Mild spoilers for Carole and Tuesday follow.
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“I feel like the world’s going in a bad direction. But I can’t do anything. The only thing we can do is write music,” Carole says gloomily, in the penultimate episode of Carole and Tuesday, which released its last half on Netflix in late December. She’s not wrong, but it’s a fantastic thesis for what the anime tries to tackle. Carole and Tuesday cares deeply about the world and music, and makes a grand statement of it. Headed by the prodigious Shinichiro Watanabe, the mastermind behind Cowboy Bebop, Kids on the Slope, Terror in Resonance amongst other works, and channeled via co-director Monotobu Hori, Carole and Tuesday is a show that is probably one of the most thematically ambitious works in anime in the past decade, but not without some faults.
Carole and Tuesday follows the story of, well, two girls named Carole and Tuesday, as they come from estranged homes to compose music and try to make it big on a futuristic, colonized Mars. The premise is rather simple, and make no mistake, is purposely so: Watanabe uses Carole and Tuesday’s plot as a declarative essay of sorts, to profess their absolute love for the charm and wonders of music. In that sense, it’s far more accurate to perceive Carole and Tuesday as less of an anime and more of a project: whether it’s the clear dedication to multicultural and ethnic representation, the volumes of music performed by real artists from all over the globe, or the tackling of topics like immigration, industrial copyrighting, or the discussion about artificial music versus ‘authentic’ craft: Watanabe has a lot to say in Carole and Tuesday, and much of it is laid out over the course of a 24 episode journey revolving around these two innocent and charming girls.
This does come with drawbacks. Carole and Tuesday, while fun and pleasant to watch on screen, serve more as templates for what Watanabe wants to discuss rather than emotional gateways. They hardly get any significant character growth and it’s one of the show’s most stunted decisions as it puts a solid hamper on a lot of the story being told. Because Watanabe seems far more involved with approaching topics than necessarily a cohesive story, many parts of Carole and Tuesday do feel a bit wandering and even misleading. The first half is standard fare anime as Carole and Tuesday go episode by episode, trying to make a hit and successfully enter the industry. Watanabe channels a bit of his Space Dandy here as it turns episodic, ranging from comedy to sincere drama, leading up to a main arc as the girls find their foil and (much more interesting) rival, Angela.
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The show’s themes kick in with the second half, which, while far more layered, trades predictability for messiness. Some character stories – and there are many unique ones explored – end abruptly, and certain realistic plots are dropped altogether or bookended into something different. The ending also feels rushed to the point where some emotional buildup feels incomplete. It’s a strong inverse of one of Watanabe’s previous works, Kids on the Slope, and while the structure in this case serves a far more noble and ambitious purpose, it still comes off as mediocre. Hori and Watanabe want to do it all with Carole and Tuesday, but in making an earnest collaboration, they sacrifice one of the biggest components of emotionally resonant storytelling.
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Even still, Hori and Watanabe’s love for music shines through in every regard. Carole and Tuesday may have issues with the pacing and plot, but everything else is absolutely glowing. The animation is overall consistent and many topics about music are covered, whether it’s about the power of music to captivate despite boundaries, the difficulty of internet sensations when it comes to being a rising pop star, the impediments of being a woman in the music industry, and even the hurdle of self-expression when it comes to gender, identity, and politics.
Nothing emphasizes this more than the fact that Watanabe has collaborated with over 20 artists from a variety of countries to create a diverse landscape of music that touches all boundaries and genres. Halfway throughout the anime, a non-binary artist talks about their way of traversing psychedelic music to find balance. In another episode, an Instagram famous star blatantly confesses to using pop music as a way to affirm his own popularity and self-confidence. One of the later episodes even directly refers to the ICE situation in America as a rapper is blatantly arrested for his music about being oppressed and condemned to a fugitive life of no free rights. All of these songs are covered by real people and real events, and so while rooted in a fictional world, carry a heavy message about the timeliness of these situations, and as a result, the timeliness of music as a way of representation and diversity. It’s a very powerful statement and Watanabe and Hori take this aspect seriously. If Terror in Resonance was Watanabe’s thesis about the corruption of Japanese nationalism, Carole and Tuesday is him taking it to a global level.
Last but not least, the dub for Carole and Tuesday is excellent, holding up as one of the most solid ones out there in the past year. I personally had a disconnect with the subbed version as much of Carole and Tuesday takes place on a global context, and thus hearing a Japanese voice actor switch to English for the music was very odd. While there are some odd choices made in the dub – I would have preferred a black voice actress for Carole – it is strong enough that it works better than the subbed version, and it’s worth mentioning that the subs on Netflix can be incorrect in translation (using improper pronouns, or weirdly worded sentences). Otherwise, the show is very bingeable, and offers an easy enough structure to navigate through and immerse oneself in.
If you care about music or what’s going on around you in the world right now, or even seek to watch a multimedia project come to life in the medium of anime, Carole and Tuesday is absolutely worth it. It may not hit the highs it wants to all the time, but it still comes off as an incredibly ambitious and successful experiment tackling themes and topics very few would dare to touch in today’s age.
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When not writing about Japanese cartoons, Natasha can be found on Twitter as @illegenes, talking avidly about her love for doomed relationships and complicated characters. You can also find more writing by her on Crunchyroll or on the blog, Isn’t it Electrifying?
Source: IGN.com Cowboy Bebop Director’s Newest Anime Is Powerful but Messy