Tuesday is a rich girl who ran away from home with only
her guitar and a desire to play. Carole
is a street smart orphan who’s been on her own as long as she can
remember. When fate brings these two
together, the spark is instantaneous and before they know it, Carole and
Tuesday are making music together. Now
they have a dream: to perform for the world and become the biggest hit Mars has
ever seen. With a washed up but still
legit music producer and a social media specialist, that dream could become a reality. The competition is tough, but Carole and
Tuesday aren’t going to give up so easily.
When the name “Shinichiro Watanabe” is attached to an
Anime project, it gets peoples attention.
This is the guy, after all, who brought us two of the biggest Anime of
all time with the genre transcendant Cowboy Bebop and totally stylish Samurai
Champloo. Well, now Watanabe is back and
he’s trading in gun toting bounty hunters and slick as hell Samurai for a more
calmer but nonetheless heartfelt project about two girls looking to make it big
in the music industry on Mars. And if
these first four episodes are any indication, Carole and Tuesday seems poised
to join Bebop and Champloo as another Watanabe triumph.
Much like Bebop or Champloo, this series wouldn’t really
have a chance at working if its main duo didn’t click. But man do Carole and Tuesday click. It’s an instantaneous bond that forms between
them and it’s both believable and infectiously fun. Despite their separate and very different
upbringings: Tuesday, a girl of privledge and Carole, a long lost war orphan,
there’s nothing about their personalities that would make me think they
couldn’t become friends. Carole’s street
smarts and Tuesdays obliviousness to the world beyond her house make for great
comedy as well. Carole cant exactly hold
down part time jobs for various reasons and simple tasks like cleaning the
house are a major trial for Tuesday. In
short, this series is going to work based on the titular duo alone. That enough should be plenty to give this
series a try.
What is really going to gnaw at me and tempt me to try
and find all the little clues to this mystery are the possible connections
C&T has to Cowboy Bebop. The series
is set on Mars in a very modern day looking futuristic city that also happens
to be named “Alba City” aka the location of the final battle in Cowboy Bebop:
The Movie. Roddy also drops “Woolongs”
as a the method of payment for supplies, which is also how bounty hunters got
paid for their collars. This cant be a
coincidence. Now im not expecting to see
Spike and company show up at any point (especially since this series takes
place in 2073, a couple years after the Bebop finale). But I gotta wonder why Watanabe chose to
return to this kind of world after so long.
I will say though, getting a chance to return to this multicultural and
lively little city is great and continues to look like one of the more
promising looking futures in fiction (ignoring how much of a crap hole Earth
has become…also Carole is a refugee from Earth…hmmmm).
Putting the Bebop comparrisons aside, let’s get back to
the characters. Carole and Tuesday have
a pretty good supporting cast backing them up.
Gus and Roddy make for a great comedic duo in their own right but also
bring their own unique skill sets to the table.
Gus used to be in the music biz as both musician and manager. He may have to learn a few new tricks in the
changing world of popular music but that adds to the fun of watching him grow
as a character. Roddy, meanwhile, is the
up and coming social media guru who can push the girls public image. I know some might wonder if C&T is
looking to pair up Roddy with one of the two pretty girls but I’m hoping that
doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t feel
like a necessary element. We also get to
see a couple more music stars who will probably play prominent roles later
on. There’s Ertegun, a DJ with a holier
than thou attitude I cant wait to see get taken down a peg. And then there’s the clear rival for C&T,
Angela. She’s a young and popular model
who wants to change careers and become a singer. She’s just as entitled as Ertegun and comes
off as incredibly unliekable in her first couple of appearances, as a total
brat and whiner.
And then there’s Tao, a music producer who specializes in
AI Music Making. The man claims he can
make a hit song by taking all the elements from music across the
centuries. Interesting concept but
definitely speaks to the digital vs. old school ways of making music that will
be central to Carole and Tuesday’s main plot.
Tao himself, jeez every scene with him feels like a totally different
Anime. He’s as cold as a machine and
Angela even calls him out on this multiple times. Tao’s reply, “What’s your point?” The scenes where Tao is flat out torturing
Angela to get the right pitch from her screaming is cringeworthy. It’s like I’m watching Watanabe direct Saw or
a Rob Zombie movie instead.
I’ve got the bulk of the review talking about the
characters and the world. But what about
the music? Well, there’s more time
dedicated to the girls practicing than most of K-ON. C&T’s very first collaboration, “The
Lonliest Girl” is destined to be the song that defines this series and the
girls themselves, both separately and as a duo.
It sums up the feelings in their hearts and their want to be heard for
what they do. Honestly, their music
could be slow ballads like that the rest of the series and I’d be ok with
it. But there will be some more upbeat
tracks too like the shows end theme “Hold me Now”. Kind of like Yuri on Ice, I think we’ll be
delving into all sorts of musical genres too.
For all his pompousness, Ertegun is a pretty awesome DJ, delivering some
solid techno beats to get you dancing.
Also, cudos to Watanabe for his choice of episode titles. Each one is based of a popular song from a
singer or group from Cyndi Lauper (True Colors…which is also Tuesday’s
inspiration for wanting to pursue her dreams) to Bruce Springsteen (Born to
Run). These aren’t just randomly chosen
titles either. They sum up the episodes
in a few short words: from True Colors showing us who the girls wish to be; to
Born to Run showing the girls hitting the ground running, literally, after
performing Lonliest Girl at a concert hall.
My favorite is “Video Killed the Radio Star”, adequate for the girls
nearly falling victim to a scamming editing robot who’s pulling their leg for
its own amusement, only to get caught in the end.
Feel like I had a lot to talk about here and that’s good,
very good. Carole and Tuesday has a lot
to offer as a series and is a very different project from Shinichiro
Watanabe. If progress continues at this
rate (and they can tone down the psycho intensity of the Tao scenes) then I
think C&T have a shot at being placed on the same pedestal as Cowboy Bebop
(it’s only fair since they might share the same universe). But we’ll get to that in a few weeks. For now, rock on girls, the Gundam Anime
Corner welcomes your feel good tunes.
See ya next week everyone.
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