SPOILER FREE

Sing a Bit of Harmony may be chock full of cheesy songs and second-hand embarrassment, but its message is good. If you go into it with the same expectations you would for a Disney musical, you won’t be too disappointed. The characters are well written, the soundtrack and animation are good, and the plot, despite being cliche, is cute. 7/10 from me.

The characters were pretty relatable. They’re high school students whose parents work for a big tech company and they’re all pretty mortified whenever Shion breaks into song. There’s diversity among their personalities and I liked the character dynamics and chemistry between everyone. Their relationships are more than just “friends” and “lovers” and “childhood friends.” I appreciated how you came to a fuller understanding of their dynamics as the movie went on, and as the plot progressed, how those dynamics changed. They played their parts well, so I don’t have any big complaints as far as characters are concerned.

I went back and forth between liking the music and not liking it. I watched it dubbed so that might affect my review slightly, but overall I found the songs Shion sings to be very cliche. The lyrics sound like something out of a Barbie Princess movie, perhaps, or maybe “Twist Your From Upside Down” from Teen Beach Movie 2. It felt a bit like they were hitting a nail with a thick textbook rather than a hammer; yes, this movie is about friendship, we get it, you don’t need to start singing every twenty minutes about it. The soundtrack, on the other hand, I really enjoyed. It’s not the best music I’ve ever heard, and maybe even a little disappointing for a music anime, but overall I thought it was pretty good.

The animation was better than I expected. I didn’t have particularly high expectations for the animation, but it was still pretty good. It was clean, and the CGI was good, but they did reuse a lot of shots throughout the movie.

As for the plot, I liked it well enough. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of AI stories to begin with, but for what it was, I enjoyed it. Some plot devices seemed a little clunky, some tropes were definitely cliche, and some actions by the characters didn’t entirely seem to fit with their personalities, but it was generally pretty cute. The plot is what felt the most like a Disney musical to me, with everything working out well in the end, everything tied up with a neat bow, but that isn’t inherently bad; that’s just what Disney does well, and this reminded me of it. The second-hand embarrassment, though, was pretty bad. Not quite as bad as Miraculous Ladybug, but I definitely cringed a few times throughout the movie, and that is part of why I didn’t enjoy the movie as much as I could have. However, I do recognize that it would be hard to execute this movie without any second-hand embarrassment while keeping the premise, so I don’t guess I can dock too many points for that.

So, would I watch this movie again? As someone who can hardly stand any amount of second-hand embarrassment, probably not—but, I can certainly see how others would enjoy this movie more than me. On the flip side, I can see how others might hate this movie. I guess it sort of depends on your opinion of Disney musicals and Barbie Princess movies. However, as far as “do your best, forget the rest, give it all you’ve got” goes, I don’t think this is the best JC Staff could have done. There’s not one single weak element, but none of them are particularly strong either. All in all, Sing a Bit of Harmony is a cute, feel-good movie for your inner child ~~unless your inner child hates second-hand embarrassment.~~

edit: I originally scored this a 7/10, but somewhere along the line it changed to 6.1/10. do with this information what you will.