Review of Listeners

.::The premise::. The set up is actually pretty neat. A world under the threat of some monsters called earless fought back by some famous dudes called players based on actual musicians fighting on their mechas which are actually their amps. Episode 1 starts with the Echo finding a mysterious girl (Myuu or µ) which is an unknown player and also she doesn't have any memory. Now Echo has to travel the world trying to know who she really else all while they meet up with other players. Sadly, it just doesn't deliver what you might expect as the music undertone is severely missing almost in every aspect. .::Characters::. Echois most of time an interesting character and Myuu is pretty likable girl; their development as a couple is heavily hinted from the start and their dynamic feels great in episode 1 and 2... but then every episode insist in splits them in different ways, to the point where they spent entire episodes on their own. In the end, you feel like you didn't spend enough time with them (together) to be impactful for the obvious climax
Players just share some little homage to their counterparts in their name or design. Most of their designs are pretty unique, but most of them are just bland in personality or just appear as part of the next stepping stone in pointing the MC into the right direction. Jimi which is main figure in the series is the one who suffers the most from this by not living to be the legend the series makes him to be.

.::Sound::.
The soundtrack is just OK which is sad for a music based series, there seems to be a main music theme for the series but it's very underused. The neat part is that every ending video has a new song with an unique video featuring scenes from the same episode in a net way. I saw every ending, but not a single song stuck with me or felt particularly good aside from the opening song and video which is great.

.::Story::.
The story is pretty linear and most episodes have a self-concluding sub-arcs, but only some arcs rise above average. Since the world building is pretty bad, is hard to care, and most of things resolve by shouting harder, by having random stuff happen or just cause. In a nutshell, the story doesn't feel like it has something to tell, nor it makes use of the music thematic.

.::Animation::.
Most of time is above average, the opening and endings animations are a banger, the CG is ok.

.::CONCLUSION::.
Episodes 1 - 8 were pretty serviceable for me, it entertained just enough to keep watching, but episodes 9 to 12 it takes a nosedive with nonsense, focusing on less interesting characters and by doing random BS to keep the story going, making me reflect on why did I even spent time watching this.

It might not be awful, but it'ss not a good mecha series, it's not a good music anime, it's doesn't feel like good shonen material and doesn't deliver a compelling couple dynamic.