Review of Listeners

Listeners shows you can't rely on good voice talent alone to prop up your show. When it was first announced, the list of A-list seiyuu being cast as virtually everyone had piqued my interest disregarding the actual content of the show. Talents and performances from people you don't really hear from that often nowadays with the influx of newer cheaper talent. So I vowed to myself to sit through this to the end at the very least, I mean, if they could spend enough money to get good talent, surely the actual show would be at least somewhat decent wouldn't it? Turns out I was deludingmyself to the highest degree. If I had wanted to listen to these performances, what I should have been doing instead is watching older anime. But enough about me, more on the actual show. That money had to have come from somewhere, and what remains is a lousy mess of animation that is neither inspiring nor is it interesting. Listeners is nothing but dad rock references propping up the main plot and narrative without having them make any much sense in the greater context of the overall story. At its core its a very simple boy meets girl kind of story yet executed in the dullest possible manner. The situations and setpieces Echo and Mu end up in just end up being music references to whatever the episode decides to be about, being references for the sake of references without providing any nuance or even humor to them. Like, the closest thing this reminds me of is Brutal Legend. But (for all its flaws) Brutal Legend at least managed to satisfactorily tie in its isekai rock world theme with its music references, Listeners on the other hand feels completely lost with its referential material not knowing what it actually wants to accomplish.

It's hard to believe this was done by Mappa. Animation quality is generally stiff, the mecha designs are awful, and don't get me started on the Earless. The music in this is incredibly bland, with a lot of the tracks being lawyer-friendly copycats of the dad rock stuff they love referencing. Really, nothing in this show works at all. There is some irony when that QUALITY baseball show ended up having better music than a show about music.

All in all, I made a new rule to myself in order to justify why I ended up completing a show I ended up disliking in the end. In this case it was probably some naive thinking that the show would come to its senses and deliver some spectacle that never happened. Or perhaps I wanted to listen to Kugimiya Rie's voice more. I don't know.

3/10