Yeah, I bet you didn't know this song had an anime

Bad Habits is a song made by Ed Sheeran released on June 25th and it is currently on its way to being one of the biggest songs of 2021 in the world. On August 11th, Ed Sheeran and popular artist Rui Ikeda teamed up to make the official anime music video of Bad Habits.

This collaboration is the first step of the "4b9" project by the digital manga agency Number Nine and music production production MUSIC FOR MUSIC. The "4b9" referencing the collaboration between the 4th art, music, and the 9th art, manga, which are recognised by the Louvre Museum (this also explains the company name Number Nine). This project aims to make more collaborations between musicians and manga artists to create unique music videos. As their first project they chose Rui Ikeda, an upcoming artist which currently has half a million followers on his instagram, to collaborate with Ed Sheeran. Following Bad Habits,

And in my opinion, if this is the first step in a slew of music videos made by manga artists, it is rough start.

Let's start with the music itself: Bad Habits is a bad song but a song that I enjoy. Ed Sheeran has been going into the direction of pop for a long time, but he never fit into the genre of pop. His most recent album which he collaborated with tons of artists to make pop songs was especially atrocious. With Bad Habits he very much continues to go into the pop route, and on this song he feels more out of place then ever before. His vocals are so unusually high and touched up, it almost sounds like he is trying to mimmick Doja Cat. The overal song feels kinda generic and nothing in the song really justifies its big popularity. Still, I do have a soft spot for the song. The wattery instrumentals in the beginning are nice, some of the lyrics like "Nothing happens after two, it's true" are really catchy and the basic structure is also pretty nice to hear in a current music landscape of hiphop beats and very short songs.

Oh yeah I was supose to be talking about the anime. Since we got the song out of the way, let's complain about Rui Ikeda. Let me start of by saying that I respect this man's work. His artstyle is pretty dang nice to look at and the colors he uses are also quite nice. It seems that in terms of Rui Ikeda's skills he did his best. I also want to mention that the transitions from panel to panel can be quite nice at times. But the transitions as a whole is the first problem with my music video: Most of them are not really well done. They linger on too long, or don't flow as well into each other, thus it takes me out of the anime. The art by Rui Ikeda looks alright, but I also feel like he hasn't drawn enough stuff at some points. It feels so bare at times and while the music is bouncy and exciting, the visuals are empty and slow. It creates this weird disconnect between song and video that is not quite enough to make the video bad, but just enough to notice it.

Also, what the hell is this story? The synopsis says it is a tragic tale between a lover and a vampire man, which I guess happens, but you either have to pay real good attention to see what is happening or you have to scroll back to rewatch it to the point of understanding. So the story follows a woman who seems in love with this famous singer. A cat in a pink suit (which I think is supose to be Ed Sheeran) convinces her to go to a party, in which she gets increasingly drunk. She then meets her beloved singer and gets in touch with him. When they get closer together, it is revealed that he is a vampire! Then the pacing of this 3 and half minutes music video gets real bad fast, as we get the story quickly retold, but this time from the vampires pespective. This is half as long as the woman's side, but contains just as many things happening as the woman's side. This creates a pacing so fast that when he told his side you are completely disoriented of where the story even is.

After the vampires side of the story is told, we get a scene of the woman running away from demons when she discovers her favorite singer is a vampire. She gets eventually caught by the vampire and before the vampire is even able to bite her, she hugs him. This makes him stop and she (I think?) forgives him. Before they can do anything else, the vampire falls out of the window (because they were apparently in a clocktower?) and gets dusted in the sunshine. The vampire dies and our woman is left in grief. This ending would have made a lot more impact if 1. It wasn't such a sudden ending 2. It was explained more how the vampire fell out of the window in the first place and 3. if the vampire was more developed (aka his side got more screentime).

While this was my review of Bad Habits the anime. Overall, a music video which song is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine and the video itself has passion but confusing production values. All I hope that the next videos of 4b9 are gonna be better.