God....okay, … I don’t like Tack.Op Destiny to be honest. I wasn't even hyped for it either, it was just there, so I gave it a watch. And this is a no from me, dawg.I don't hate it per se. There's nothing glaringly wrong about it, it's just that there are so many little gripes and problems that build up and bother me.It just feels like the writers didn't try.

STORY

Basically Takt is a better version of listeners ,but that's honestly not a compliment.Both shows are about two people in a world where music is almost gone from the world, and they go on a journey and fight with something music related.In Listener’s the people fighting are called “Players’ and in Tackt Op. The people fighting are called “Musicarts”. But just like both, their stories are very vacuous,hollow,and basic,and both are really boring.

I already made a review on Listeners,but the problems I have with takt are mostly similar to Listeners,just keep that in mind.But focusing on Tackt Op.destiny(which has the most clumsy title of an anime ever and a pain in the ass to type)

The themes about music feels less like a theme and more like an ambiguous plot device, the only times music plays a role is when the show reinforces over and over that Takt likes music and to use the concept of music as some ambiguous conceptual being that the villains monolog about.Despite it being about music, the style or setting of the show doesn't incorporate music that much into it.I feel like the only reason that the anime takes place in USA is because of the music culture there,but instead of exploring different types of music,incorporating it into battles more than just having a fancy conductor stick, or hell being somewhat creative with it, it's just fight scenes mainly. Fight Scene on top of fight scene on top of fight scene. WIth loud ass music.

I think the best way to describe the writing in Takt is like a video game adaptation of a video game that didn’t exist.
(note-i didnt realize until i checked on mal that it was based off a mobile game that came out at the same time this aired,but i fukin called that shit so yea)

There are just a lot of things that make no sense, and the show doesn't explain that much about where the D2 come from or how they exist, also the explanations about the Musicarts and the Maestros is murky at best .Despite having long flashbacks and info dumps, there is barely anything valuable to get out of most of these scenes,and it feels like the show is just using fightscenes to distract you from how little the story is actually progressing.there is a lot of exposition that barely matters repeating info we already knew but also not addressing other important things,it doesnt help that the dialogue is trying way too hard to be clever, and for a journey anime, it's soooooooooo boring.

Each episode is almost the same, The gang go to a location, Destiny fights the D2 and that's about it.Sometimes there are episodes where nothing fucking happens. And it's not because of world building since they already have an American setting to work with.There are no situations to help shake things up, build the characters or anything, there are just fights and more fights that are so over the top and trying so hard to be flashy by having the most goofy ass sound effects. And there are just over the top emotional moments for the shallow characters and in the words of the famous artist Icona Pop: “I …….don’t ……….care”

And the setting bothered me too. The show takes place in 2047, but for some reason it feels like a setting older than the one we're in now. I know the D2 have destroyed a lot of civilization,but for some reason technology regressed???? People still use paper maps, watch old vintage television, and one of the girls still uses a FUCKING LAND LINE TELEPHONE IN THE YEAR 2047???????I don't think anyone uses smartphones either.so it feels like this setting taking place in the future didn't matter at all.

#CHARACTERS
The characters are one note ,inhumane like, and don't have chemistry, the main two are at each other's throats for half the show.
Cossette’s whole character is that she likes to eat and break things.I get the writers wanted to make her the alien entity who learns about human nature, but her main sign of character development is her repeating character personalities over and over to other people. Even characters who did not matter to the plot.its like her voice actor pulled up the character wiki's and read aloud from it. She does develop late on but its way too little and waaaay too late,The thing about her is that she is a new entity called Destiny who in the body of a girl who passed away called Cossette,but by the end of this show, Destiny had less character personality than the girl who passed away in episode 2.,What really pissed me off though, is that the characters kept stating how much she has grown and im like “bich, really?”Destiny went from a sugar eating robot, to a one dimensional sugar eating human.

And the main dude, Tackt,was just a bore. He has no personality outside of music,he is insanely bland,so full of himself,and feels like a puppet controlled by the plot.He’s like a caricature of an art student, focusing only on what he makes and literally not caring about anything else.His character development really peaked in episode 2.His dynamic with Cossette was heartwarming,but when Cossette turned into Destiny, that dynamic vanished and Tackt turned into a sodden, pretentious,ass, with little to no likeability or personality outside of “I like piano , i love piano, i wanna have sex with piano, i wanna tap dat piano ass”.You might say he could make a good “video game protagonist'' but without a player’s control on what his personality is.The show had so much potential to develop him and his dynamic with Destiny since she took the place of his dead sister, but its like the writers tried that in some scenes, gave alll the way up , and just turned him into heroic character who fights evil for the rest of the show.

Anna doesn't matter,she is literally the chauffeur of the anime, her sister mattered to the plot more than her, all she did was fall through a plank of wood and tell the group to shut up when they were fighting.

If anything the better characters I liked were Lenny and Titan, not because they were well written or anything ,but because they stole the show at some parts.Titan is cute and kicks ass resulting in her having the best fights in the show, And Lenny is….hot. I think the directors would agree with me because there are a lot of shots on his ass for some reason,aaaaand That's all I got for him. I didn't say the characters were well written did I? Because they aren't. Titan literally doesn't matter, she could've been anyone basically.And Lenny is a personified tutorial,showing the characters how to fight, catching up to speed about what's happening in the story(i.e. not much) and disappearing for a good chunk of the show.My only compliment is that the story by the end had a bare minimum of character development resulting in stakes and making the fight scenes more hype.Goes to show how valuable a character is to an anime. And its not much in this anime

Oh and the villains. They're not just lame, they're probably the worst villains I have seen in a long time in any medium.There are two of them, and you know they're villains right when you see them.The first one is like a dumber version of Syndrome from the Incredibles, he feels envious because of how others reject him and then later on he has this weird delirium where he wants to become a hero by causing destruction to happen and solving that destruction making him more praised by others.Incredibles took those two conflicts with him and made it work, but in this anime, those two conflicts feel like they contradict each other. Not to mention he’s fuking stupid. The villian after that is even stupider.The main villains motive is sooo bad.Not bad in like a “oh its evil” kinda way, Bad as in poorly written, stupid, and nonsensical. “ You know, people sacrificing their lives is not cool man, you know what would help? Basically Genocide, yea that will definitely stop people from dying” Ugh.

#ART AND ANIMATION/SOUND
I usually dont talk about art and sound last but there's not much to mention.Its a collaboration between two studios who both make fabulous looking things,Mappa and Madhouse.My problems with both studios is their inconsistency, Madhouse sometimes can make their anime look great and other times make it look like Overloard(aka dogpoo). And Mappa is basically the same way but more drastic since they make an anime every five seconds.

Unfortunately, the inconsistency plagues this anime. It feels so unstable. The fights are really nice and top tier sure, but as is said before, the characters or story barely add any sense of investment to the fights so it leaves me bored going ohh and ahh mainly. Some scenes look like a standard tv anime and other cuts of the same scene are so jarringly higher in quality, it looks like a different anime entirely..There isn't a lot of harmony, which is ironic coming from a show revolves around music. Speaking of music its also inconsistent. Some of it is good, albiet a bit loud,like the piano tracks, and other tracks sound like stupid guitar music during fight scenes. Sadly most of it is unmemorable.And the foley was just obnoxious, its like a bad diarreha bowl of jojo sounds,micheal bay, and madoka magica. Even so much of a swing of Destiny’s weapon has like five different sounds.

#ENJOYMENT
Y’know after thinking about it, this show is bad, I can't deny it. It's not because it does anything awful, it just doesn't try, and falters in basically every area. The show tried when it came to looking good, but didn't try when it came to what mattered which was the writing. There are just so many holes that feel barely thought of.This show is one of the many that thinks its concept alone is enough for an anime and its lack of competent story and characters piss me off the more I think about it.And its nonending that made no sense really did it for me. Does no one care about writing a good anime story beforehand anymore? Probably not the case, Odd Taxi months later is still a masterpiece, AOT, Kageki Shoujo, hell, even Tokyo Revengers had a better story. And I'm sure there a lot of manga and written works that have yet to get an anime. Sadly they will have to wait for their time to shine, because right now, poorly written cash grab anime based on irrelevant mobile games will have to take their spotlight.And I hope Mappadhouse is proud of themselves if they ever break even from the sales of their ingame currency/blurays.

Fuck it,

I started this review very ambivalent, but now I'm a little salty. I wasted my time on a show like this. If i watched this seasonally, I would’ve gone insane.