Category: Let’s Watch

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Let’s Watch TAKT OP.DESTINY: Episode 9

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

It’s a strange thing to be grateful for what is essentially a filler episode, but nonetheless here I am, feeling exactly that way. Perhaps “filler” is too harsh a term, “Family -Eroica-” isn’t as inessential as it usually implies, but aside from the cast’s arrival in New York–one of the few cities still standing tall, proud, and mostly untarnished in North America–there are really only two important points here in the ninth episode of takt op.Destiny, and they’re fairly brief ones. In order, those are:

  1. Takt and Destiny’s strange Conductor/Musicart bond will, as some have suspected, kill them eventually. Their choice is thus simply whether to continue fighting, knowing that any heroic intervention could be their last, or to enjoy what life they have in relative quiet and comfort.
  2. Someone is using Shindler’s tuning fork technique to attract D2s to New York. Again, Takt and Destiny’s options boil down to fight or flight. Takt, it will not surprise you, is not much of a runner.

Beyond these two admittedly tense points, most of episode nine is spent exploring New York and providing a bit more color to some character dynamics. It’s enjoyable stuff, if not exactly the highlight of the series.

We also meet Anna’s older sister Lotte here. Lotte is a scientist in the employ of the Symphonica and it’s from her that Takt and Destiny learn about their eventual fate, making her a crucial character to the show’s narrative despite her relatively lean amount of screentime. (And her honestly a bit uninspired design. Lotte and Anna look so similar that I expected them to be twins, but this is not the case.) Though the two do get a pretty adorable reunion hug.

takt op’s New York is not quite as compelling as its New Orleans. That city hummed with vibrancy despite the fact that most of it was abandoned back when we saw it. New York by, admittedly, possibly deliberate contrast, feels a touch sterile. There are skyscrapers and Times Square-style electronic billboards and a park (perhaps it’s meant to be the mythical Central Park? Though if so, it doesn’t much resemble it.) Said park hosts a memorial to a musician who goes unnamed but whom flowers are still left for. I’m not sure if the series is trying to imply it’s a specific historical figure or perhaps a character from its own worldbuilding, but until proven otherwise, I will assume it is for Biggie Smalls.

Ah, I should also mention that there is a Very Important scene of Destiny trying on new outfits and being applauded by the Schneider sisters.

If someone has not yet edited this scene to have her wear head-to-toe Supreme, they should.

There’s also a charming bit where Anna unsubtly pushes Takt and Destiny to go off on their own. Takt being himself, the result isn’t much of a “date,” but the two do discuss future plans; talk turns to fireworks (which neither of them have ever seen) and listening to Beethoven’s Fifth in the park. It’s cute, the sort of thing these sorts of episodes excel at.

But, as mentioned, this does not–cannot!–last. Something beneath the city’s streets has been set up to attract D2s. By whom and for what purpose is a mystery for the time being, although I have my suspects.

The one who confirms for Takt that his suspicions are correct is, of course, Lenny, via telephone. His facade of playfulness breaks when Takt presses him for further answers, and the episode ends on his hanging question; is Takt truly ready to learn the truth? What’s happening here may have happened before, as the conversation again turns to Boston and the general anime favorite timestamp of “ten years ago.” We don’t get any answers here directly–those are for next week–but it’s not hard to intuit that things are about to turn rather sour. Takt even correctly points out that Lenny’s attempt at a farewell mid-call sounds an awful lot like a final goodbye.

Thus, takt op.Destiny enters its final movement. Until next week’s, anime fans.

I could find no place to mention it in the main body of the article so I will do so down here. I apologize for this article being late despite my wishes last week. I’ve been struggling with what I believe is S.A.D., as often hits me around this time of year. I’ve been finding it very difficult to pay attention to much of anything, and writing has been even harder. I will endeavor to persevere in spite of this and only ask your patience, thank you.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch TAKT OP.DESTINY: Episode 8

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

There’s a simple trick that anime sometimes use to signal that the episode you’re about to watch is intense. If an anime’s OP is either skipped entirely or played right at the top of an episode, you know you’re in for quite a time. takt op.Destiny does the latter here with its eighth episode, “Destiny -Cosette-“, and it delivers on all counts.

We pick up immediately after last week’s cliffhanger. Takt–quite understandably given what we learned in that episode–has lost it. He charges into battle like a madman and, perhaps predictably, this is not a great approach against the more skilled Shindler and the just generally very strong Hell. He’s beaten within an inch of his life before Destiny carries him off.

Takt, thus, spends a good chunk of episode 8 bleeding out and delirious. Anime characters have pulled off compelling turns in more unlikely circumstances, so it’s not really a huge shock that for the third episode in a row we get some interesting insight into Takt’s character here as Destiny tries her best to nurse him back to health. Even while Takt, barely-conscious, mistakes her for Cosette. All of this takes place over the episode’s relatively brief middle third, and packs a pretty impressive amount of emotional character work into just a dozen or so minutes. The dark atmosphere of the cave that Destiny drags Takt into helps, admittedly, providing a suitably transitional backdrop for the emotional development in question.

It hasn’t been hard to intuit that Takt is still hung up on the late Cosette. Admittedly, with how these things sometimes work in anime it was hard to initially be totally certain that she was even actually dead. (takt op.Destiny would not have been the first anime to pull this sort of double bait-and-switch maneuver.) But as the show’s gone on it’s become clear that Takt really misses the girl. We get some elaboration on the “why” here, and some questioning into if holding that old flame is at all healthy.

On the one hand, yes, it was Cosette who pulled Takt out of his depression while Anna was taking care of him. But these feelings are complicated and muddy, and Takt has never been able to sort them out. Wisely, they’re not given any specific name here, which would risk cheapening them and would turn Cosette’s early-series death into little more then a vehicle for cheap tears.

It may be a touch surprising to add takt op to the list of anime this year that understand that emotional connections are not clear-cut things, but it’s welcome. When people leave our lives, we remember their shadows as much as the real person. Things left unsaid must remain so, and Takt’s inability to deal with that has held him back from genuine connection with the people who need him now. Chiefly Destiny herself, but also Anna and the scores of people they’ve met along their journey.

It’d be easy to criticize all of this as fairly standard “male lead gets all the depth” stuff, but I think looking at Destiny and her own struggles both throughout this episode and in prior ones makes it pretty clear that that isn’t true. Her loyalty and earnestness are not traits she has because she’s in a role that expects them, but because she lives them full-heartedly. Plus, there are little details that could easily have been played up for easy romantic tension but aren’t. When Destiny has to give Takt mouth-to-mouth, for instance, it is refreshingly devoid of any blushy hemming and hawing, something a lesser show would absolutely indulge in.

Random aside to remind you that mid-distance models are great, actually.

Instead, the closest the two are here is when Takt finally calls Destiny by her real name for the first time. I have to confess that I’ve been pretty “meh” on the idea of the two as a couple (the entire “a new person living in the body of Takt’s dead crush” thing is, admittedly, weird) but this scene is the best case for it that takt op has ever made. It feels natural in a way that the light hinting toward the pairing in prior episodes hasn’t.

If I could make one complaint, it’s that Anna does continue to get the short end of the character screen-time stick, as she’s physically quite far away from the action here. Although her own mini-plot here is quite good as well. She confronts her own insensitive habit of calling Destiny “Cosette” as a way of ignoring that the latter is truly gone, and at episode’s end she calls Destiny by her proper name too, bringing this ongoing subplot to a warm close.

(I would like to take an aside here to brag about being six or so episodes ahead of the actual characters in terms of referring to Destiny and Cosette as two different people. But hey, I’m not an anime character and thus have agency of my own. Not everyone is so lucky. 😛 )

Most of that in just the middle of the episode. So how does it actually end?

Well, let’s discuss its antagonist first. It should not be news to any readers who’ve been keeping up with the show that Shindler sucks. He’s a petty, grasping would-be authoritarian shitheel with no regard for other people, and whose hatred of Takt stems from jealousy at the boy’s talent and perceived importance. He is not a subtle or deep character, but he is very easy to hate, which happens to be a good trait for an arc villain to have. We also learn in this episode that he apparently actually hates music full stop. Sure, why not.

Hell, his Musicart, is entertaining, although she leans a bit too hard on the “sadomasochistic berserker” archetype that seems to pop up in every action anime. Her fun design and incredible choice of weaponry (I’m still not over the heel-mounted blades) make her a good counterbalance to Shindler.

Isn’t she just the worst, folks?

Why relitigate these characters? Because the episode ends with a rematch, of course. Destiny initially confronts Hell and Shindler alone. Unable to transform with Takt still recovering in the cave, she comes out swinging a pair of woodchopping axes* and nothing else. It’s commendably confident, but she can’t stand up to Hell’s full power by herself. Naturally, Takt staggers in to lend his power. Also naturally, Destiny chews him out for not taking care of himself and calls him an idiot. (Sidenote to the show-writers: if you’re going to make them a couple in the four episodes we have left. They need to keep this dynamic.) Naturally again, Shindler gets angry because they’re arguing with each other instead of paying attention to him. Naturally one more time, Leonard and Titan make their grand return in the nick of time, the foreshadowing from last episode (and, to be fair, some appearances earlier in this episode that I haven’t discussed) paying off wonderfully.

This machine kills fascists.

And then, honestly, the sort of scene that words cannot really do full justice to. This is where the aforementioned bit where Takt calls Destiny by her real name comes in, and the renewed connection between the two lets them re-enter the fray with full force. The fight scene is just superb, capping off with one of those huge energy blast vs. differently-colored huge energy blast sequences that, just speaking personally, I’ve loved since I watched Dragon Ball Z with my stepdad as a kid and have never stopped loving.

The fight ends here, not because Hell is entirely defeated but because a mysterious Musicart intervenes. Given this show’s general lack of subtlety her name is, of course, Heaven. Heaven’s proper debut here makes quite the impression; she apparently has the authority to both strip Shindler of his rank and to requisition his Musicart, both of which she does, leaving the now-former Conductor a stuttering mess. He promptly has a breakdown, which, honestly, after all of the nonsense he’s put our cast through, feels about right. Leonard and Titan are reprimanded too, apparently more for interacting with Takt than anything else.

We conclude on a note of triumph and catharsis tinged with an ominous shadow. Our heroes have succeeded for today, and are closer than ever as Takt silently vows to Cosette that he’s going to move forward from now on.

Also, and I cannot stress this enough, Anna and Destiny hug and it’s very cute.

Ah, but the final shot of the episode is this, revealing that Takt’s scarring is getting worse. Perhaps implying that using Destiny so much has really started to take a toll on him.

What will the consequences of all this be? It’s hard to know for certain, but I hope we’ll find out together, anime fans.

(Minor programming note: You may have noticed this week’s column was delayed by a day. That is a product of some personal stuff going on and I don’t expect it to repeat next week. Fingers crossed!)

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch TAKT OP.DESTINY: Episode 7

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Or: The one where things start getting kinda nuts.

Remember Shindler? The weird wannabe authoritarian we were introduced to a few weeks ago? takt op.Destiny certainly does, because he and his Musicart Hell return here, and in spectacularly awful fashion. But getting to the heart of why his return here is impactful requires us to talk about the rest of the episode first. “Truth -Noise-” is in fact, aside from its sharp turn in its final few minutes, otherwise another fairly sedate and character-driven episode.

The focus here, as it often is, is on our leads and their relationship to each other, which takes on a few new dimensions here as the trio roll into a town somewhere in the Appalachians that has been recently beset by D2s.

A few things happen here. Takt is wrapped up in attempts to compose a song since last week’s episode, and relentless mental improvisation (combined with his habit of tapping out the notes he’s “playing” in his head) have left him exhausted.

Takt, seen here looking like every college student I’ve ever known.

Destiny and Anna’s relationship has been somewhat strained by the latter being unwilling to let go of the idea that Destiny somehow still “is” Cosette (and in her defense it’s possible she’s right. We don’t really know enough about the mechanics of how Musicarts awaken. Either way, it’s clear Destiny doesn’t like it.)

Destiny and Takt’s relationship, meanwhile, feels like it’s opening up. When Takt gets ahold of an instrument this episode (a melodica, of all things, rather than the pianos he’s used to), it turns out to be because Destiny borrowed it from someone. It’s clear the two care about each other even if they’re not very good at showing it, which really gives their interactions some depth. Much of Destiny’s other character work this episode involves her helping some of the town’s residents–in particular, the mother of a young baby–out with procuring some basic supplies like food and such. It’s really lovely to see, and she remains a great character. (One of the very few ways this show could realistically greatly disappoint me is if they were to simply make Destiny disappear in a proverbial puff of smoke if Cosette were to come back.)

And about those D2s. We learn that, surprise: Shindler has been able to lead them around by the nose this entire time.

One of Hell’s abilities as it turns out, is to “wake up” sleeping D2s with her tuning fork. Cleverly, we actually saw this in action way back in episode three, but it was there devoid of any context, so we didn’t know what was happening. Shindler rants and raves about how the world is “impoverished” and how there’s no room for the poor and unproductive in it, and how he’s the real hero here and blah blah blah. He stops just short of saying something like “history will vindicate me.” As a portrait of a pretentious blowhard who’s convinced himself that his petty narcissistic impulses are for the greater good, it’s spot-on.

Some will decry the revelation that Shindler also awoke the D2s that lead to Takt’s hometown being ransacked in the first place (and to Cosette being killed and turned into Destiny) as overly convenient. What I think should not go unmentioned here is that in the episode’s opener we see Shindler told to avoid Takt by his superior, who praises the boy as “rare.” There is clearly something going on farther up in the hierarchy of the Symphonica as well, it’s just a question of what form it will take when it finally bubbles to the surface.

Takt naturally wants to kill Shindler. It’s hard to fault him–the man murdered a town of innocent people for basically no reason at all–and the episode ends on a cliffhanger as the two are about to face off. Thus, unlucky number 7 comes to an end. And wow quite a lot happens in this episode, doesn’t it? I haven’t even gotten the chance to mention that Leonard and Titan return for a brief cameo, presumably setting up a role in next week’s episode.

I’m here to look grim and chew bubblegum, and I’m all outta bubblegum.

Until then, anime fans.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch TAKT OP.DESTINY: Episode 6

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Before we begin, an administrative note. I somehow managed to hurt my hand a few days ago, and on top of that am presently sick. This is why there was no Frontline Report this week. I ask your patience if I seem a little less sharp than usual, and if my articles are accordingly a bit shorter for a while.

In any case, takt op.Destiny‘s sixth episode, “Sunrise -Rooster-“, for the most part, focused on minor bits of character building and some small dollops of backstory both for Takt specifically and the show’s setting in general. Most of it is building on old ideas, rather than introducing new ones. But that shouldn’t be taken to mean it’s minor. The emotional beats hit here are arguably more important than the actual narrative developments seen in episodes like last week’s. (Something I have come to realize about takt op is that I prefer its more low-key, traveler story-like episodes to its more “plot-important” ones.)

Following on from what we saw of Vegas a few episodes back, New Orleans, which our heroes reach here, is fairly desolate. Quite unlike Vegas though, there are remnants of the city’s past scattered about in a way that feels lived-in rather than superficial. Takt notes New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz, a fact that perhaps unsurprisingly, becomes relevant in the episode’s midsection. I should also quickly note here that, while we don’t meet a huge quantity of characters here, the episode does fairly well capture the racial diversity of an American city. That’s something that a lot of American media doesn’t do, so it’s worth praising here.

We follow two different paths through New Orleans over the course of the episode. Anna and Destiny leave Takt in the car while they go to pick up groceries, and their side of things unwinds into a chain of them helping out the various elderly residents of the city. Most of this is more cute than anything, but the third person they run into–an old woman with what appears to be dementia who mistakes Anna for her daughter–Destiny is eventually able to emotionally open up for one of the first times in the series. She has no shortage of praise for Anna, calling her strong, saying she protects her and that she knows many useful things. But it’s what she says about Takt himself that’s most revealing.

It’s been easy to get the impression that Takt and Destiny don’t really like each other very much, but that idea is put to rest here. Speaking honestly about her “Maestro”, Destiny praises the passion he puts into his piano-playing, and how it translates into her own experience on the battlefield. As she puts it, she is the music. It’s so poetic that it’s easy to forget that it’s almost literal. Without a doubt, this is one of takt op’s best pieces of character work so far.

Takt himself meanwhile ends up in what’s essentially a speakeasy. A small bar with shelves stocked higher with records and CDs than they are with liquor. The episode’s other two standout characters make their debut here as well. One is an enthusiastic bartender, who happily raves about a performance he once saw from Takt’s father once the Maestro lets slip that he’s Ken Asahina’s son. The other is the contemplative Joe, a former horn player who once played alongside Ken. He is, perhaps more than most, hit hard by the music ban.

Takt connects to both in his own way (although he’s rather cold to the former). When he’s given the opportunity to play a piano he, of course, takes it, and the resulting concert is one of the few times in takt op.Destiny where we’ve seen its first title character seem genuinely happy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that joy spreads to his audience, and Joe especially is moved by his performance. (You may note that on another level, the performance of the entire cast spreads joy to us, the audience of the entire anime. Popular media is more cleverly meta than it’s often given credit for.) As thanks, the bartender offers him some music composition paper, something sure to come up again later.

It’d be easy to write this off as a “minor” or “filler” episode, but, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, I think these emotional moments are ultimately what give the visual showmanship the series is known for its meaning. Music, animation, and so on. We’ve all got art in our bones.

The episode closes with a rather ominous aside. We sneak a peek at the offices of the Grand Symphonica, where its leader learns that the only son of Ken “The Rooster” Asahina–which is to say, Takt–is still alive. Mention is made of “proper countermeasures,” it all feels very heavy and foreboding. Yet the episode itself is the very opposite of that; just for today, Takt, Destiny, and Anna all seem genuinely happy. It may or may not last, but it’s wise to appreciate the calm before the storm hits.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch TAKT OP.DESTINY: Episode 5

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

There is an inherent push and pull at the heart of takt op.Destiny. The show is at its best when it’s giving us pure style. It’s much less remarkable as an actual story, where what we’ve seen so far has been solid but rarely amazing. That continues here in episode 5, “-Equitation -Valkyrie-“. takt op clearly wants it both ways, but the fact of the matter is that it’s a lot better at the former than the latter, so any dose of Plot has to be backed up by at least as much of its visual pyrotechnics. Episode 5 does stay on the right side of that line, and much of what I’m about to say can be chalked up to this being an episode that establishes new elements rather than fleshing them out. But its less inspired moments are a good reminder of why the show has to maintain that balance in the first place.

When takt op ends and people need to refer to this specific episode, they’ll call it “the one where they’re on a train.” Early on, Destiny fights off some D2s, and ends up standing on some train tracks after finishing them all off. Being how she is, she doesn’t move out of the way when a Symphonica train running important cargo (Black Night Siderite, as we soon learn) chugs toward her, so it has to stop. This rather astounding coincidence is how the show deigns to introduce three new characters, all of whom I suspect will be rather important in the weeks to come.

The first of these is Walkure. We learn several things about Musicarts in general through the lens of other characters talking about her; she’s a “conductor-less” Musicart, meaning that while she seems to take orders from another character and perhaps Symphonica-certified Conductors in general, she’s not actually “bonded” with any. Walkure is very straight-laced and by-the-book. She only ever refers to Takt as a disrespectful form of the word “You”* and is generally annoyed when he and Destiny act without official authorization. Later in the episode Takt and Destiny earn her respect after repelling another wave of D2s, and she melts like an ice cream cone in July after a very mild compliment from Takt himself, classic tsundere-style. It’s a little much, but she’s a likable enough character.

Offering that authorization is the conductor Felix Shindler. Shindler is obviously, cartoonishly shady, basically forcing Takt and Co. to “tag along” on his train as it hauls its cargo into Houston. (Our leads are New Orleans-bound, so he argues it’s only logical, given that Texas is on the way to Louisiana.) We don’t get much of a sense as to what he wants here. It’s clear from his monologues and his discussions with first one of his subordinates in the pre-opening, and later with his own Musicart, that he is concerned about Takt because he’s an “unauthorized” conductor.

It’s not totally clear whether that’s actually some kind of problem in the sense that the Symphonica itself would consider it one too, or if Shindler is just a petty wannabe authoritarian. The former would square with the general running implication that there’s something sinister about the Symphonica in general, and the latter would with his characterization here. It’s possible both are true.

As mentioned, the third character here is Shindler’s own Musicart. Her name is Hell. Yes, really. The “vaguely ‘psycho’ berserker” archetype is one that many action anime make use of, and I’ve never been terribly fond of it. We briefly saw Hell for a few minutes back in episode 3, but this is the first time we get any sense of what her deal is. While Shindler is certainly her Conductor she appears to have an agenda of her own, something the show rather hilariously telegraphs by having her play solitaire at one point and flip up a Joker card. I suspect she may end up being more important to the series overall than Shindler is, but if that’ll be the case, only the very seeds of such a development are planted here.

She also gets a genuinely very creepy line where she suggests to Takt that he should bond with Walkure “by force.” Thankfully he’s not interested, but still, it’s kind of out-of-nowhere. Far more arresting than her limited characterization is the fact that her heels turn into….what I will tentatively term “combat rollerblades.”

I don’t think this is what ZZ Top had in mind when writing “Legs”, but perhaps it should’ve been.

Which brings me to my general thoughts on this episode. Most of what we learn was already fairly obvious by implication, and the few new pieces of explicit information we learn aren’t real gamechangers. Takt may or may not be “rogue” in some sense from the Symphonica, but we kinda already knew that. Shindler seems like he’ll be a decent antagonist, but he’s certainly not a terribly deep character, at least not yet. What remains untouchable in takt op.Destiny are the visuals. And true to form, the climactic fight scene of this episode, where Takt, Destiny, and Walkure defend the train from a swarm of flying D2s, is one of the show’s best so far. There are only so many ways to say that a show looks really great, but takt op still does. I suspect it will continue to.

Other than this there are some fun or interesting moments with our main cast scattered throughout. I’d be doing the episode a disservice if I did not at least briefly mention Destiny’s moment of pure euphoria upon eating a new kind of sweet for the first time.

Her and Takt’s relationship continues to soomewhat fluctuate between “bickering siblings” and “a pair of hurt people who take that out on each other because they’re not really on the same page, emotionally.” The whiplash is a little odd, but not so much as to detract from their general chemistry. They work in both modes.

The episode ends with Walkure being coldly dismissed from her post by Shindler and left, I suppose, essentially unemployed?

In the meantime, our main trio get back on the road, still bound for New Orleans. I suspect we’ll be seeing more of all these characters in future episodes. As such, it’s no insult to say that aside from its fight scenes “-Equitation -Valkyrie-” feels a lot like a chunk of setup that has not yet paid off. This is just something that happens when watching a seasonal week-by-week, and it is not really a criticism, merely a fact of the format. Thankfully, the series has enough eye candy to make even an episode like this still feel like a treat.

Until next week, anime fans.

*I don’t speak Japanese, but I believe what she’s saying is “kisama”, a very disrespectful second-person pronoun that, when it shows up in anime, is harsh enough to sometimes be translated as “you bastard” or the like.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch TAKT OP.DESTINY: Episode 4

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

It starts out so simply! “Let the Performance Begin -Showtime-“, takt op.Destiny‘s fourth episode, opens with Takt and Destiny engaging in a little bit of training under Lenny’s guidance. It’s a great little demonstration of the kind of thrilling combat animation that takt op seems to be able to just summon with a casual flick of the wrist. Laser fire bounces off of scenery like rubber, a D2 is whacked to pieces like a busted action figure.

The usual. Eventually, this builds into what is probably takt op‘s most natural episode since its premiere. Perhaps “natural” is a funny word to use to describe an anime, but the focus here, at least with regard to Takt and Destiny, is the pair learning to fight like duet partners. And, on a less literal level, learning to find meaning in their new calling as protectors of the weak.

But first; we were promised a trip to Vegas last week. When our heroes roll into the town itself, it initially seems like we’ve been misled. Most of Las Vegas as we know it today is, here, abandoned, and a majority of the population survives by farming in fields outside the ruins. Our brief tour around the Vegas fields here is charming, but it quickly becomes clear that not everything is above-board. Most viewers will start to get the impression that something’s amiss with the introduction of Mr. Lang, a man wearing a decidedly not-farmer-ish suit and escorted at all times by a pair of armed bodyguards. When he’s introduced as the land’s “owner”, one need to connect only a few dots to intuit that the man is, at best, an exploitative landlord.

Before that particular thread can be tied up, though, we should also touch on Leonard’s interactions with Takt, here. We’ve only known Leonard for a little while, but he fills the role of the somewhat-cryptic (but seemingly, largely good-natured) mentor well. He and Takt discuss the meaning of music itself in one of “-Showtime-“‘s quieter scenes. Leonard espouses that music is a bringer of joy and a figurative guiding light. He argues that this is true even if the music itself can only come into existence through pain or loss, a fair enough idea. Less scrupulously, he also uses this concept to defend the Symphonica’s policy of not necessarily telling endangered populations that D2s may be nearby. The reasoning is sound, if cynical; fear saps peoples’ motivation, and that isn’t something that can be afforded when the world is just starting to get back on its feet. That, and they can’t really do anything to defend themselves without a Conductor around anyway. (Perhaps tellingly, Leonard doesn’t say that last part himself. It’s Takt who picks up the ball there.)

Leonard is an interesting and somewhat ambiguous figure, and his driving the episode’s plot doesn’t end here. It’s he and Titan who take the initiative into investigating Mr. Lang, uncovering a secret casino–a remnant of old Las Vegas in both physical form and spirit–without much effort. And while Takt, Destiny, and Anna eventually make their way to this place, too, it’s Leonard who gets in without a fight. When Destiny eventually drags Takt and Anna there, it’s because she’s following “vibrations” under the ground, and she’s more than happy to kick the living daylights out of Lang’s security guards to get in.

Of course, the inevitable eventually happens and Mr. Lang’s underground gambling den is promptly invaded by freaky spiked beetle-gorilla D2s, who bust in through the floor and bounce around the place like Sonic The Hedgehog in a casino level’s pinball table. Leonard gives Takt a sort of live-fire exercise here, and it’s over the course of this sequence where he and Destiny finally learn to “play” together like a proper pair of musicians should. Because this is takt op, that entails kicking a lot of monster ass. And indeed, much of it is kicked over the course of these few minutes. It’s the kind of scene that makes you want to break out old-timey adjectives like “rollicking” and “rip-roaring.” The show’s just fun to watch, OK?

After all this, we bid goodbye to Lenny here, with him shaking Takt’s hand Conductor to Conductor as he wishes our protagonist well. Their own business in Vegas taken care of, Leonard and Titan ride off into the sunset. I suspect we’ll be seeing them again. Oh, and if you’re worried about Mr. Lang, don’t be. Titan rounds him up in the episode’s closing minutes. What exactly happens to him is left to our imagination, but aside from confirming that yes, he was stealing money from the farmers to fund his bougie casinoland fantasies. This sequence also proves that Titan can be quite scary when she puts her mind to it! I really do hope we see more of her.

“This shot is mostly just to remind you that I’m not human and also carry a firearm.”

This episode lays some groundwork for future ones, certainly, but more importantly than that it’s the kind of engaging fun that you (or at least, I) look for in a series like this. It’s a nice reprieve after the rather serious nature of the last two episodes without being so lightweight that it feels inconsequential. This is what you want out of a traveler story series, and I hope many more episodes like this are to come.

Until next week, anime fans.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch TAKT OP.DESTINY: Episode 3

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

I think I’m closer to figuring takt op.Destiny out. I could’ve told you from the opening minutes of episode one that this series had a flair for the dramatic, but “campy high-concept action series” is a pretty populated genre these days. That alone doesn’t tell us all that much. When I say that I’m closer to “figuring it out,” I mean I think I know what it reminds me most of, at least at present, and that would be Black Rock Shooter. Not the OVA, the TV anime.

Both shows are predicated on high melodrama and have a broad music theming tied together with ostentatious transforming heroine designs. There are of course some big differences too; Black Rock Shooter is a lot more esoteric than takt op has been so far, and being animated entirely in 3D CGI gives it a very different visual feel, but the general similarity is definitely there. And that’s a good thing! Black Rock Shooter is a real gem, and there’s enough interest in the franchise even ten years later that we’re getting a new anime based on it next year. So believe me when I say, I mean the comparison only in the most flattering of terms. Even the opening for the third episode (“Awakening -Journey”), an honestly kinda edgy scene where Takt and his new Musicart cut through swathes of D2s only to eventually pass out, will make you say “oh the drama” in a good way.

They’re rescued by new character Leonard, who is almost certainly more than he appears, but other than this scene mostly serves as a charming face to drop exposition and cryptic hints on us alike in equal measure.

To the Guy Enjoyer segment of my audience: You’re welcome.

His own Musicart, Titan, helps out here too. I’m actually a little sad she doesn’t get more of a role in this episode. (This is to say nothing of the other Musicart who briefly appears in the opening, cuts a huge magic tuning fork in half(??) and then disappears.)

Now does all of that mean that takt op‘s third episode is particularly great on its own merits aside from that scene? Well, I complained last week that it felt like takt op seemed to think it needed to “explain itself” in terms of worldbuilding and mechanics and such. There is some logic to this–this is a tie-in to a mobile game, after all–but it’s easily the weakest component of the show, and it takes up a good chunk of episode three. The silver lining is that the show’s production carries it even in moments where the story is a bit dry, and the characters are likable enough that even “dry” isn’t actually “boring.” This leaves us then with an episode that is a bit slow in spots but still mostly pretty good. There are worse things to be.

As for what is exposited to us, I won’t bother recapping every nuance, but there are two main takeaways here, and a third that’s essentially a restatement of something we already knew. Almost all of which comes to us courtesy of Leonard, filling his Guy Who Knows Things role here admirably.

One: The “Cosette” we followed in episode one and the latter half of episode two is not really Cosette. Musicarts lose their prior sense of self upon “awakening.” We learn–although anyone who read prerelease press materials sort of knew this already–that her actual name is Destiny, hence the show’s title. Everyone rather stubbornly insists on calling her Cosette anyway, though for the purposes of this column going forward I’ll be referring to her by her Musicart name and reserving “Cosette” for her prior, pre-awakening self. She’s also “unstable” somehow, which perhaps explains her wildly fluctuating power as a fighter.

Two: Destiny awoke in a very unusual fashion. Leonard informs Takt and Anna (and by extension, us) that most Musicarts are trained over the course of many years. (The even moderately attentive viewer will note this raises quite a lot of red flags about the whole “Musicarts forget their entire past lives” point, but that’s presumably something to be addressed down the road.) Destiny’s emergence, all at once, makes her very unusual, and Leonard speculates she may be a literal world-first. She also, again unusually for a Musicart, appears to somehow unwittingly sap Takt’s lifeforce when battling. This again is called out as unheard-of, and Leonard seems genuinely shocked by it.

Three: The only people who can possibly shed any more light on any of this are the Symphonica themselves. And as we knew from episode one, their HQ is in New York. The full route that Takt, Anna, and Destiny plan to take is detailed for us here, starting by going “down” to Las Vegas, along the American South, through the Appalachian Mountains, and up the East Coast to New York. Leonard and Titan offer to tag along part of the way, yet they were nowhere to be seen during episode one. Hmm.

Boy, Titan sure is cute. It would really be an emotional jab to the gut if she and her Maestro died horribly or turned out to be evil or something.

And that’s essentially our episode. There’s another (great) fight scene to close things out, in which Destiny literally blasts Takt’s house away in an almost hilariously on-the-nose symbol of his abandonment of his old life. But hey, the show is at its best when it’s not being subtle. More metaphors like that, I say!

The closing moments of the episode feature our main trio piled into Anna’s car, where Takt and Destiny lightly bicker. For the first time since its premiere, takt op feels like it’s found its “normal” again in this final scene, and the character dynamic that immediately endeared me to the series clicks back into place perfectly. Will it hold up for the rest of the series? That’s impossible to know. But I do know one thing, assuming next episode picks up right after this one. Anime fans? We have a trip to take.

Until then.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch TAKT OP.DESTINY: Episode 2

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime, and provide thoughts and analysis on each episode. You should expect spoilers for both the current episode and all episodes before it.

Serious question; did people think that takt op.Destiny needed to like, explain itself?

Surely some people must have. That’s the only explanation I can really muster for the puzzling note on which the second episode, “Music -Reincarnation-” opens. We open not by picking up after last week’s riotous romp, but at some point before then. A sort of “how we got here.” takt op here runs through its world’s and protagonist’s backstories competently, but without much flash. We see that Takt lost his father. We see him struggle and, frankly, fail, to cope by holing up in his room for an unknowable amount of summers, pounding away at his piano but interacting with no one but Cosette and Anna. (The former of whom acts notably differently here than she does in the first episode, but we’ll get to that.) He gets snippy with them and balks at the suggestion that anything is wrong. Typical traumatized teenager stuff, mostly.

None of this is bad, but it’s a far cry from the knock-you-on-your-ass bombast of the opening episode. Certainly I don’t know how those who liked takt op.Destiny’s more lighthearted side are going to react. And while it’s certainly tolerable, it would be a pretty disappointing note for the show to continue on if it weren’t leading up to something. Thankfully, it is.

You see, it turns out that a traveling, Symphonica-sponsored music festival will be arriving in town. Surely, nothing bad could come of this.

For a while, nothing does. Grand Maestro Sagan (the one responsible for the “music ban” in the first place) makes a brief but notable appearance. Other than that, the festival sequence is fairly lighthearted and warm. Takt and Cosette even play piano together at one point. It’s cute.

Oh you cishets and your instruments.

Of course, this is not the sort of show where things stay copacetic for very long. Soon, a band of D2s are attracted to the festival and everything goes to hell. Cosette nearly dies, Takt loses an arm. If that doesn’t seem to immediately square with what we’ve known of the series so far, you’ll want to hold on to your monocles, because the final few minutes are where “Music -Reincarnation-” really earns its stripes. (And, yes, explains its title.)

We don’t get the specifics–and why would we need them?–but Takt unintentionally does some kind of music-magic that infuses Cosette with new life and seemingly transforms her into a Musicart. We end on a cliffhanger, but not before some truly stunning, wonderfully melodramatic dialogue and imagery.

The remainder of this past-set story to be resolved sometime next week, we must assume.

In general, it’s kind of an odd follow-up to the first episode. Mostly for how tonally different it is, and for the implication that the Cosette we got to know last week is not “really” her. (I suspect, even though it doesn’t come up explicitly here, that being infused with a Musicart somehow changes one’s personality. Recall that Cosette was almost android-y at times last week.) But if takt op.Destiny wants to trade in some of its visual oomph for melodrama, I think it turns out to be well-earned here. I just hope the series doesn’t forget why people tuned in in the first place.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.