Let’s be honest – I’m still here because in this anime season the herd has been thinned to the extent that it has. If this were a normal season I suspect I probably wouldn’t be covering Listeners, but this is anything but a normal season. If it were doing anything to make me actively dislike it this show would be easy to drop, but because it isn’t, it’s easier to stick with. Everything that’s wrong with it can be boiled down to a very simple essence – I wish it were better than it is. But there are a lot worse things I could say about a series than that (and I have).
That’s it really. Listeners tries too hard, it’s kind of a mess, and doesn’t seem to know exactly what it wants to be (which is surprising, considering that it has a very accomplished writer and director). But for all that – or perhaps because of it – it has a kind of endearing puppy-dog quality. And if you’re interested in rock music it’s usually interesting to see anime tackle it head-on. This time around we see Echo and Mu in high school – “Freak Scene Academy” in fact, known for churning out players with regularity (though that’s not so glamorous as it sounds, as we’ll find out).
The theme here is Nirvana, complete with “entertain us” puns. The headmistress asks Echo and Mu to figure out where students are getting “teen spirit”, an aerosol drug that makes them forget their problems but leads to long-term brain damage (not subtle). In return, she’ll let them see the Jimi Stonefree file that came to see in the first place (though it will prove pretty useless – though not totally). In service of that plot we have Nir, a lonely girl who for some reason Echo thinks is a boy, and Hole – the student council president who sidetracks Mu with the intent of keeping her from sniffing out the drug ring he stands at the head of.
As goofy as this is in execution, this ep is basically a story about high-school junkies who shoot up to escape the reality that they face dead-end futures. This is a different life than we’ve seen players cast in – as basically society’s shock troops against earless, and doomed to an early death. That’s what drives Hole to seek another way out, though Nir is hardly being used – she goes into this with her eyes open. It’s all very primary colored emotionally, and Echo and Mu continue to be predictable characters with no real depth to them. But it’s entertaining in its unpretentious, slapdash way.
The next phase of the journey is going to take us to see Prince (“Denka”, if you prefer) with an actual purple kingdom to boot. There’s a certain slightly trepidatious curiosity in seeing the likes of Suwabe Junichi as Prince and Fukuyama Jun (already handling the previews) as Jimi, and if indeed Listeners is to be a sort of funhouse mirror survey course in rock & roll they aren’t going to be the last big names we see. It’s not a bad concept, but it’s too bad Echo and Mu don’t provide a more compelling anchor for it. They’re likeable enough, but just not all that interesting.
