Carole & Tuesday

Be it for better or worse, 2019 is not over yet, but after taking an effort to analyze much of the upcoming Fall lineup, I don’t think it is at all early to claim I have found the single worst anime of the year already. While you may be able to gravely fault things like either second season of One Punch Man or Kemono Friends for being an insult to the creatives behind previous seasons, and while you may also be able to do something similar for Arifureta Shokugyō de Sekai Saikyō for serving as an exceptional low point in the production quality of modern ... TV animation, you’d be hard pressed to find something as bad as Carole & Tuesday which is as terrible as it is on its own creative rights. While anyone over the age of fourteen has probably long since resolved Studio Bones to the vaults of their embarrassing preteen memory, no one can deny the studio is capable of bringing some seriously impressive works of animation to life given the right collection of staff, proven by their work on Concrete Revolutio, Space☆Dandy, Star Driver, and others, and no such concession needs to be made with award winning, fan favorite director Shinichiro Watanabe heading the project. While the list of talented, capable staff isn’t as long as most top tier anime, his name is certainly nothing to scoff at, and the idea this would turn out to be such a heinous scrap of rancid garbage was a disheartening shock to my system. Hopes and expectations notwithstanding, I’m here to tell you Carole & Tuesday is the worst anime of the year.

Carole—who's the black one by the way, I swear to God that was a trap on purpose—and Tuesday are two young girls down on their luck. Carole is a penniless street performer and Tuesday is a runaway rich girl estranged from her family, but they fatefully discover one another through their music and decide to continue their humble craft together, only to soon be swept away by their own untapped well of talent and take the world by storm. It’s a pretty cliche setup as far as western media is concerned, but it’s unique in the context of anime, and it’s not inherently bad. However, everything about its execution is either messy or, more often, downright abhorrent.

This show is criminally soulless. The voice actresses don’t sing their own songs and, including all the side characters you meet along the way, are always switched with doubtfully professional vocalists during every musical number. Even if you like the show and characters, you’ll be immersed only until the singing begins, and then you’ll have to sit there for two and a half minutes while two English vocalists who don’t sound even remotely similar to Carole or Tuesday’s Japanese voice actresses take over, and the Japanese animators who don't understand English vowel sounds or mouth movements completely fail to match the English lyrics to the mouth animation, making the disconnect even worse and ruining the experience for anyone who isn’t both blind AND deaf. And even that is only concerning Carole and Tuesday’s English vocalist. Wait till you see some of the side performers I mentioned, like Pyotr for example, who is this preteen Instagram Celebrity who purposefully sounds like 2010 Justin Bieber as some kind of hackneyed joke only to suddenly develop a low-pitched, full-toned man’s voice when singing. And it gets more and more criminal as it goes on. I mean, they bring in Megumi Hayashibara in this one episode, and the replacement vocalist for her silky, dulcet voice is the full, powerful voice of a black woman! The animation production behind the performances—and the entire show for that matter—is just as terrible. You’ll see something like Crystal’s sequence in episode six which has a minimum of ELEVEN OFF-MODEL FRAMES, you’ll see something like GGK’s sequence in episode nine where the character’s entire costume is colored via a still image filling, or you’ll see something like Pyotr’s sequence in episode eight which is just fully, unabashedly rotoscoped. For such a gargantuan joke, this show isn’t even funny. As if I needed to tell you, all the instruments are CG, and if I had a dollar for every time Tuesday’s horrendous digital white outline shading clipped though the 3D shading of her guitar, I could personally fund someone to hand draw this entire laughingstock trainwreck myself. Speaking of character shading, the characters’ hands are all CG too, and the director clearly had no fucking clue how to integrate this well, which itself is generously assuming they even could integrate it well given the PS2 graphics quality of all the CG. When the shot composition is just the hands on the instruments, I guess it’s acceptable. I mean, it’s just ugly CG. Nothing new about that. But when they try to have a character’s entire body in the shot, connecting the CG hands to the hand-drawn arms, it’s laughable.

And I didn’t mean to so quickly brush over the rotoscoping in this show, seeing as it’s easily the production’s biggest, most fatal vice. As of episode twenty three, eighty four point seven three percent of all performance sequences are rotoscoped, and this is not including the two scenes in the show which are rotoscoped for character animation totally separated from the music. Bones’ 20th Anniversary Production, ladies and gentleman, this is it. And if you’re holding onto hope the few hand-drawn performances are animated by Yutaka Nakamura or something, like the legendary Viva All dance sequence from Space☆Dandy, you’re lying to yourself. No, no, no. Didn’t you know the second anime original My Hero Academia movie is coming out this year?! They’ve gotta chain that poor, weary soul to a chair so he can animate some more lifeless, mindlessly directed pieces of barely on-model sakuga, for which his genga is getting more and more scribbly as the years dredge on. And keep in mind the show is well aware the hopeless mice animating the few hand-drawn performances aren’t worth their salt at all, because they only let them do it for the nobody filler characters and let the digital camera do the heavy lifting for the characters who actually matter. Every. Single. Performance. Of Carole and Tuesday, the losers who are supposed to be the main fucking heroines of this god awful excuse for an anime, are fully rotoscoped. I’m not even kidding, and I urge you to go visit the cringe comedy image gallery for this show which I personally compiled and posted on my profile page, because a significant amount of those repulsively hideous screenshots are from these ROTOSCOPED SCENES. Like, Jesus Christ, people! Are you not already rotoscoping this?! IS IT THAT HARD TO TRACE A FUCKING PICTURE SOME DIGITAL CAMERA ALREADY DREW FOR YOU, YOU UNTALENTED SWINE?!?!? And forget the rotoscoping, honestly, because the rest of the show is immeasurably worse. Even having just taken the week off between seasons, they had to delay episode fifteen a week back. It’s no surprise considering episode fourteen was one of the ugliest episodes of TV anime I’ve finished in recent memory without dropping the show immediately afterwards, but it’s still utterly disgraceful. The show’s background art is some of the ugliest I’ve ever seen—forget about how generic, choppily colored, blatantly overlapped, and abundantly digital they are—simply because the characters don’t look like they belong on said backgrounds at all. There wasn’t a single person animating this farce who knew a single thing about depth of field, so even the endless scenes of our cast of wholly uncharismatic washouts blabbering on about banal bullshit look like garbage even though the only thing needing actual animation on screen is their mouth movements since they look like they’re FLOATING ABOVE THEIR SEATS! And God knows the bodily proportions are never anatomically accurate. I remind you this is Bones’ 20th Anniversary Production, so happy fucking anniversary.

I keep wanting to roll on to my next complaint without elaborating on the sheer depth of each element’s individual failure. Since the show sure didn’t, I’ve got to give some attention to those side characters I mentioned, because everyone outside the main rival is, in literal context, a joke. The show is so eager to construct worthless challenges and undefined hurdles, but every single artist Carole and Tuesday face off against is a walking meme. The cold open of the show reveals Carole and Tuesday are, indeed, going to become an international phenomenon, but for half the show they’re treated like little babies with no talent who need to do as they’re told and respect the greats, but they’re being told this by a bunch of old losers out of their prime whilst the only young people on the same level as the girls are, again, ALWAYS blown off as joke characters who were never even a competitor to begin with. In the one proper tournament arc the show bothers to set up, the initial audition itself displays no one but idiots the judges all unanimously scoff at. You leave the scene wondering why you even watched it, seeing as it set up no potential challengers and only managed to make fun of black people, Indian people, Chinese people, and European people all in the span of seventy two seconds. I remind you this is the same so-called competition in which our girls really had to give their all against such staunch competition as a trio of black transgender women—or at least male crossdressers—who come on stage only to sing the lyrics, in English, as follows:

-Fucking bullshit.
-Fucking bullshit.
-Fucking bullshit.
-Holy shit, oh fucker.

-Fucking bullshit.
-Fucking bullshit.
-Goddamn bullshit.
-Son of a bitch, what the hell?

-Oh, motherfucker, goddamn bullshit, holy shit.
-Oh, holy shit, bullshit, goddamn motherfucker. (Motherfucker.)
-Oh, fucking bastard, goddamn fucking shit. (Oh, fucking shit.)
-Son of a motherfucking bitch. (Oh, shit.)

I’m sorry, but if there’s a joke here, I’m not getting it. I’m not five years old like whatever retard wrote this disgrace, and I’m not going to giggle just because someone says a naughty word, and moreover, HOW DID THESE ASSHOLES EVEN GET PAST THE AUDITION WE JUST SAW WHERE THE JUDGES DISMISSED PEOPLE SEEMINGLY JUST FOR HAVING FOREIGN ACCENTS?!?!??!?

Which is a great segue into this show’s delightful writing, because if you thought this show’s nauseating audio/visual presentation was all it had to worry about, you’ve got another thing coming. The writing behind it all is equally, stupefyingly abysmal.

The character writing and dialogue is downright infuriating and made me—for lack of a better term—rage quit certain episodes which I had to pause and come back to just to stay calm and away from objects I might’ve hurt myself with. I seriously forgot what it was like to get so vehemently angry at a fucking screen. For example, in consideration of Tuesday’s status as a runaway teenager, Carole asks, “Are you okay being on camera?” ARE YOU OKAY BEING ON CAMERA?! Bitch, you FILMED YOURSELVES and uploaded it to the internet to get famous and went out of your own way to make an Instagram account with pictures of both your faces, TAKEN PERSONALLY BY YOU, to attempt to build your fanbase. There is such an overwhelming sea of lines which should be totally nonchalant throwaway piece of dialogue which end up breaking a character or the entire eternal logic of the narrative like a twig. There’s this other time they meet this musical legend guy, and his backstory is that he was in love with this other guy, that guy died, and the future legend consequentially “lost the ability to sing.” He then SUNG SONGS and GOT FAMOUS SINGING, became beloved, and only then did his fans’ support allow him to “find the strength to continue singing.” But you just got famous by singing…RIGHT?! There’s so many lines that contradict themselves, WITHIN themselves. Like this other, other time when the girls muse over their rival, Angela, having a larger social media presence than themselves, “Ehh!? Look how many follows she has!” What happened to her being internationally famous as a model before even holding a microphone? Did the show just forget a main character’s backstory, BECAUSE I SURE DIDN’T! Like this other, other, other time when Gus, Carole and Tuesday’s manager and alleged comic relief character, suddenly starts categorically claiming everyone from Texas—yes, the actual state of Texas in actual America—is populated entirely by wild western cowboys in, I remind you, THE MIDDLE OF THE SPACE AGE. I must say, though, as someone from Texas myself, all I could think of while first attempting to process the ridiculousness of that scene was, yup, this fat deadbeat cuck whose wife left him for a woman is most certainly from the good ol’ Lone Star State. God, this show made me sick. Like this other, other, other, other time when Carole, a drifting orphan, finally gets to meet her father who tracked her down after seeing her on TV after he inserted himself into the story by buying a ticket to Mars, FROM EARTH, after just having got out of his SEVENTEEN YEAR PRISON SENTENCE. Like this other, other, other, other, other time the squad is brought in by this music guru to…I don’t even know, honestly, but this guy invites them over, and given his enigmatic social perception, Carole decides to ask, “Um, are all those rumors true? Like, that you’ll die if you’re exposed to sunlight?” Good question, except she asks this while THEY’RE STANDING IN A FUCKING AAAAHHHHHHHHAHAHA OH MY GOD A FUCKING GREENHOUSE!!!!

Alright, I was about to wind down here, but I must discuss this show’s attempt at theming. At this point, this review has been nothing but taking candy from a baby. This show obviously wasn’t trying, because how on Earth could you ever turn out this product if you were, so me railing on it just came off as vain. Luckily, this show really tries on its themes, and while I could’ve spent this time steepening the mountain of scripting flaws from the last paragraph like the fact the character Roddy finds Carole and Tuesday’s exact location from their Instagram in episode two in exactly eighteen seconds documented on screen, remarking how careless they were for not disabling that functionality, yet Tuesday’s mother and brother with infinite funds and a later established information gathering network can’t find their runaway family member for the life of them for five whole episodes, I think taking the time for this is necessary so this review actually has a sense of back and forth. Carole & Tuesday does entertain a disproportionally large number of ideas, but again, it’s all vapid, surface level bullshit trying to distract you from the fact anything else your attention could possible fixate on is uglier than roadkill and worse written than Sword Art Online. But the one concept they genuinely tried to make meaningful…was their copy of the Cowboy Bebop universe. For those of you who forgot (or for those of you who for some reason haven’t seen Cowboy Bebop), the Earth has suffered from a cataclysmic event ruining the landscape almost entirely and sending whatever factions of the populace with the means to other planets. But really only Mars, Venus, and the Moon, since technology has advanced that far, but not far enough to leave the solar system. The difference, however, is in Cowboy Bebop the demographic groups left behind on Earth were those who you’d realistically expect to have been. They weren’t a specific race or ethnicity, it was just a vague mix of third-world citizens, like South Americans, Balkans, Southeast Asians, and Africans who would’ve been too numerous for international powers to reach out to when evacuating the planet in a real world crisis scenario. Ed’s last name wasn’t Williams, or Johnson, or Brown, or Jackson, or Davis, it was Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV. There’s a reason that name contains a comically ridiculous amount of ancestries, as well as a reason my example names were the Google search results for “most common black last names in America.” It’s because in Carole & Tuesday the people left behind on Earth are specifically—and as far as the show lets us know—exclusively black people from first-world countries. Yes, that’s insurmountably retarded given black people’s relative population spread and resource wealth on the planet in today’s present age—forget the future age of this show—but this contrivance most importantly serves as the foundation for one of the most backwards attempts at sociopolitical thematic commentary in the anime medium. So…Earth is screwed along with its populace who is apparently comprised entirely of black people from first-world countries who—AND THIS IS REAL FUCKIN’ IMPORTANT—the show insists on explicitly calling “refugees” at all times despite its technically incorrect denotative implications, and the stage is thusly set for Valerie Simmons. Valerie is the upstart Martian presidential candidate whose big, bold idea to change the pace of society is to ban any and all “refugees” from Earth from entering Mars under all circumstances since they’re perceived as lower class, under educated, uncivilized, and a general pollution to Martian society, and her supporters are exclusively white skinned, blue eyed, blonde haired people who show their support for Valerie’s campaign and patriotism towards their state by dawning bright red hats with the candidate’s slogan on them—OKAY YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOIN’ YET?! Seeing as we’ve already taken the liberty to excuse the dumbass contrivances behind this farce, this should be all fine and dandy until you learn all of Valerie’s blatantly racist and classist political propositions were orchestrated behind the scenes by Jerry, the infamous political advisor, and Valerie herself actually has a heart of gold, is a strict but ultimately loving mother, and was largely manipulated by Jerry into her current level of corruption. I’m sorry, WHAT?! Why instate such astronomically feigned plot devices like asserting all of Mars is united peacefully under a single governing body, use such politically charged and inflammatory labels as “refugees” even when the word isn’t even logically applicable since the migration in question is not involuntary, and paint such racially suggestive portrayals as making one hundred percent of the discriminated blacks targeted exclusively by whites to concoct such a boldfaced Donald Trump parallel only to turn around and assert that very same parallel is a totally upstanding person?! Is Carole & Tuesday trying to tell me the sex offender running my country is actually a totally chill guy I just have the wrong idea of being sat ignorantly behind a TV screen EVEN THOUGH WOMEN HAVE BEEN ACCUSING THE GUY OF TOUCHING THEM SINCE BEFORE HALF THIS SHOW’S VIEWERSHIP WAS EVEN BORN!?!?!?!?!???!?!?

I contemplated censoring my hatred towards this show considerably for this review, seeing as an obtusely negative review may come across as toxic and bad for the community, but after coming to terms with the fact saying anything other than exactly what I did would’ve been outright dishonest, I realized this was the only way I could’ve gone forward in good conscious. Carole & Tuesday is just that bad and with that few redeeming qualities. The bits and pieces of Watanabe’s personal direction were nice if quaint like the laundry mat beatbox scene, but he was Chief Director, which for those of you who don’t know, is effectively an oversight producer who audits the actual directors’ work, so any personally directed scenes from the man himself were few, far between, and hard to appreciate or even identify given just how ugly the show looks on a second to second basis. I honestly don’t blame him at all for distancing himself from the production as much as possible though. Back when MAPPA was still a healthy studio under Masao Maruyama’s sound leadership, they worked their asses off to bring he and Yoko Kanno’s vision to life with Kids on the Slope, a show which actually innovates on and brings to life rotoscoped artwork and which actually has high-quality musical numbers to accompany its instrumental storyline, so I can totally see the horrendous work Bones was doing this time around killing any and all motivation he could’ve possibly had going in. One thing’s for sure, though, it most certainly killed any and all motivation I personally had to put myself through any one more god damn second of it too. I’ve seen thousands of anime, and this may just be my least favorite one.

Thank you for reading.

Imagine, if you will, a moment of bliss. The dazzling array of lights illuminating the hall, radiating along the stage. Glimmering golden flakes floating down from above like snow upon two girls pouring their hearts out in the performance of their lives. Their eyes are transfixed on the spectacle of it all as the narrator bellows that “it would go down in the history of Mars as the miraculous seven minutes”. This is the moment that Carole & Tuesday wished to define itself by. A celebration of music and the power it holds consummated in seven special minutes.

But behind these seven minutes is the journey ... that set it all in motion.

Carole & Tuesday is a tale steeped in the past, now set in the gleaming terraformed future of Mars. The story of rags-to-riches between a pair of talented women: Tuesday, who sneaks away from her wealthy sheltered lifestyle and takes a train to the big city, and Carol, an ex-refugee and orphan constantly looking for work with no clear direction in her life. In their world, music has been studied, dissected and repackaged to perfection through the use of artificial intelligence; the popular human artists now acting as merely fronts for the artistry. They both feel isolated and melancholy, needing some way to express it. In this, the two have a fateful encounter as Carol plays piano atop a bridge. She hums along to the music, but Tuesday insists she can hear the meaning of her song despite the lack of words. Carole and Tuesday, two musicians from radically different socioeconomic backgrounds, are able to understand each from through their music.

Considering the nature of this series being centred around music, the anime puts a lot of attention towards the music incorporated within the show. Carole & Tuesday holds some clear similarities with other works by director Shinichiro Watanabe; not only does he use a variety of diverse character designs and art styles, but here he employs different genres of music and artists to coincide with the Western accessibility of the show in general. Flying Lotus, Alison Wonderland and Denzel Curry and just some of the names associated with this project. Most importantly, the music acts as a natural means for development between the two leads. When the two begin playing together, the flaws in their sessions are apparent: they aren’t in tune with each other, Tuesday is a step behind Carole and both continually have to restart the song. The session is a work in progress, but once they start finding their rhythm, it’s as if their souls have slowly begun to intertwine. Their unity, passion and emotional release creates a world of their own, free from the gloomy feeling around them.

The worldbuilding details constantly echo the technology-driven culture of today, giving it a sense of believability amidst the more fantastical elements. Instagram, Google and YouTube are all featured in some way during the duo’s attempt to break into the music industry, before eventually entering a talent competition that parodies the likes of The Voice and American Idol. This is where the most diverse musical genres of the series are showcased, from a profane barbershop quartet number to an operatic hip hop hybrid piece that really shows the range of musical styles present in the show. While the pacing is slowed down significantly for this purpose, it also introduces an antagonist to the pair in Angela, a model turned singer on her own journey that acts as a clear juxtaposition with Carole and Tuesday. Unlike the lead duo, Angela embraces the influence of artificial intelligence and is pushed as the industry’s next big star, however her struggles are as real as the two protagonists. Angela as a former child star carries her own share of baggage whilst being used as a puppet of the industry and given no creative control over her art. But she is passionate about her career and has to work tirelessly in order to stay relevant. She provides an insight into what can happen when business takes priority over pleasure.

All of the contrasting styles and motivations serve as foils to the stripped-down singer-songwriter ability of the titular duo, representing the traditional side of music with warmth and authenticity that cannot be replicated. At least, that is what the intention was with each of their performances. But the series only achieves this in theory. Their opponents in the talent show seek to treat music as a commodity first and foremost in contrast to Carole and Tuesday, who want to deliver a more intimate experience with their songs as down-to-earth musicians. Except that the music they play seems counter-intuitive, coming across as the kind of melodramatic pop that would not be difficult to find nowadays. It might not be surprising to see how the judges love the pair whose music you would expect to find in every talent show in the last decade, but consider how the series is trying to, in a sense, rehabilitate music, with some of the most generic pop tunes of our time. Lyrically the song also come across poorly, with the melodies and rhythm having to compensate for instances of laundry being used as a metaphor for example. The song writing here speaks volumes about Tuesday’s lack of life experience to draw from, yet they are still showered with overwhelming praise after each and every one of their performances.

As the series continues, there’s a concerning lack of character development going forward for a character-driven show such as Carole & Tuesday. The characterization starts off strong with establishing the differences in both leads, before the script changes to emphasize the commonalities between them and more nuance is added to their actions. However, their bond as a whole feels unnatural, as they become such close friends after a short amount of time and their bond is never challenged going forward. Chemistry between main characters, especially in dramas, tends to grow little by little through each of their interactions with each other. Because of this, viewers are able to see their relationship develop gradually for themselves, thus coming across more naturally. This does not happen with Carole and Tuesday. Instead the two are shown to be great off the get-go, putting on good to excellent performances together that garner high praise from well-known artists. There is hardly a struggle they face that is shown in their journey. Add to that how predictable and light-hearted the tone of the series is, Carole and Tuesday feel more like avatars than their own characters for the remainder of the show.

From the offset Carole & Tuesday, despite its shortcomings as a music drama, was based around the two leads coming together and making a name for themselves in the music industry. But after the talent show, the narrative begins to shed more of a light on their backgrounds: Carole’s friends who are refugees and, more importantly, Tuesday’s family ties to politics. This is where the story transitions from the tale of two women chasing their passions in an age of AI-produced music to an allegory of current-day American politics that takes itself seriously. Politics in an anime is not an inherent issue and make no mistake, Carole & Tuesday wanted to be a socially conscious series from the beginning. But the sudden change in plot and focus causes most of the key events that occur to feel forced and inorganic, not to mention even more predictable than before. The execution is clumsy at best and incompetent at worst; it imitates the United States’ immigration policy yet holds a childlike perception of the debate that would only lead to more dissention. The show portrays it as simply a societal bad mood without any further nuance to the discussion, to where the audience is never told why Earth has refugees coming to Mars in the first place. The story becomes so concerned with being a social commentary on the world today that it does not bother to justify the political actions that happen within the story.

And regardless of how much the story has shifted, the anime continues to revolve around Carole and Tuesday. The two musicians who at first strived to be a success in the music scene have had their journey side-tracked by the overt political agenda that, coincidentally, renders their previous journey obsolete. The AI-produced music that initially acted as a commentary on how pop music panders to the trends of today instead of creating something “meaningful” is tossed aside. The sub-plots unresolved from the talent show remains unresolved. Instead the series takes the overly-idealistic route that coming together and singing an inspirational song has the power to change the world, with music’s power lying in the ability to make one's own voice heard. Only a vague solution to the real-world crisis the show intended to reflect. There’s an air of cynicism to the series that feels crafted out of naivete, which is certainly odd when Shinichiro Watanabe’s name is at the helm of the project. For an esteemed director as himself, it feels as if he was phoning it in here, not overly concerned with how the show ended up looking. Obviously, external factors like scheduling and budget play a larger part than ever trying to gauge effort from a director, but comparing Carole & Tuesday to his previous work (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Space Dandy, etc.) should highlight how underwhelming this most recent project is.

Carole & Tuesday was ultimately a tale in two parts: the first enamoured in the original journey of its two protagonists, their pursuit of passion acting as a love letter to the art of music. While meandering in parts and feeling a tad bloated, it’s hard to deny the show had a genuine love of the craft on display. But its second half was burdened with misguided ambition, aiming to encompass every angle of drama the series holds without regard for their impact on the writing as a whole. Unwilling to commit on its initial story and core values, we can only imagine what could have been a true moment of bliss.

With nearly three decade span of experience, Shinchiro Watanabe once again takes the stage as a director for a new original anime project. It’s well known that Shinchiro Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop managed to garner an international audience and achieved universal success. Carole & Tuesday won’t likely have the same level of success but the premise is worth to think about. Considering that there’s not many 2-cour music-drama these days, the idea of Carole & Tuesday sounds like a refreshing experience.

The first time we see Carole and Tuesday is two characters with different backgrounds and personalities. It’s easy to get the image of these two girls ... into your head as the main characters thanks to their contrasting images. Carole has a cool, rebellious type of look while Tuesday is designed with more feminine delicacy and innocence. On-screen, both characters displays a remarkable amount of realism, characteristics that can be easily relatable in our society. First, there’s Carole Stanley, an orphan with keyboard skills and somewhat of a rebellious attitude. Working various part-time jobs, she’s a common type folk you can probably encounter easily on the streets. On the other hand, we also meet Tuesday Simmons, a timid rich girl with talent of singing and the guitar. After running away from home and into the city, it’s where she encounters Tuesday and their incredible journey begins.

This is a character driven story, one that tells what humans can do when they put their minds into making their dreams into a reality. From the start, both Carole and Tuesday display remarkable potential for their skills although with a lack of experience in a professional environment, they need to push themselves. The first few episodes both shows and tells of their character personalities. Carole is the confident one who isn’t afraid to speak of her mind. Tuesday is the timid girl of this pair and for her to work in a professional environment would require commitment and discipline. The character chemistry is surprisingly compatible given their contrasting looks and personalities. Throughout the story, both characters come to learn and understand each other as part of the youth experience. Let’s face it, they’re young and have a long journey of life ahead of them. Making a career in the music industry will probably be one of the biggest challenges in their lives. They’d have overcome the fear of anxiety, build a strong audience, and promote themselves to be world-class superstars. Not to mention, being in public also requires supreme self-confidence, something that Tuesday need to realize and accept. Early in the show, both girls also get into trouble and having to run away to avoid consequences. The truth is that they don’t really know how the adult world works. It’s part of the reality of this show that performs so well. Honestly, the more I watched Carole and Tuesday, the more I felt attached to this anime. There’s even a feeling of nostalgia when you realize how inexperienced both girls are when dealing with adults and this new world they decided to step into. Thanks to their share of love and passion in music, Carole and Tuesday builds a great amount of trust and bond in their relationship.

Thankfully, both characters evolve as they face obstacles. From dealing with the pressure of competition to harassment from a stalking fan, Carole and Tuesday shows that they have what it takes to be in the business. Their personality shows change too as Carole matures into a more sensible person while Tuesday displays a growing confidence in herself. It’s the type of character evolution that makes this anime worth investing into. Growing up is not easy after all in our own society when we have to make decisions ourselves. Carole and Tuesday learns that when making decisions, there’s usually a risk and they have to face the challenge head on. They also have to realize the impact it would make for their lives. Welcome to reality, girls.

Being a music entertainment industry also has its competitive atmosphere. Meet Angela Carpenter, a former child model who wants to make a name for herself in the music business. With strong self-confidence and talent, Angela becomes a foil to the main characters. She exhibits a great deal amount of charisma and comes into industry with a focused sense of commitment. Some of the early comments Angela makes in the show suggests that she wants to truly prove herself although her words often come across as intimidating. In fact, during one of the competitions, she mocks Carole and Tuesday of their music. Even after the competition, Angela doesn’t seem to truly accept Carole and Tuesday as equals or friends. To me, a character like Angela represents the type in anime that protagonists must overcome or at least earn their respect from. She’s a type of realistic character that you may have encountered in your life. Indeed, the anime unravels colorful personalities of different people. It’s the type of personalities that garners an audience and create the sensation of a competitive environment.

Outside of the two main cast, the show does put some value into characters such as Gus Goldman. While he may be overlooked at times, it’s characters like Gus who makes an important asset for Carole and Tuesday. Without him, their careers would not have been possible. Introduced later in the story, Flora is a character that is a source of inspiration for Tuesday. Indeed, music artists are usually influenced by others and it should come across as no surprise that’s also the case in this anime. Unfortunately, the anime doesn’t put enough emphasis on the others such as Cybelle, Dahlia (Angela’s agent), Tao, or even the judges. Most of the contestants are forgettable although it’s easy to say the Mermaid Sisters made an explosive impression when they dropped the F-bomb.

Perhaps the most prominent element in Carole & Tuesday is the music and songs. From the very beginning, the show consistently manages to craft consistency with its soundtracks. With 24 episodes, the show featured many different songs ranging from its OP and ED themes to the various stage performances. I’m not going to list them all but the first album consists of at least 20 different tracks by various musicians. The first OP song “Kiss Me” contains a coming of age feel that brings the reality of characters growing up and is no doubt one of my favorite in the series. When it comes to the character performances on stage, every song artist or group brings their unique talent. The choreography combined with the visual elements is nothing less than spellbinding creativity. Carole and Tuesday's talent also synchronizes perfectly to bring the best out of each other during their performances.

Honestly, you don’t need to be a music nerd to enjoy Carole & Tuesday. The experience of watching this show can easily be felt by what the staff wanted you to see. They managed to capture the essence of the music industry and make it as real as it can be. And while the show contains plenty of drama, there’s also room for comedy and joy. Music is a source of empowerment that draws people to feel and can even change lives. Carole and Tuesday is a duo with lives connected by their passion and love of music. We can learn more from them in this anime, even if you don’t agree with their choices. Honestly, Carole & Tuesday is so much more than just an anime.

*Minimum Spoiler Review*
TL;DR: Futuristic Cowboy Bebop mixed with Kids on the Slope sprinkled with some Nana and a whole lot of wackiness from Space Dandy to give you the new hit, Carole & Tuesday. Seriously, it's just like wrapping yourself in a blanket by a fireplace and drinking hot-choco while enjoying some lo-fi music and falling asleep while watching this anime... Except you don't fall asleep.
[Story: 7/10 , Characters: 7/10, Art: 8/10, Sound: 9/10, Enjoyment: 9/10]

"Fucking bullshit... Goddamn bullshit... Son of a bitch, what the hell?" - Galactic Mermaid ♪

It's definitely a little cold in paradise tonight for the brainchild show Carole & Tuesday, ... by the visionary director, Shinichiro Watanabe, just came to its conclusion. This amazing show produced by Studio Bones to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their studio and the 10th anniversary of their record label, FlyingDog, in short was quite a success. For people who are not aware of Watanabe's style of work, they might have some reserve or approach his shows slightly differently. However, there's a reason he is known as the Quentin Tarantino of the Japanese Animation Industry. From his previous hits like Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and Space Dandy, just to name a few, this new show once again proves he is one of the only successful directors that can bridge both western and eastern genres harmoniously in perfect convergence. Moreover, his fascination and importance of film scores and his belief in music being the universal language is heavily shown throughout his works. With all that background in mind, when you approach a seinen sci-fi show marketed as a musical, it's important to go in with an open mind. His shows are never linear with clear cut problems between people but rather looking at the issues plaguing the society today but just set in a different time or era. Now that you have a background of what to expect, let's dive in to see whether Carole & Tuesday is really going to create a wave that might grow into something larger... like a great anime.

"If I believe I can do anything... I can move mountains, I can move mountains" - Move Mountains ♪

The story isn't really complicated at all. The story is set in this futuristic planet, Mars, where everything is maintained and propagated by the use of AI. It revolves around two girls, as you could've guessed by the title, Carole (low class orphan girl trying to get by) and Tuesday (a run-away posh girl) who both share the love for music and singing. They accidentally meet at the city of Alba and they decide to start a band and become successful musicians. The major conflict of this anime is the struggle they will have to go through to become successful in an age where AI rules the music industry. Sure there are minor conflicts among characters but it doesn't pale in comparison to the actual struggle. This conflict might not keep viewers interested throughout the show since they are really used to conflict among people but this is where the big brain thinking happens as Watanabe sheds light on the current state of artistic industries like movies, music, books or manga where we have become so formulaic that we know what works, what resonates within people and how to utilize it over and over again to make profits. We have lost the sense of innocence and ingenuity in our works. If our society continues to progress in this path, what's to say in the near future we too become heavily dependent on AI driven creative works and lose sight of our creativity. So from this standpoint, the story is relevant and appropriate; not just for today but also in the future. That being said, if you nitpick the character conflicts, there are barely any and at times it's just hormonal conflicts driven by puberty and growing pains of adulthood & interpersonal relationship issues. Nothing too gripping to rally behind but at its core it's fun and wholesome to follow the painful path to success these girls would have to take to become musicians.

"Nothing's wrong with my head... Nothing's wrong with the way I walk" - Love Yourself ♪

Now that we have a good idea of what kind of story to expect, we can dive into the characters. Aside from the main characters Carole & Tuesday, the other major side characters are all caricatures of people from today's music industry. You have Gus, this washed out drummer boy, who found a new purpose in his life to manage and build the girl's career. You have Roddy, this tech-savvy computer wiz, who knows how to market and make things viral. They sort of setup a conflict character in Angela, who's your typical "Disney girl who wants to transition into a musician *cough Selena Gomez* *cough Miley Cyrus*, but she just turns out to be a character used as a foil to better propagate our likings for the main character. Sadly most of these characters seem very disingenuous. For me the most stand out characters would be Tao, this music AI-phillic composer, musician and producer who believes there is no such thing as real music and he has perfected the formula to produce pop hits after hits after hits, similar to the real life counterpart Max Martin Sandberg. Look him up; behind almost all the top Billboard chart pop songs, he has played a big hand in their success. Another one being DJ Ertegun, who just seemed the most comical DJ in the industry who was a great caricature of a mix of DJ's like DJ Khaled and David Guetta with his obsession of featuring artists left and right. Also, Tuesday's Mom's actions and characteristics sort of gives off this Hillary Clinton & Trump vibe with how her scandalous political angle was setup in the show but it wasn't executed well. Looking at all the characters, it seems they were just setup to give us glimpse of issues persisting in today's music industry. Other than that, they didn't have much of a function. Special shoutout to the Mermaid Sisters. I understood your music even if the judges couldn't. As well as Pyotr, you have earned a follower in me, Pow!

"Can you feel my... Can you feel my... Can you feel my tears? They won't dry" - The Loneliest Girl ♪

After critically looking at the story and characters, one might wonder, well what could possibly be the it factor that's giving this show such high ratings. Well that would be it's art & animation as well as the music; after all it is a musical anime. It's produced by Studio Bones and if one thing we know about Studio Bones, they are always delivering on the animation. From the stellar works in Noragami and Mob Psycho, they didn't hold that much back in animating this anime. Nowadays almost everything is CG blended and they used it well while animating this anime. The character designs all felt really unique and the mix of western culture and different ethnic backgrounds as well as the rugged New York Bronx/Brooklyn futuristic setting really propped the show up to be more realistic. Some of the scenes felt a bit jarring, like the way the hair flaps or the crowds just being dots but they really painted the picture well of how one may experience different genre of music. Now the biggest highlight for this show is the music. The songs are all sung in English by various artists both in Japan and outside. The lyrics, albeit somewhat formulaic, still able to string a chord among people and the composing of the overall OST is very chill & lo-fi akin to what today's people are used to. None of those loli style, vocaloid music to make your "heart" go doki doki and purchase all the overly priced ecchi figurines for unnecessary reasons. Jokes aside, at times, it really felt like the music was also used to highlight the singers actually singing the song but it was executed well. The show used two sets of voice actors for each characters. One set for just regular talking and the other to sing the songs in English. The transition at first was a bit shocking but you get used to it really fast. So overall, the seiyuus and the singers did a phenomenal job. I would highly recommend listening to the OST plus the OP & ED song are both catchy and sung by same singers as Carole & Tuesday. It's really good. The show features various music genre like ED, pop, rap even opera. Seriously, Watanabe is a serious music-philliac. Also, each episode is titled after a great western hit song and I found that really fascinating. Not only did it open up new classics to enjoy but also to go back and listen to the classics I loved growing up. With or Without You, Every Breath You Take and Don't Stop Believing is just a few of the amazing songs to listen to.

"Two hearts, four broken pieces... That's who we were before... Somehow we fit together... Now we're unbreakable" - Unbreakable ♪

Nevertheless, the best way to describe Carole & Tuesday is to use the quote the great philosopher Aristotle once said where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If we break things down to judging the story, the characters, the animation and the music separately, it may not look that great but as a whole, it is a really chill, laid-back, feel-good anime. Sure the anime lacks a concrete conflict but in real life, our major conflict is the over-pressing society blockading us from finding success in our career. Sure the characters might seem disingenuous but in reality, it's just trying to mimic the type of people everyday humans are. We aren't some anime protagonists or antagonists. We are both the heroes and the villains of our own success and failures. Sure the music might seem formulaic but guess what, it's the same formulaic music, your trashy music taste continuously seeks out and listen on repeat. Seriously, we made Old Town Road, a billboard chart-topper. Overall, this anime may not be for the mass but it is for the many who enjoys works of Watanabe and enjoys complete anime that looks at issues plaguing the society. It's more of a story driven conflict, rather than a character driven conflict where people are just trying to better themselves to survive in this society without losing themselves in the limelight. You might like it, you might not like but it's worth giving it a shot. I would highly recommend to anyone that wants to jump into watching anime as this works as a great bridging anime for newcomers. Regardless, viewers who love the music genre and not into the loli vocaloid musical anime, you should definitely give this show a watch. There might be a second season or a movie since it ended with a to be continued. Anyways, thank you for reading this review & feel free to share with me your favourite quote from the anime as well as your fav song. Ciao.

P.S. Thank you for reading. I hope you found this short and supaishi review helpful!

Tl;dr This is a very enjoyable show even if you don't like music genre and is definitely worth watching.

In my case it was like came for story stayed for music and visuals although that doesn't mean story is bad or anything. Carole and Tuesday is a story about two girls named after the title of this anime living on Mars after it has been colonised(elon musk heavy breathing) and finding their way into music industry. First few episode start off very good with girls trying to sync their chords, looking for ways to gain popularity(via Instagram coz probably they are sponsoring this show) and gaining ... attention of allies and people gradually. Also another main thing(enemy? maybe...) in the story is A.I. Most of the music is being made by A.I. (which doesn't seem way too far in future to me).

Story and Characters:
I think you know what story is about by now and in case of characters besides Carole and Tuesday there is a another Main-ish character with significant screen time(presumably) being Angela who is shown to be fighting her way against A.I. and a glasses dude who is all in for all AI no human future. Tuesday is shown as a timid and shy girl and Carole as a tomboy. Supporting characters also are quite entertaining. Gus being a drunkard who starts to get back on track after seeing the raw talent of these girls and Roddy being idgaf but i take the opportunity if it comes person and trying to mutually benefit by investing in Carole and tuesday.

Audio Visual:
This is the main reason why I like(almost love) this anime. Animations are on point. Cities,trains, stage designs are all look awesome. Music is marvellous. Every song up until now(highly likely later on too) including op and ed was in English and oh man they were awesome. Even the non vocal songs like Ertegun's DJ is ear pleasing to listen to. This amazing music combined with great stage design makes every performance to look forward to( there's 1 performance of carole and tuesday per episode on avg. but there are other people performing too and their songs feel awesome as well. )

Overall:
This is a must watch even if you're like me and know nothing about music you'll definitely enjoy it.

*potentially vague and mild spoilers for a show I don’t recommend*

Carole and Tuesday is an empty shell. It’s fundamentally at odds with itself as well, given the narrative of the show and the contemporary feel it oozes in every direction. You can smell the corporate in the air here, which is probably the most bizarre thing to say given that this is a Shinichiro Watanabe anime. The man responsible for stylish classics such as Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo is one of the main people who crafted something that’s at the crossroads of trends from both the popular anime industry and the popular music industry. ... That sounds epic until you realize that both industries are formula and trend chasers, meaning this show is the culmination of all that. It certainly hits home with the American crowd, much like his works always do. This time it feels even more designed for them than before.

This leads to the first major problem with the anime: its setting. There is no reason for it to be set in Mars. There’s not a single thing this anime does to really have a setting that couldn’t have easily taken place on Earth without anything changing outside of where Carole comes from. The only thing they do with it outside of lame space politics is “Mars’ radiation tampers with people’s hormones” because they couldn’t just let trans people and androgynes be in the show without some kind of crazy explanation that raises more questions than answers. The space politics are done in a way where you could just replace Mars with America and Earth with a third world country, and it wouldn’t have made a difference to Carole’s backstory or the world. If they wanted this to be an allegory, then it needs to justify why it makes its setting based off real world events instead of just setting it where it’s pulling from. The show doesn’t tap into anything regarding the planet and what kind of climate you’d expect a city on Mars to have. It doesn’t really do anything regarding space travel. It’s just a futuristic show that happens to take place on Mars while having a suspicious number of American talent and ideas from the 2010s.

Frankly, I’m left wondering why they didn’t just make this show take place in a futuristic America. The main characters have decidedly English names. One of our main characters is light-skinned. They have a plethora of both light and dark-skinned people in this show (compared to most anime, anyway), and even some lesbian and transgender characters. There’s more English than the recently finished El-Melloi anime which sprinkles in random English/Engrish words and phrases every chance it can get. The show has Denzel Curry and Thundercat, on top of some other American artists. Hell, the main music genre the show uses is pop music, one of the most American genres out there (there’s hardly any J-pop in this show). Why didn’t they set it in America? Would it have made too much sense? They ignore the most obvious idea for a setting and do nothing with what they actually chose! Sure, there’s a fair amount of world-building regarding the music industry and the technological advancements (even if some of the AI concepts feel underutilized) but this is still baffling beyond belief!

Then we get to one of the show’s ideological conflicts: AI vs human music, or rather the divide between humans and people. The conflict between AI and human music and how one just sounds artificial and corporate and lifeless and whatnot falls on its face when you realize that the show's just using generic, melodramatic pop music for the human side. Just about everyone seems to love the typical pop music Carole and Tuesday put on (as well as the dismal chorus Angela showcased in episode 5) and I just don’t see it. I can’t see it with these vocals, let alone some of the lyrics. I’m no Anthony Fantano but I can’t help but roll my eyes at lyrics like “Can you feel my, can you feel my tear drops of the loneliest girl”. I understand that pop music has a lot of repetitive lyrics and tackles contemporary/relatable subject matter in a relatively melodramatic fashion, but this is just too much. Angela’s aforementioned song in episode 4 just features the chorus which primarily is about her moving mountains, and I can’t bet behind the lyrics or the voice. Another case of bad voices is the song Carole and Tuesday perform in episode 6, which often sounds off-pitch. Not all of the songs are terrible (I find the song capping off episode 5 to be sorta decent, and most of their songs are just mediocre) but still. They’re often cloying beyond comprehension.

The characters treat the concept of AI music as artificial and lacking in warmth before we even get to hear it. It takes forever for us to hear proper AI music unless you want to count the terrible electronica that pompous fuck Ertegun pumps out almost every time he is introduced (as well as episode 5's chorus to one of Angela's songs that are written by AI). We just have to take the show’s word for it for more than ¼ of the show’s runtime while putting up with corporate, boilerplate pop music. In this regard, the show is at odds with itself, fundamentally speaking.

There is a lot of commentary on the shadiness of the music industry with regards to how labels and producers often treat their artists like shit and try to control them, as well as how several of these producers are terrible people with several recorded acts that will ruin them if exposed. Even some of the more harmless producers have a ton of shit other characters threaten to expose them for, and there’s a ton of blackmail from or between producers in this show regarding exactly that. If only that amounted to anything beyond there being a shady corporation man working with our main antagonists for profit in the final quarter.

Another problem is with Tuesday, specifically, her fear of getting noticed and sent home. It's one of the main things about her and yet it barely even gets brought up during that time everyone tried making a music video, or when she and Carole were backup performers at an event with over 10K people. Though the show treats this as some sort of looming threat until she develops past that after a single pep talk in episode 7, it doesn't feel like one. It doesn't even happen during an episode when one of her family members is in the city she is so he can look for her. Almost no one in the public or the media seems to make a big deal about it or look into it further anyway, which is utter nonsense given the show’s attempts to look into the industry and the connections of people inside it. It's not like her storyline amounts to much more than a worse version of Pokemon Sun and Moon's (even Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon's) storyline, anyway. That and the issues with the setting are the main problems with the first ⅓ of the show since honestly, the actual writing, for that portion of the show isn't all that bad. Outside of a detail that dismantles the 4th episode because they couldn't figure out how to do dramatic irony in a way that doesn't make the characters come off as utter morons, that's basically all I got. Unfortunately, sometime during the Mars Brightest competition, the show decides to create contrivances for our main duo to be separate for an episode, and for Angela to have a temporary conflict with her latest manager who was introduced several episodes ago. This is all by the halfway mark.

The rest of the show is where the main conflict regarding human music VS AI, issues with the music industry, and issues with politics and capitalism take center stage. They’re so basic, one-dimensional, and on the nose about all of this to the point of absurdity. To think, the self-defeating conflicts about human VS AI music and the warmth of one vs the artificiality of the other wasn’t enough for this show. On top of that, while criticizing the music industry, they have our main characters train under someone that continually forces them to do upwards of over 52 takes until he is satisfied. He is overworking them to dangerous levels and that’s a combination of comic relief and an uplifting montage. That and the fact that the AI vs human music disappears completely by episode 21 should tell you everything about how this show handles these ideas and commentaries. Here I was thinking that the AI and people divide in general was supposed to be relevant with how much they brought it up.

Admittedly there is this nice plot point that pops up in this latter half regarding Carole’s parents which the show had been building up to. It’s delicately handled, and it provides another genuinely good character who sadly won’t get much screen time in this anime since that whole plot point concludes by the end of episode 14. There’s also episode 16 which has a decent, bittersweet tale with some pretty nice songs by our main duo. That and a sorta decent episode knocking down and building that egotist Ertegun back up caught me by surprise. The second half of the show seems more character focused despite also doubling down on the points that damage the show. When it focuses on the elements that are promising and true to its characters, it somewhat works, and when it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. It really goes to show you that the show’s writing isn’t all that terrible on paper, and that with some tweaks as well as a change in destination, this could have probably been a compelling anime. It’s just those critical logic, setting, and idea/commentary blunders among other issues that kill the script.

The characters aren’t great either, even with a few cute moments here and there. It’s never a good sign when the two main leads in your show tend to feel virtually identical outside of their pasts and how they react to a deranged superfan/musician who goes mental around Tuesday. Carole is more of the tomboy type while Tuesday is more of the girly girl type, and that’s basically the main thing differentiating them...when it’s noticeable. Simply put, Carole and Tuesday don’t have much chemistry or anything interesting in their personalities or interactions. Their manager is ok. He has some interesting bits regarding former friends and his former lover and another former partner, but that’s about it aside from being a bumbling tough guy looking manager. The last member of the main quad squad is Roddy, who is just a shy guy with connections, and nothing else. I suppose he’s better than the myriad of stereotypes we meet in the Mars Brightest show such as the rapper stereotype. The worst has to be the insufferable instagram boy always saying shit like “pow” in the most obnoxious way possible because clearly making a character out of zoomer stereotypes was a great idea.

Sasuga, Mrs. Watanabe. Your script writing and series composition knows no bounds.

Honestly, the most engaging character was that one guy named Skip from episode 6 who gave C&T some wise words of encouragement before talking with a former love and then playing the song “Unrequited love”. The latter conversation in particular is one of the few times where the show just uses strong implication and actually good dialogue to convey what’s going on. This is a character who feels more tangible and engaging than the actual characters in this show, and he doesn’t reappear until episode 14. He doesn’t even play a major role in episode 6, and I was excited to see him return! Sadly, the show abandons him and his guys shortly thereafter when they could have easily filled the roles some non-entity characters fill in during the final ⅓ of the show. This anime does seem to abandon a few characters, like Angela’s female manager at the end of the first half. She’s absent for an incredibly long time, and all because of contrived, surprisingly vague circumstances.

The anime does try to have some of the stereotype characters flesh out their views and whatnot so the show can feel more lived in, but none of them are particularly engaging. Even then, that only goes for the Mars Brightest stereotypes, not the political stereotypes. Tuesday’s mom is especially lame as she’s just a typical amoral politician created by fusing Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton together with the spell card Polymerization. She even drops a line about deporting illegal immigrants cuz this show likes to be very on the nose about its commentary and conflicts. She’s also influenced by a typical scheming advisor because of course she is. The show needs a main antagonist, even if he has nothing to do with our main leads beyond a few actions that indirectly impact them. They do get into some conflict by the end because the mother has to be redeemed at all costs, but that’s not enough to make this worthwhile. It all devolves into a bout of sugary, exceptionally rushed nonsense bin the last two episodes, anyway.

I also get the feeling that we’re supposed to like Angela. Despite the show making her out to be a complete bitch at every turn, we’re supposed to feel joy whenever she wins something, and sympathy for her just because of a scene that implies that she was abused by one of her parents (if only the show’s dialogue was more consistently clever). Yet she talks about actively abusing her managers for fun as the reason why she doesn’t want an AI manager. This isn’t an Asuka from Evangelion situation where we’re supposed to understand the character as she gets peeled back regardless of whether or not we like her. We’re supposed to like Angela, especially when she determines that she wants a fair match against C&T instead of her winning cuz of them getting sabotaged. We’re supposed to like her when she tells her cold, AI-loving manager, Tao a bit about her past thanks to circumstances regarding his AI programs knowing everything about her. We’re supposed to fear for her when she gets targeted by a stalker and feel for her when we know that she’s doing everything for her mother’s dream at the cost of herself. Seeing what becomes of her in the final act is interesting, so the show does have me on her side by the end in terms of character writing. I just wish the presentation was better.

For an anime prominently featuring and referencing music, the show’s songs are unfortunately hit or miss. I am somewhat ambivalent on the first opening, and I absolutely hate the second. However, both C&T and Angela have a song that I actually kind of like, that being their respective ending themes: “Hold Me Now” and “Not Afraid”. Otherwise’ I’ve gone over enough of their tracks for one lifetime. The other pop artists/characters such as Lauren Dyson’s performance as Crystal or J. R. Price as Pyotr the instagram boy don’t do much for me either. The fact that they make up a majority of the songs in this show hurts because not only does an actually nice OST by Mocky get pushed practically out of existence by the 8th episode, but I do like a majority of the other songs. Maika Loubte’s (Cybelle) “La Ballade”, Thundercat’s “Unrequited Love”, Madison McFerrin’s (GGK) “Milky Way” and “Gravity Bounce” make up some of the many nice songs the non-pop singers perform for this show. The production for these songs is a lot more interesting and varied, and while not all of them have necessarily interesting lyrics either, they’re a lot more engaging and memorable than Angela’s or C&T’s songs. Even the latter’s songs get better over time anyway, so there ends up being a few tracks from them I actually find decent to listen to. If nothing else, this anime does provide a gateway to a variety of interesting artists, so I can appreciate that fundamental aspect of the show. I just wish that Mocky’s OST wasn’t mixed so low after a while cuz I actually want to hear more than just the eyecatches track and the piece that plays during the 30 seconds of recap at the start of every episode.

Carole and Tuesday's contemporary, unadventurous feel even extends to the visual presentation. This doesn't feel like a Shinichirou Watanabe anime. I don't know what goes into being chief director, which is his role in the show outside of original creator, but I'd assume that there would be some real ambition or flare in the camera work of this show. Instead, it feels like just about anyone even remotely competent at anime direction and cinematography could have made it. That's probably because Motonobu Hori was the regular director credit for this show. He does do a fairly decent job, but there aren’t many moments that feel particularly enticing in terms of cinematography and presentation.

The visuals by studio Bones are about as solid. The anime sports a vivid, varied set of character designs, often with different types of heads and faces that still mostly feel like they all come from the same world. There are some dazzling light show sequences as well, like with GGK, a contestant in the Mars Brightest talent show who has her outfit synch with the moving galaxy patterns in the background. I can't deny that outside of some dodgy CGI sequences and instruments, the show looks rather good, especially when they're able to pull off that aforementioned sequence on top of having overhead crowd shots that don't contain CGI. Still, even with generally solid, sometimes exceptional visual presentation, I can't help but feel jaded in context. It doesn’t help that the production does go downhill for part of the show’s third quarter thanks to less overall polish and further reliance on bad CGI instruments and objects.

Where did it all go wrong? You'd expect an original anime, especially one with Watanabe as one of the credits, to showcase a ton of ambition and creative freedom. This feels the exact opposite, with only the vibrant city and character designs having any sort of flair. Unlike previous works like Macross Plus or Bebop, there isn't that same creative drive here. It's more about mass appeal, which Watanabe had already excelled at without even trying to. As a result, Carole & Tuesday feels empty and artificial, requiring dismal writing and uneven music to fill the void that ambition once filled. How fitting then, that it embodies the sugary, overly melodramatic, trendy pop music it employs so often. That said, even pop music tends to have a clear goal it wants to commit to. Carole and Tuesday has a bunch of ideas and concepts it merely pays lipservice to before barely going through with any of them. If nothing else, I hope Shinichiro Watanabe and his wife are satisfied with this product. I wish I could be.



By the way, since we’re getting political, I have to ask: where are my hispanics at?! You’ve been tackling the deportation of illegal immigrants via a Trump x Hillary character, an issue that affects my people, yet we get no representation in the show outside of arguably the guy Denzel Curry performed as. What the fuck? I say “arguably” cuz we don't even know. At most, he dropped a line about speaking Spanish. That’s it! You got all sorts of white and black people, as well as a bunch of LGBTQ+ characters and people of other ethnicities and whatnot, but not us while you’re tackling our issue? Piece o’ shiet!

Written and Edited by: CodeBlazeFate
Proofread by: Peregrine

I'm more of an action/adventure/fantasy/magic/shonen person. The only musical anime I have watched are Your Lie in April and Fuuka. So this is coming from someone who goes for great animation and plot with less emphases on the music aspect....

IMO this anime is a mix of music arts , good animation, and story development. So far I really like the development speed and a sly mixture of music from current or past generations. This anime has a different future concept that gives it a fun quirky side. The character development is really nice and gives a good taste of each individual's background and why they ... are who they are today. The anime is really captivating and isn't too in your face.

Final thought: worth watching the first 3 episodes and if you aren't itching for the next then this isn't for you. Better than Fuuka, but not quite up to Your Lie in April... the quirkiness makes it close though

An original work by the famous animation studio Bones (MHA, FMA, Mob Psycho 100, Noragami ...) that we greatly appreciate. This is something very surprising considering the genre of Carole & Tuesday since usually Bones often adapts us actions, shonen works. So what’s the value of this new work out of nowhere?

First of all the story begins with the introduction of our main protagonists Carole & Tuesday, Carole is a girl who lives alone in town, looking for a stable job, while Tuesday lives out of the city in a very rich family. Tuesday runs away from home, to go to town and meets by ... chance Carole playing the piano on a bridge, she herself a guitarist, they associate with each other (in a futuristic era, with AI who can replace singers) it is from here that the story really begins.

A rather stimulating plot I think, it is distinguished by a beautiful animation and chara-design, music even more beautiful, and very good VA that gives us attachment to our two characters.
We find the will to touch people with the music of Your Lie in April, and apparently a future rival who will surely be on the way to our duet.

I do not have any information on what's next, but from what I've seen from these first episodes, I guess I can only expect quality for all future episodes, in any case I hope this will be the case.

Story: 7, Art/Animation: 9, Sound: 9, Character: 8, Enjoyment: 8.

How am I supposed to buy that these two girls are the more unique, different and exotic thing if their songs are the most generic, pop, country, dumb shit ive ever listened to??

They sound exactly like a white girl who has been gifted a guitar on her 18th birthday and is traveling to find herself #bodypositive #smiling and along the way she found a black poor girl on the street playing the piano and they became the new trending interacial duo!!!!

And these two girls are the flattest character Ive ever seen for real I dont even know why I keep watching it, im ... 19 ep in and nothing has changed their songs are still bad they found a band a fucking band out of nowhere they were just chilling under a bringe i mean yeah i do that too on my free time I hang out w my friends, we carry the whole motherfucking ass drum set, set it up under a bridge and I start playing my electric guitar without even an amplifier.

Fuck this show, the only good song it has is the one of the black bass player

Maybe is it still too soon to emit a judgement about this show, but well, I'm kind of bothered by how things turned out for me, watching this show. *Rant alert*

The first few episodes were very enjoyable, discovering new characters, a new world...
I immediately liked Carole, she's a strong character, she's got style and she's driven. The supporting cast is decent, and funny at times, at least they try very hard to be funny... Tuesday would be my least favorite aspect of this show, although I understand her background as well as the fact that every character needs room for growth and improvements. Now I ... have to admit I did not care one bit for the given "antagonist" of the first half of the show.

Which is why maybe the show at some point began to dangerously stall for me, in its narration, also in the way the main characters were put in weird situations that seemed a bit random and irrelevant to their core. The story after 16 ep, still does not feel as a whole, which is a terrible shame because the characters ends up drowning in that lack of direction. Like ep16 was ALL over the place. Bad aspect that repeated a lot : new supporting characters emerge and fade into nothingness, every episode, not time given for long development and character building.

This show is about music, it's supposed to be its cement. Maybe I'm totally not the right person for this show, but I thought the music really wasn't on par, with anything. When are the moments where playing music and singing really becomes a genuine token of liberty, when is it that our heroes are saved from emotional breakdowns by music? I think there's nothing strong about them playing music. And the songs in this show even sound like the absolute worst the music industry has to offer. Overly edited or autotuned voices when they're not totally stereotypical, stupid retarded lyrics, maintream melodies and lovey dovey egotistical themes. This is what you get. This show is trying to rehabilitate music, in its genuine expression, with some of the most annoying pop songs I have ever heard. And why aren't the voice actress singing the songs as well? How are you supposed to feel something for a character when there's is such a great discrepancy between her speaking voice and her singing voice? Voice actors are supposed to fully embody a character ; as a viewer such disparity annoyed the hell out of me and ruined it for me everytime there was a singing sequence. Next time just put Japanese lyrics and be done with it. Did you think everything needs to be in English to be cool or something?

I guess this show was supposed to appeal to me in a sense given how I hate the nowadays music industry blend sounds. Now come on people, the setting of your show is on Mars, like in space. Show us some sublime, some grandiose, make us feel those girls know that they are connected to something greater! With music and not cheap cringeworthy Top 50 charts teenager stuff...

The sound aspect is upsetting, compared to the big effort given to the visuals. Although I don't have much to say about it, you will see by yourself, that show gots moneyz. One detail though, at some point we get a shot where we can see Earth... in the Mars' sky... almost as big as our moon, thing that would never occur. Like from Earth the most of Mars we ever can see is like a big yellowish star, so yeah here went my suspension of disbelief.

Not sure I'm gonna finish this show. After so many episodes already, the story is getting really boring for me, seen as the music does not help one bit. Music and music industry does not offer much room for personal accomplishment, music is all about sharing. Now in terms of accomplishment everything you're gonna get in that part of our society, is gonna be granted to you by some suit, producers, critics and such. It's all about the network. Fans? Yeah the story is gonna be about two girls and their growing instagram account, awesome isn't it? I had hopes for something more, I had hope the writers would find the trick as some other show did, something about camaraderie, bonds and confrontations, forgiveness, breaking free together with music... but it seems those emotions are gonna be some of the minor things in the show, the main piece being completing their first candy pop album, I guess. Even though it could have been interesting to really see up close what's going on when one wants to craft a masterful piece of music, but nope. Nothing solid there neither, only some vague patronizing pep talk about passion here and there.

Well let's cut it short, if you want to feel what is music essentially, go watch or re-watch "Kids on the slope". You want to know what is industry and team effort (albeit in a different industry) go watch "Shirobako".

Because I feel like "Carole & Tuesday" peeps got too much money to waste and forgot to put some real heart in their show.

If this show ended after the first cour it would’ve been 9/10. I haven’t seen an anime fall apart in the second half so badly since Aldnoah.Zero.

So, the first half of the series has its titular heroines pursuing their dream of creating music. They face the many challenges of an aspiring musician, meet industry people, cross paths with crazy fans, but also with Angela - a corporate-manufactured instant hit which serves as their foil - etc, etc. The first cour culminates with them getting a big break. So, where would you think the story will go from there? Suffering from success? Having to sell your ... soul to a record label? Maybe a falling out between the leads? Well, if your answer is “2016 election do-over and fighting FemTrump’s anti-immigration agenda with the power of music” - hi, you must be the writer of this show, because I don’t see anyone else thinking that up. What started as a relatable story of personal struggle ended up as just another one of “an artist masturbating over how art can change the world and save people.” Furthermore, the show doesn’t just shift its focus - the problem is that it loses the focus altogether. Plotlines from the first half get abandoned, the new ones are introduced out of nowhere. Characters become monsters-of-the-week. Filler episodes where Carole and Tuesday themselves are irrelevant. One moment there are silly cartoon comedy antics, the next one a person is almost murdered. The exact moment where the series jumps the shark is Episode 15 - a random musician that wasn’t ever mentioned before summons the leads in order to look at the screen and preach his (the author’s) personal philosophy for half an hour. This is some bad independent film territory. Not like it was impossible to execute this premise well - he could’ve been a role model whose music inspired them to become musicians. He could’ve summoned them for some actual plot reason, like a song collab. But nope, straight-up We Interrupt the Regularly Scheduled Program to Bring You this Important Message.

Which brings me to the next point - show's writing sucks. It starts as a few minor suspension-of-disbelief moments, but eventually snowballs out of control. The most glaring things are asspulls - like, at one point C&T are in need of three session musicians - so they just stumble upon some random guys on the street. It could’ve counted as a joke, if the plot wasn’t advanced that way several times. I don’t want to go into major spoilers, but there are entire plotlines that just would not happen if the real life logic applied. Another eyesore is incredibly predictable “plot twists.” At one point a guy shows up who is so obviously Carole’s father, you start thinking the twist will be that he’s just a random unrelated guy. Nope, he actually is her father. Not like his plotline amounts to anything.

Also, the music, while sounding nice, completely fails to support the narrative, because the “genuine small time artist” songs of Carole & Tuesday don’t sound any different from the “soulless industrialized product” made by AI for other artists.

3/10 for “Zankyou no Terror isn’t the worst Watanabe anime anymore.”

Carole & Tuesday: ep 1-12

"A rough masterpiece". it may be unfair for me to bring up "Nana" in this review but Carole & Tuesday gave me some similar chills.

in this review I won't be talking about the simple and nit-picky aspects of the anime that I would usually hammer on,instead I will simply give it praise where praise is due because if you are reading this review to see if you want to watch it or not,I strongly recommend that you watch it regardless of what is said about it,it is an anime that deserves as much opinion as it can get and believe me ... when I say that you deserve to watch it.

I was getting sick of keeping up with seasonal anime so I took a few weeks break before catching up on this Spring season and man am I glad that the first thing I decided to watch was this.

lets get this out of the way first,if you can't stand musical anime then I beg you to watch this,if you can't handle VA changes when the characters sing then I beg of you to watch this anime.

A lot of Carole & Tuesday is done rather shoddily with plenty of derpy errors thrown in to the fray,however, it's almost as if it was intentional as I feel that it was better because of such flaws.

Carole & Tuesday does a brilliant job of playing your heartstrings like a guitar,every scene elegantly dances with the immaculate sound work of the OST,the VA changes does throw you off quite a bit especially when the songs performed by other characters have their voices heavily modulated,however, they only modulate Carole & Tuesday's voices ever so slightly to make it sound different from the rest by sounding simply more raw and natural,this adds to the play that this anime has on how music has changed so significantly in this world, Carole & Tuesday makes perfect use of the comedic relief mechanic,just the comedic timing alone can elicit a chuckle or two.

The OP and ED is my personal favourite part of Carole & Tuesday,I never skipped it once,the OP brings your mood right into the anime with gorgeous visuals and a brilliant song,the same can be said about the ending which does not in anyway throw you off the mood that each episode will leave you in.

let's just get straight into the overall analysis.

Visuals/Style&Design: 7/10

In Carole & Tuesday this plays a big part in what makes this anime unique, there is no CGI,only generated effects which only add to the simply beauty of the anime.
The colour palette is versatile featuring strong colours when depicting the "futuristic" elements of the world ranging to the more flat earthier colours of everything which contrasts it.
the style is a tad bit derpy but it betters the show in only good ways.
Characters all have varied outfits,hairstyles and features which make them all seem very unique from one another,there is not many scenes where they show a vast amount of people with much detail but with the cinematography utilized in Carole & Tuesday it makes sense especially when it shifts to the Mars Brightest features.
The environment feels a bit

Audio: 9/10

I feel as if I should say that this is the strongest category in Carole & Tuesday but in my opinion it isn't, don't get me wrong the music is brilliant,my favourite part of the entire anime is the OP and ED after all,however, I have to point out the way the VA's all contrast the vocalists in the OST,it is something that I don't mind looking past but it is there,this can probably be solved by making a Dub.
general sound design is good but it is limited too,there isn't much effects used when things happen in throughout the anime but it supports the anime as it makes the music seem more intense when it plays so I can see why they did that.
The general voice acting is great excluding what I stated above. From the narration at the start of most episodes to basic dialogue the voice acting is solid and consistent,the VAs do a great job of breathing life into each character with all of them being very unique.
Also, Huouin Kyouma is Ertegun which is amazing.

Characters: 9/10

This in my opinion is Carole & Tuesday's strong point.
Every single character feels unique yet also fleshed out.
they way characters interact with one another feels real and not cringy like a lot of the currently airing stuff.
characters backgrounds are fleshed out in clever ways throughout the anime with good pacing,another thing that has been missing from anime recently.
all the characters are deeply layered and have an air of mystery to them which implies that there will be more Carole & Tuesday in the future to explain such mysteries.

Plot & Worldbuilding: 7/10

the plot brought me to this anime but it didn't quite keep me in it,I would have to reward that medal to the characters and audio category.
It is fairly unique as it has an interesting twist which they play into quite a lot throughout the anime with AI basically commanding society on Mars but it isn't quite played on enough.
The worldbuilding was slow but with the first episode that was virtually all we needed for the entire season,as the pacing was brilliant even though it was being slow "implying" more to come which I think is fine as they did state at the end of the last episode that it will be continued.

Is it worth your time?

I usually never stop talking in this category but for Carole & Tuesday I am just gonna say this.
If you have the time and you are looking for something to watch then this is a great choice,I personally don't find it to be the most bingable anime out there as its format and pacing are perfect for watching it as it is being released,however, it just makes this the perfect anime to watch in-between other anime,it will immerse you and remove you from your daily life which is all you should really look for in an anime in my opinion.

Overall: 8/10

"When it comes to researching the human brain in order to control emotions using AI, music and politics are very much alike."
— Jerry Egan

It's been fifty years since humans colonized Mars. Cities akin to Tokyo and New York are populated with first and second generation natives and an array of immigrants from Earth. Technology crowds every facet of life. From streets to homes, an android or robot pet is commonplace. Thanks to artificial intelligence, people don’t have to burden with working, thinking, or even creating anymore. "99% of modern hits are produced by AI," a record producer tells an up-and-coming idol. Doing anything without a ... technological assist is an oddity.

There are still people who prefer doing things the old-fashioned human way. Tuesday Simmons, a 17-year old from the lowkey Hersell City, dreams of becoming a musician. Fed up with the sheltered life under her strict mother, politician Valerie Simmons, she runs away from home with just a suitcase and Gibson guitar in tow. She arrives on the bustling streets of Alba City, and her suitcase is immediately stolen (never turn your back on your stuff in a big city).

On a sunset lit bridge—lost, penniless, and alone—Tuesday encounters Carole Stanley, a street musician who appears to be the same age as her. Carole's upbringing wasn't as cozy as Tuesday's. A refugee from Earth, she grew up in an orphanage, and struggles with odd jobs as a young adult. Carole's melancholic lyrics resonate with Tuesday in her moment of desperation. The two form an instant camaraderie as if by fate, and Carole takes her in.

In a parallel story, Angela Carpenter, a 16 year old with excellent hair, already has a career as a model and actor. At the behest of Dahlia, her mother and manager, she works with a misanthropic technologist named Mr. Tao to start a music career. Mr. Tao prefers working with technology over people. His algorithmic approach to producing music is juxtaposed with Carole and Tuesday’s from-the-heart approach. At this point, it’s unclear if Angela’s new path is something that she wants, or if she’s doing it for her mother’s sake. Regardless, she doesn’t take kindly to competition, and she has a strong desire to be the best in everything she pursues.

The first 12 episodes, generally, had a casual slice of life vibe. It was so casual in fact that I worried if the story could stay fresh for the 24 episodes that were listed. On the other hand, I was hoping that needless drama wouldn’t be interjected to justify the runtime. Mercifully, with the exception of a few brief arcs (I'm looking at you Cybelle), the story neither dragged nor irritated me for too long. Strong worldbuilding, unexpected predicaments, thought provoking ideas, and bits of backstory kept each episode feeling new.

After a string of light-hearted, and often hilarious, performances and competitions, the story took an unexpectedly dark and political turn, touching on real world issues like convenience verses privacy, and the morality of using technology to read and influence people. The same technology that’s used to produce hit music is being used by politicians to improve their poll numbers. Data is collected from facial and sentiment analysis to tailor messages that will resonate with people. This is an interesting prospect because something like this will likely happen, and is already happening to a less advanced degree today.

Valerie’s presidential election, advised by the perpetually shady looking Jerry Egan, opens a discussion on another real world issue, the immigration debate. One side feels that a country (or planet) has a moral obligation to help refugees, and the other side feels that unfettered immigration poses a security and economic threat; Valerie sides with the latter.

There was also commentary on the struggle for human relevance as technology renders us irrelevant, and how neither pursuing our personal ambitions nor attaining societal acceptance can guarantee happiness. It was surprising to see such weighty topics in what I’d expected would just be a cute music anime. Shinichiro Watanabe (previously Cowboy Bebop) clearly had a lot that he wanted to say.

The animation by BONES studio shined. The art had a 90s aesthetic with a modern digital polish. Collectively, the cast had an extensive wardrobe, and the character designs were attractively detailed with highlights, shadows, and full lips. It would’ve been cool if those lips were always synced to the singing, but doing this likely would’ve exceeded their, presumably, already large budget.

The vinyl record eye-catches, printed with song titles that mirrored the theme of the episode, were a nice touch. Pop music isn’t a genre that I’m intimately familiar with, so I can’t give an unbiased assessment of the soundtrack itself. Regardless, I did love a few of the songs, especially the first ED. It was a delightful bop that I never skipped.

There were notable and instantly recognizable seiyuu surprises like Hiroshi Kamiya (previously Koyomi Araragi) as Tao, and Megumi Hayashibara (previously Faye Valentine) as Flora. Carole (voiced by Miyuri Shimabukuro) and Tuesday (voiced by Kana Ichinose) were voiced by actors with relatively short filmographies, but both filled their roles more than adequately.

I’ve been watching anime on-and-off for about 24 years (wow, I didn’t realize it was that long until I did the math). In that time, I’ve become less critical of the medium. If I’d seen Carole & Tuesday when I was a 20 year old film elitist, I’d likely rip apart how little friction the leads had to endure (despite enduring enough), how abruptly some turning points happened, and how briskly the last few episodes wrapped up the story—which are all valid criticisms. Today, at the ripe old age of 38, I’ve become a “filthy casual” in the way I watch things. While maybe not all of my expectations were met, I was more than satisfied by what was, for me, an uplifting and inspired experience.

Thank you, Shinichiro Watanabe.

Carole and Tuesday explores different genres of music that sparks enjoyment for a wide audience demographic. The effort in producing quality music each episode with elements of music from different artists come into play. As someone who enjoys a large range of music genres, I appreciate the types of music utilised in this anime.

Carole and Tuesday also explores issues that are actual reality as well. E.g. refugees in Mars being discriminated highly relate to the current issues we have in terms of immigration and stereotypes that refugees face in real life. You see how it applies in an anime and hits home to those ... who experience such issues presented in the animation.

Overall, it is a light-hearted and warm anime that keeps you smiling with each episode. Seeing how Carole and Tuesday venture into the music industry with nothing but their uniqueness against the industry where AI dominates. On the flip side, it is awesome to see how AI is utilised in the anime.

Definitely recommend!

Story(3):
Well, 17 episodes already and I feel like the characters didn't got a lot of development or any originality, specially because of the political part, it has been consuming the time to make this anime good and looks really artificial and forced, looks like they put it there just for some political (anti)propaganda. It as been really annoying because it doesn't help any development of the story and also have a lot of unanswered questions like "Why people are fleeing the earth?", "What happened there that is so bad to live?" or "Why a entire planet that lauched a new civilization in another planet(Mars) is ... way worse for people to take refuge in another planet, crossing thousand of miles into space(also, how they do it?)?", it looks like its there just for the sake of making a political point/statement.

The AI also looks kinda confusing, they never explain why the AI have personalities, ego and why they scam people as if they are acting outside of their code. Etergun's AI at episode 17 looked like a lame excuse to move the plot forward. Using a AI as a scammer to move the plot foward is a cheap trick that you should use only 1 time, never in the episodes that are setting the final plot of the series.

Art(7):
The art is good, nothing amazing but they do use some western aspect like more facial expressions, Gus resemble a character from western cartoon like Mega XLR or Martin Mystery.

Sound(9):
Music it's definitely the reason why I don't give this series a lower score and why I keep watching. Just great.

Character(3):
Didn't find any interesting aspect on any character, almost all of them have cliche personalities from western cartoons, maybe its a new thing for eastern viewers.

Enjoyment(4):
The only things that has been enjoying in this anime is the music. All the plot problems and the political stuff is what makes enjoy less and less every episode, and I think it will only get worse.

Carole and Tuesday are supposed to be the collision of two worlds—as Crystal says, "Carole, a refugee, and Tuesday, Valerie's daughter" (Episode 24). But the two of them lose all individuality from the moment they team up. From then, they function as more of a unit than as two individual beings—their dialogue becomes entirely interchangeable.

Here is a conversation (Episode 5) in which the girls talk to Roddy. Can you tell who's saying what?

RODDY: Well, it's a gig, but it's just one song. Just a trial kind of thing.
???: Don't worry, that's just fine.
???: Hey, what song should we play?
???: Well... why don't we write a ... new one?
???: Good idea, let's do that.
RODDY: By the way, isn't it a little dark in here?
???: They still haven't turned the power on.
???: All right, let's do it outside!

Here's another (Episode 6):

???: Wow, look at all these people.
???: I'm pumped!
???: I'm so nervous!
???: Look, Crystal is performing too.
???: I gotta go see her!
???: Do you think we're breathing the same air right now?
???: Maybe her breath's mixed in with the air here!

Within the show, this kind of bland, uninteresting dialogue is pervasive. The main characters lack substance. They are shallow and uninteresting. Carole and Tuesday see eye to eye on everything, with the exception of an argument in Episode 11 (which—for the record—is resolved in the span of an episode and then never referenced again).

Worse, the show leaves virtually no character development for the two mains. There are certainly hints of it—when Carole speaks to her father, and later, a childhood friend, we think there might be something there. Yet, they are static characters; namely, no amount of conflict in the show can make them change in meaningful (or even noticeable) ways.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

The first cour (Eps 1-12) is mostly centered around C&T competing in a talent show and somehow manages to be even more predictable than the TV shows of that sort. Round 1 pits mildly interesting musical artists against people who are clearly not meant to be taken seriously (see Mermaid Sisters). Round 2 pairs the main characters (C&T, Angela) against other artists who have had much less screen time (really, I’ll let you guess who advances.) Round 3 is just a huge cop out for reasons I'll avoid going into detail about, but the result is meaningless and frankly a little disappointing. The whole arc amounts to the conclusion, "the girls now have marginally more exposure!”

Cour 2 (Eps 13-24) isn't much better. Most of cour 2 focuses on random other artists—at the start of an episode, we've never heard the artist's name before; by the end, we know their whole life story, in bullet points. Cour 2 continuously had me asking, ‘why should I care?’ It's bland, it lacks impact, C&T respond in the same predictable ways, we move on. The season finale tries tenuously to connect these characters again but fails to do so in a way that's interesting.

A few positive points—the show is visually gorgeous; that's Studio Bones for you. There is, on average, an original song per episode, and it's interesting to see the intersection of genres, even if nothing on the soundtrack is particularly groundbreaking. The series takes place on a terraformed Mars well into the future—the worldbuilding is well-integrated and subtle enough as to not be distracting.

What saddens me is that this show—in theory—had a lot of potential. The main immigration plotline (which has to do with Mars and Mars-bound refugees) is, in part, social commentary from the writers, and it's VERY relevant to the current political climate. The show TRIES to say something important—it’s just not well-executed. The entire plotline is relegated to the sidelines for the majority of the show, and even when C&T become directly involved, they feel disconnected–as if writing a good song is still their first concern, they react to everything like they’re one-step removed.

In cour 2, the pacing moves from repetitive and sluggish to whiplash-fast in the last three or so episodes (there's enough plot to go around; really, guys, just split it up). The writing is atrocious. The show’s biggest downfall, I think, is that it focuses on C&T, of all people. They are the winners. They make it big and keep making it bigger. They have it easy—they are the textbook heroes. They don’t face real conflict, but they watch others fall down, again and again. (The hero’s origin story is only impactful when the hero has to work for greatness.)

Many of the side characters, though archetypal, are much more compelling than C&T. Angela believes in her own greatness but feels, still, utterly and illogically alone—she is an antihero in the sense that she’s envious of C&T. She’s tragically unfulfilled. She lacks autonomy; her Mama uses her as a vehicle to achieve her dreams. Yet she’s arrogant, and memorably so, and that makes her plot arc all the more shocking.

Spencer, the son and right-hand-man of a presidential candidate, watches his own mother’s policies become more and more corrupt; mother’s joy becomes his burden. He is the flipside to Tuesday; he is someone who once loved music but turned his head and learned to give it up. Seeing him leave his mother’s side later on holds weight to it. Meanwhile, Tuesday’s one weighty decision—to leave home and pursue music—happens in episode 1. It’s arguably the only meaningful decision she makes in the entire show, so it's all downhill from there.

Katy, the observer, the unfulfilled fan. Even Ertegun, who leans on fame to find his sense of self. They’d all be better focuses than C&T, who—as characters—are interchangeable and flat.

TL;DR Carole and Tuesday could have been great, but the main characters are badly written and the pacing is uncomfortable. The result is far from great.

Every review is subjective, art is subjective your opinion may differ, never trust reviews to make the opinion for you, use them as a guide and make your own journey.
--
When I first watched Carole & Tuesday in 2019, my assessment was unremarkable. It was competent, neither especially impressive nor notably poor. Revisiting it several years later, however, in a period defined by the rapid normalisation of generative AI and algorithmically produced music, the series presents itself rather differently.

What once appeared to be a speculative premise now feels distinctly contemporary. Carole & Tuesday was among the earlier mainstream anime to pose a clear question: what happens ... when music production becomes almost entirely automated. In 2019 this functioned as a hypothetical concern. Today it resembles an ongoing structural shift within the industry.

Viewed with more distance and maturity, the series benefits considerably from a second encounter. The emotional centre of the anime lies not in its plot but in the relationship between its two protagonists. The warmth and sincerity of Carole and Tuesday friendship feels grounded and recognisable, and Shinichiro Watanabe once again demonstrates a particular skill for writing characters whose emotional responses feel restrained, human, and credible.

The overarching narrative remains relatively conventional. Two young girls pursue a musical dream in an inhospitable environment. Yet the story largely serves as a framework rather than the focus. The real substance lies in the contrast the series constructs between human imperfection and algorithmic optimisation.

Carole and Tuesday are portrayed as inexperienced and unpolished. Their lyrics are simple, sometimes naive. Their themes revolve around hope, personal experience, and aspiration. Their voices are not flawless, and their performances lack technical perfection. This stands in deliberate opposition to the AI driven competitors within the story, whose music is engineered for immediate recognition, maximum appeal, and market efficiency. These songs are polished, familiar, and strategically derivative. They sound new while simultaneously evoking the sense that one has already heard them many times before.

The anime handles this contrast with a degree of consistency. AI generated music is not presented as malicious, but as soulless in a structural sense, shaped by optimisation rather than expression. Fame and commercial success are depicted as attainable, yet fragile, and the series touches on both the privileges and the instability that accompany them. While the portrayal of the music industry is softened compared to real world conditions, it remains sufficiently grounded to serve its thematic purpose.

In the context of contemporary generative technologies, Carole & Tuesday acquires renewed relevance. The series implicitly argues that automation excels at reproducing formulas and replacing the merely adequate, while human creativity derives its value from intention, limitation, and emotional investment. Whether or not one accepts this conclusion in full, the anime articulates the tension clearly and without excessive moralising.

Seen from this perspective, Carole & Tuesday is less remarkable for its plot than for its timing and its focus on character driven authenticity. As a second time viewer, the underlying message emerges with greater clarity and resonance, lending the series a quiet poignancy that may not be immediately apparent on first viewing.

(SPOILER FREE - Review written from a Musician's POV)

Plot: 6/10
The anime was rather accurate in portraying the ugly and the good in the entertainment/music industry, so I really liked that! However, the relationship building between characters are either vague or underdeveloped. Characters' decisions are abrupt sometimes or do not make much sense, and that was mainly what I wasn't fond of story-wise.

Art: 7/10
The artstyle is pretty, but the animation is lacking quite a bit, I see way too many repeated frames sometimes and it threw me off just a little. Lip syncing, especially during singing, is very off. Loved how diverse the characters are though!

Music: ... 9/10
The music is what I loved most about this anime, naturally. The harmonies between the 2 MCs are absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I loved how authentic it is to live singing (autotune/pitch correction aside) it feels, Tuesday doesn't always time her vocals precisely to Carole, they hum during instrumentals etc. which also shows that they aren't professional singers but just 2 best friends who enjoy singing!The production also made all their original music and explored different music genres, big fan of that. Some of those songs produced really do deserve more recognition! "The Loneliest Girl", "Dance Tonight" and "Unbreakable" are my absolute favourites! Only song that was a HUGE miss to me was the rap done by Carole's refugee friend when he was in prison, that was pretty hard to listen to NGL.

Overall: 8/10
Mediocre plot, BUT diverse characters, pretty art and good music that will be stuck in your head for a while! Would recommend to at least give it a try.

i thought this anime was wonderful! was looking for something that brought representation, as got tired of works that only show whiteness and heteronormativity, and was surprised to see many black and lgbtq+ characters, in addition to the interesting approach to shanty towns and social inequality, immigration and refugees, censorship in art and freedom of expression, family issues and independence, etc. the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence is also a relevant topic, as there is a deep questioning about our existence and contribution. the soundtrack is amazing, especially love the songs "the loneliest girl", "mother", "kiss me", "unbreakable", "miserere mei, deus", "all i see", ... "give you the world", " endless", "after the fire", etc. it is interesting to follow the development of the protagonist duo and the ups and downs they face, apart from the fact that the plot does not forget to portray the dark side of the entertainment industry, that is, when artists become victims of betrayal, deceit, drug use, career fall, emptiness in the heart, etc. i wouldn't complain if there were more episodes! anyway, a great anime, highly recommended! 💛✨

.

[Review in PT/BR]

achei esse anime maravilhoso! eu estava procurando por algo que trouxesse representatividade, pois cansei de obras que mostram apenas branquitude e heteronormatividade, e fiquei surpreso por ver muitos personagens negros e lgbtq+, além da abordagem interessante sobre favelas e desigualdade social, imigração e refugiados, censura na arte e liberdade de expressão, questões familiares e independência, etc. a relação entre humanos e inteligências artificiais também é um tópico relevante, pois há o questionamento profundo a respeito da nossa existência e contribuição. a trilha sonora é estupenda, gosto principalmente das músicas "the loneliest girl", "mother", "kiss me", "unbreakable", "miserere mei, deus", "all i see", "give you the world", "endless", "after the fire", etc. é interessante de acompanhar o desenvolvimento da dupla protagonista e os altos e baixos que enfrenta, fora que o enredo não esquece de retratar o lado negro da indústria de entretenimento, isso é, quando os artistas se tornam vítimas de traição, enganação, uso de drogas, queda da carreira, vazio no coração, etc. não reclamaria se tivesse mais episódios! enfim, um ótimo anime, super recomendado! 💛✨

It’s sad to see negative reviews for such an outstanding anime, so here’s a positive review to hopefully convince all of you to watch it:

Carole & Tuesday is about two girls who dream of making it as singers in a world of AI music. With the help of Gus, Roddy, and others they meet along the way, they work to make their dream come true. However, that’s not all that goes on in this story. Setting: Mars, future (theory is that it takes place around the same time as Cowboy Bebop, 2071)

Story:

Carole and Tuesday’s motivation to not only be known, but also heard, is ... inspiring. They fight past many obstacles that stand in their way. One obstacle is sadly Tuesday’s mother, a politician who forbids her daughter from having the freedom she desires. I won’t get too into it because it’ll be a spoiler, but you do learn from the start that this mother daughter relationship isn’t an ideal one. Another obstacle is the usage of AI. Being not only singers and musicians, but also song writers, Carole and Tuesday have difficulty making it since it’s not usual anymore for humans to write music. To add to these obstacles, there are future events that pose problems for the characters that I won’t go into detail about. There are dark themes that definitely came as a surprise to me, such as depression, drug use, abandonment, and topics related to the government. The biggest shock was the inspiration from real life events. I won’t go into further details, but I promise you that the story will hook you and have you wanting more. If you’re here in hopes of finding another yuri, harem, ecchi, or isekai anime, you’ve come to the wrong place. Sure it takes place on Mars, but they were never transported there to save the world.

Art:

As an artist myself, the art style in anime is always a very important factor for me. When I saw that Eisaku was going to be doing the character designs, I instantly got excited. I’ve always loved his works, so I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed...and boy, was I right! Both the characters and environments are so well drawn. They’re beautiful. The expressions each character made are great and their eyes show so much emotion. The color palettes used suited each scene perfectly; soft, vibrant, dark. As for the characters, everyone has their own unique look. It’s always a nice change as an anime fan when the characters have distinctive features. This isn’t the case for most anime, sadly. Studio Bones always seems to do a great job in this regard. Then we have the two OP’s. The concept art for both were done by Bahi JD, who I didn’t know too much about until now. I’m so glad I’ve discovered him. Thanks to his amazing skillset, we’ve been blessed with some enchanting pieces of art.

Animation:

Similar to the art category, we have the animation, which is beautiful. I saw a review that negatively pointed out the usage of rotoscope and I must say that whether it was rotoscoped or not, like Yuuri!!! on Ice, it was extremely well done. In school, I rotoscoped for an assignment. Although it wasn’t exactly hard (probably because my drawings were not very detailed), it was very time consuming. I’ve always been amazed by animators in general, whether classical or 3D. So to the animators at Studio Bones, I applaude you. You really made the movements of the characters and vehicles look fluid. The close-up sparkle in characters’ eyes was captivating. If only I could animate like that. Lastly, the OP’s, like mentioned before, have a different art style. The animation in the OP was smooth and realistic. Each animator deserves praise. I found a blog that goes into further detail. Check it out here: https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2019/05/06/the-art-of-carole-tuesdays-opening-interview-with-bahi-jd/

Sound:

Now, we have a category of obvious importance. Being a music anime, you would hope that the OST would be worth listening to on repeat. As for me, I’ve been listening to it non-stop. Only the first vocal collection though since the second isn’t available on iTunes or Spotify (as of now). Both the first and second half of the anime have songs that are emotional, upbeat, and of course, funny. Galactic Mermaid isn’t for everyone, but it has me laughing every time I hear it. For those who find the lyrics dumb, that’s the point. It’s not supposed to be taken seriously. Call me immature all you want. I think it’s hilarious. Other than this song though, the music is very well written. Many of the songs have lyrics that will grab at your heart or maybe even be relatable for you. The songs later on in the anime have a lot of depth. As for the characters’ voices, the cast is made up of both singers and seiyuu. I hope this isn’t a turn-off for you. I personally prefer songs in anime being sung by professionals rather than seiyuu who are just okay. Nai Br.XX (Carole) and Celeina Ann (Tuesday) have such beautiful voices. They really compliment each other. I would love to hear more songs by them as a duo in the future. Another amazing talent is Alisa, who plays the new breakout star, Angela. Damn, can this girl sing! I personally love the voices and songs of all of the artists. Like the singers, the seiyuu did a great job. Please, please, please watch the anime in Japanese. The seiyuu are incredible. Their voices suit the characters perfectly and although they didn’t match the singing voices (obviously), I have no complaints. As a big fan of Miyano Mamoru, I think he killed his performance. Ertegun (FIRE!) is a great character and his lines are so extra. Miyano is the perfect seiyuu for him.

Characters:

There’s quite the line-up of characters, so I’ll only touch on the main ones.

Carole: a girl from Earth who meets Tuesday, a fellow songwriter, while busking on a bridge. Until that moment, she’s been lonely, but things start turning around when they become friends. Carole is outgoing, athletic, and loyal to her friends. She’s not afraid to stand up for what she wants and fight to protect Tuesday. We learn about her past later on and it really adds to her character.

Tuesday: a girl from a wealthy family who has been hidden away from the outside world. Her mother is a politician and wishes for her two kids to stay by her side, but Tuesday wishes for a different life, so she runs away to the futuristic, NYC-like “Alba City,” where she meets Carole. Due to her sheltered life, Tuesday is shy, introverted, and easily scared. Sadly, she has low self esteem, but she tries to be optimistic. Future events help her mature.

Gus and Roddy: Gus is Carole and Tuesday’s manager and Roddy is an AI programmer + system engineer who discovered the girls during their first guerrilla live performance. Both of them are very supportive and would do anything for Carole and Tuesday. They truly believe that they have the talent to make it big. We learn more about Gus’s past as a manager later on.

Angela, Dahlia, and Tao: Angela is a model and actress turned singer. After meeting Tao, an AI music producer, her goal of making music is set to action. However, in order to do this, she must become Tao’s puppet and do exactly what he says. AI machines put her through immense pain in order to further her in her career. Angela’s mother and manager, Dahlia is controlling and although she loves her, her actions aren’t always in Angela’s best interest.

Enjoyment:

You can probably tell by now that I love this anime. I absolutely enjoyed every second of it. From the story to the music to the animation, I was always excited to click ‘next episode.’ I recommend binging it like I did. It would have been very hard to wait each week for a new episode to air. As I got closer to the end, I got more and more excited (and nervous) to see what was to come.

Overall:

I 100% recommend this anime. I don’t understand the negative reviews. Maybe those reviewers are too immature to understand the masterful storytelling. It’s not your typical anime. As mentioned before, it contains dark themes that maybe aren’t for everyone. It also has an OST that maybe isn’t your preferred style of music. It also isn’t a yuri, which apparently is a reason for complaint...Don’t watch it then.

Carole & Tuesday is an original anime, so you will not find the story elsewhere. I love original anime because when you watch it, you have no idea of what’s to come. There isn’t a manga, light novel, or game to spoil the ending. I think that makes it even more worth watching.

This was a long review, so if you got to the end, I really appreciate it. Thank you. Have a wonderful day! ☆