「音楽。心を照らす光。」
"Music. The light that illuminates the heart."

— Asahina Takt.

Yes, you read it right. Those are the deepest words that Takt (and any other character in the show, for that matter) has to offer on what music is. Music is a metaphor for light. For visuals, not sound, not touch, not even heat. Light. This sums up pretty well what the anime has to offer, as it all comes down to selling a pretty game.

The positives of Takt op. Destiny are art style, character design and, in most occasions, animation (though it gets lacky at times). You can see the pattern. Visuals, not music. To be fair, the soundtrack and sound effects in this show are... acceptable. They are well structured, there is technical knowledge behind it, clearly... but it lacks any "soul", anything that would make it memorable or meaningful. Much like our protagonist Takt, who can play very complex pieces, but can't reach his audience and provide an emotional experience to them (until he does, for some reason). You'd expect this to be intentional and a major point for the development of the story, but it's not. It's boring until the very end.

To talk about story, oh, well, do we really need one? Just make some monsters that hate music fall on earth or something. D2s are one dimensional evil creatures with little explanation and no apparent motivation other than stopping music, which threatens them. That goes hand in hand with Schindler, the first major villain of the show, because we need a megalomaniac human villain too, to show that not everything on the human side is black and white. Humans can be bad too. They can even hate something so beautiful and harmless such as music... because... well... anyway. Moving on.

Sagan, the 2nd villain of the show, is another bland and mentally inept character. His motivations arise as a mean to "fight fire with fire" or eliminate pain by re-signifying pain, which supposedly were to give him more honorable goals. Sagan actually comes up with a half decent idea on how to deal with the D2; although an incomplete plan, it could realistically gather support or, if necessary, even a conspiracy to his side. But no, Sagan tries to do it all alone for no good reason, and in the most harmful way possible, despite there being much better alternatives that could spare many innocents' lives... like just letting people know what he's doing and giving them time to escape.

When we stop to analyze the plot events and the tension (if any) in the story line, it can be confusing. What is the main conflict? We know that music is censored and controlled due to the D2, but they don't have an explanation. Human counterparts don't offer anything better for that purpose. Do we even have real stakes? Meaningful drama? Well, we can put some Beethoven when the generic psycho waifu is choking one of our protagonists, I'm sure the 5th Symphony — which no one ever heard before — will add more spice to that scene!

Regarding characters, the protagonist is supposed to be someone obsessed with a hobby, but he's written by a person who doesn't seem to possess that passion. There is no convincing reason for his intimate relationship with music neither through dialogue nor through his actions — yes, he always wants to play the piano, but why? The best justification is a father complex after said man died, which was not further explored. In all honesty, the depth of characters in this show is nonexistent. They will be very glad to state their plot role with plain tropey words. There are a couple character deaths in the anime, but none of them felt compelling enough, either because the script was terrible and the events happened solely to benefit the plot and provide poor shock value, or because it didn't feel like they died at all. If I have to be fair, there are some fun dynamics between Takt and Destiny, but there's not much more to it.

We have to mention some questionable choices audio wise; missed opportunities, I'd say. Like the music playing in the background and the fight happening on the screen having little connection other than the obvious matching tone — fight scene, glorious combat music; sad scene, violins and a low tempo. There's also so much battle noise during some of the fights that I could barely hear the music sometimes. Why couldn't the music be the battle noise instead? There was room to make more unique decisions, but Takt op. Destiny sticks to the comfort zone of average direction.

Another point in that regard is using background tracks so often even though the show is trying to convince you that music is, supposedly, banned from this world. It would be very interesting if we had solemn silence instead, if the anime could focus more on using sound effects to create depth and immersion, while leaving music only for the battle scenes with Musicarts (the waifus that anthropomorphize the music of their maestros) or other scenes where it's actually supposed to be playing. Then, each play would have more meaning in contrast to the consuming silence of the in-betweens. Of course, that's not what happens in Takt opt. Destiny. Music plays at the same frequency as any other show, and has the same impact on the audience as any other show. It's generic, and not deserving of the "Music" genre.