Good show, but couldn't they do an English course before starting?
A series about music is always hard, since you actually need to have good voice actors who in turn also need to sing well. And when it comes to be good music, it's still a matter of preference. And while the show itself is pretty interesting and the music is fairly decent, the songs are in my opinion nowhere near good.
The story on the other hand is done well and the show is interesting and doesn't become uninteresting along the way. But having read the manga before watching the show, there are a lot of disappointments despite the show not being anywhere really bad. It's a pretty nice show to watch, but there are also a lot of aspects where the show simply fails – technically, every time they used English. And when it's about singing in English ...
Animation: Starts off brilliant, only to see it degenerate every episode.
The series starts off with excellent animation, as shown in the OP-animation. Many CG backgrounds usually scream for a huge contrast with the drawn characters, but – just like displayed as the dog walks onto the road in the OP-animation, it simply works here. There is no contrast between the background and the characters and in the first few episodes it stays that way. Great animation and perfect integration between fore- and background.
Unfortunately, this doesn't last all the way. By the time we have passed the first 10 episodes, the animation has detoriated to what I feared: the characters do not integrate that well into the background anymore. This makes the characters look out of place in the fully-CG background. Fortunately this happens only every now and then and not all the time, so I thought I could live with it.
But if that was the only bad thing it would be okay. Unfortunately they kept doing it more often, to the point where the final episodes were pretty bad in terms of animation. Re-used scenes when they were on stage also happened more often, giving the end of the show a really bad taste of animation.
Sound: Good voiceactors, but none of them have heard of the language English.
EnglishThe voice actors were good – as long as they didn't need to speak English. Too bad the show consists of parts where characters are supposed to be fluent in English, or where Americans appear in the show. Many of them are shockingly bad in their pronunciation, regardless of whether they were Japanese, Americans or Japanese fluent in English.
I've been in Japan myself and didn't have much trouble understanding them when talking to the few people who dared to speak English. But nearly all of those spoke better English than anyone in this anime. The only people who were doing a fairly decent job were Ryuusuke (3 out of 10 lines were flawless, the rest was pathetic) and Goldy. It wouldn't have hurt to hire a few native speakers in order to spell out the lines for a couple of characters. But it certainly wouldn't have hurt to let someone check the text before putting them into the show. Quality Control is also necessary, after all. Even fansubbers know that, so why doesn't the core business?
The songsThis also affected the songs, as it's really shocking if you hear major songs being butchered by lousy pronunciation, not to mention the cripple lyrics as Japanese people oftentimes don't have a clue about grammar or spelling. But besides that, considering the story's about some great band with a great singer, Koyuki doesn't really excel in that.
It's a major issue with music series, they have to live up to the greatness the manga tries to convince the reader. But where a manga lets the reader imagine how it sounds, the anime actually has to produce the sounds. And there is where many shows fail.
Koyuki has a decent voice, but despite him having a certain original voice, his singing isn't exactly much above average and that breaks the spell somewhat.
Story: Anyone seen KareKano?
The story plays well, despite them taking out several character-driven side stories. This becomes especially true when they suddenly start talking about an idol singer; in the manga Koyuki has been thinking about her for quite a while, but in the anime they never bothered with that detail – until there's a conversation about it and Koyuki turns out to be a fan.
The same thing goes for a few other details where you can find yourself wondering if you've missed something. Nevertheless, the story emits an atmosphere which causes the show to never become boring. The plot paces itself well, the characters fit in perfectly and except for the ending, the series never really does anything wrong storywise – except for the ending.
If anyone has ever seen KareKano, one understands what I mean. A photo album which skips through a whole arc, whereas the manga had spent several volumes showing what they had done there. It simply feels cheap.
Characters: Technically, no bad characters despite the numerous characters in the show.
I can't really say anything except that the characters are good characters. Round personalities, interesting characters and plenty of development despite not really focusing on them.
In the manga there are often subplots which involve one or several characters and focus on their own development, but despite the anime cutting those out, there isn't any real loss. This also because the anime only covers roughly 1/3 of the manga (of which the last episode covers ~3 volumes out of those ~10 volumes; the manga is 34 volumes) and most of those developments have yet to be used. So for the anime this suffices.
What's the most surprising is that despite the show involving so many characters, they all feel realistic. Even the side-characters have value in the plot. This is very much worth a mention here.
Value & Enjoyment: Good series to watch.
All in all, the show is a fairly good watch. If you can live with the bad English pronunciation, the lousy English dialogues at times and the mediocre singing, this series doesn't do a whole lot wrong.
The atmosphere is excellent, the story plays well and the series simply stays as interesting as it was in the beginning. Despite the flaws, the series is still interesting and the characters make up for many of its flaws, so I can imagine how many people will appreciate the show for what it tries to show.
