of their next big plan. We don’t get much more out of that unfortunately, but they sure have set up something really exciting for the next time.
I was hoping that we’d see the other guys of the other divisions but they still left something to look forward to. The anime ends with the groups wanting to kick each other’s butts and…that’s just fine lol It looks like if we get another season, Tom and his group are still going to stick around seeing that he was actually employed by Rei and not The Party of Words. Ha…haha…oh goodness. Considering character relationships, well alrighty! Too bad we didn’t get more with Nemu but it was a tease. Things are okay now, but what about later? Hmm.
FINAL IMPRESSION
Let’s be honest with ourselves, Hypnosis Mic is a very strange and unique series but that’s why I love it so much. You’re really not supposed to take it too seriously so it makes me laugh when people do. There are some things to take seriously here with plot and character relationships, but this is a zany series with guys fighting via rap battles. It’s insanity and it’s great.
The anime itself has issues, and the last couple episodes were a real slow down with maybe a couple of slower episodes in the middle as well. Still, this was a series I immediately fell in love with and I can say I’m a huge fan of it. I mean, I’ve already got myself merch and all that sooo whoops. I think the biggest draw of the series is the rap since there aren’t much franchises that go with rap and hip-hop culture, and the anime went hard with it. It’s amazing that we got new songs every episode, as well as some existing songs sprinkled in here and there. We didn’t get proper rap battles until the DRB but they didn’t disappoint with those either. The music is great, with a couple clunkers maybe, and it was paired with some gorgeous visuals. We got CG with the longer and bigger battles, and even then the CG looked great. The 2D visuals of the rest of the songs were so beautiful and clean, as well as very creative and fun that matched with each group’s style, as well as the tone of their song. Honestly, if the animation for Hypmic were anything below this the anime would have been way less enjoyable, but A-1 Pictures really pulled out all the stops for this show and I’m super happy about it.
If I had to give my complaints about the anime, it would be the lack of plot and some of the characters getting little focus. When it comes to the (main) characters, we have so much of them and they all have so much personality that I genuinely like all of them. Tom, Iris, and Rex I’m sort of indifferent about but I do think it’s cool that they’ve traveled the world and experienced so much. The Party of Words are really cool villains, though Otome took a backseat to things but Ichijiku stood out and I really like their designs as well.
The guys of Hypnosis Mic are great but when I compare to how they are here in the anime and how they are in the dramas (I haven’t listened to them all yet), there’s a stark contrast in some of their personalities and a couple plot things. It seems like they kind of held back on some of the characters and their personality traits, as well as depth too. Maybe if I hadn’t checked out some of the dramas while watching the anime I wouldn’t have cared as much, but seeing as how I play the mobile game as well I knew they were leaving out some of the fun of their characters. They still are great and I do have my favorites, but I do wish they touched on their quirky traits and fun interactions, but I know there wasn’t as much time for it. Still, they’re all such a fun group of characters and I always have so much fun watching them so I can’t really complain all too much.
But I think the biggest thing Hypmic lacks is in the plot department. We know they had a war, we have The Party of Words and the invention of the hypnosis mics, that’s all fine. Their plan before of wanting to control the four divisions to gain more power was also pretty great. But we’re still missing a bit more depth and there’s still so many questions that haven’t been answered, as well as all the TDD stuff, Nemu, etc. I think Hypmic doesn’t focus on the plot much on purpose, but there’s still so much material I still haven’t gone into yet, and I think what the anime did was handle whatever material it had at the time. Still, I’d love for the series to go deeper into that.
But hey, I still really enjoy these colorful pretty boys and their raps and songs so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sure this series is strange, and ridiculous, and also kind of dumb but I love it. I genuinely do. I do think we’re going to get another season, but I don’t think that’s going to be happening soon on account that the second DRB was just announced pretty recently and they haven’t happened yet (tho they will soon). That should be super exciting and I can’t wait to see who the winner of that one will be. And until then, the anime is just going to have to stop here for now. For people that want to get into the series easily, the anime is the best way to go and if they like what they see, then they can check out everything else (dramas, songs, manga, game). The anime has its problems for sure, but I personally enjoyed it so much that I can kind of overlook it. I was really scared going into this anime because not many new music anime can grab me like this and genuinely be good, and Ensemble Stars was so awful that I was scared this was going to be too. Thankfully that wasn’t the case at all and I’m coming out a really happy girl. :3
tho funimation’s subtitles were bad
I’m going to miss covering this, but my time with this series isn’t over. I’m giving it a pretty great score of 7.75/10 because of how enjoyable it was. This anime and series definitely is not for everyone but I’m sure you’ll at least have a fun time with it.
With my top three faves being Ichiro, Jakurai, and Doppo I wonder what their group name would be?
One of the unique things about Hypnosis Mic is the world and characters are slowly being developed more as time goes by (more so than other series with ongoing source material) and so lack of depth indicates, most likely, we’ve simply “gone back in time” information-wise. Of course, this sucks for an anime, where people somehow expect it to hold every single answer…
Over the weeks, I’ve basically come to terms with the fact HypMic’s anime was meant to act as an extended ad for the rest of the series (…maybe more so than other anime adaptions) by essentially delivering the series’s sense of over-the-top fun to the masses and so, if it encouraged people to seek out the other arms of the franchise, then it’s done its job.
Funimation’s subtitles were sometimes laughably bad (aside from helping people with hearing problems, why do they subtitle the laughing? You can tell a person is laughing just from how their mouth moves…), but as for translating the songs (obviously one of the most important things), they really knocked it out of the park.
Lately, a lot more series have been bothering with rap. Most notably, Akudama Drive had an ED produced by the guy who also brought us BATTLE BATTLE BATTLE.
Noting the reception Japanese Twitter users gave the reveal of the Secret Aliens (causing “Tom is 30 and Rex is 16” to trend – …yes, I didn’t believe that either), HypMic has a chance for an s2 after the 2nd DRB wraps up in March. (I keep remembering Boueibu got an s2 with about half that much reception…) There are events related to disc releases right up until September 2021 and even without that, they could always suddenly announce it on one of the regular livestreams, so fingers crossed…
Yeah I have to agree with that. I mean, a lot of anime are advertisements for the source material and that does kind of bother me since I believe an anime adaptation has to be its own thing. But like you said, Hypmic is unique in the sense that the story is slowly developing so the anime being a little lacking with that is kind of forgiven because of that. And hey, look at me, the anime made me look into the series deeper so it definitely did its job haha.
Ooh that’s cool to know. I haven’t listened to the full version of Akudama’s ED yet but that’s a nice fact. It’s nice having more variety with music so I hope this sticks.
Okay you’re absolutely right, I’ll give Funimation that. One of my complaints about music anime are the lyrics not being translated so I’m extremely grateful that they did for Hypmic. Honestly the lyrics here are so incredibly important so if they hadn’t translated it the show would be less fun. So bravo. But yeah, Funimation is kind of a mess and their subs in other shows are…not that good. I’m glad I don’t have to read Gentaro’s horrendous subs anymore.
With how insanely popular Hypmic is, I would actually be shocked if we don’t get another season. I have a good feeling we will, just gotta wait for the 2nd DRB to finish and we’ll see from there. In the meantime, I got some catching up to do.