It’s undeniably an event anytime Watanabe Shinichirou wades back into the TV anime pool, which makes Carole & Tuesday an important series by default.  Watanabe is both a big name and a phenomenal directorial talent, and those two don’t always overlap.  Not only that, he doesn’t work that much – his last efforts being 5 years ago in Space Dandy and Zankyou no Terror.  The latter was pretty divisive, and I’m of the opinion that it was a colossal mess.  Space Dandy was certainly a standout, especially the second season.  However, it was by design a forum for guest talent to showcase their own aesthetic, with Watanabe only directly involved on rare occasions (though the best episode of the series was one he both wrote and directed).

Like Space Dandy, Carole & Tuesday is a co-production between Bones and America – and this time they’ve stepped up in zip code from Cartoon Network to Netflix.  And like Dandy C & T seems written very much with a Western audience in mind, though to the fair Watanabe’s shows often have a decidedly American style to them.  And like Space Dandy Carole & Tuesday is mostly in the day-to-day hands of others, like veteran animator Hori Motonobu and screenwriter Watanabe Aya (no relation), while Watanabe Shinichirou focused on the larger concept.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that – one of Watanabe’s greatest strengths is both identifying talent (he gave Tachikawa Yuzuru his first big break) and gathering it together.  And he’s certainly done that here, with big-time animators like Ito Yoshiyuki and Thomas Romain and art director Konou Ryou involved.  Ironically, the series is running as a Netflix Japan exclusive for the next three months, which means there will be no legal options for what seems to be the main target audience until after the series is half-over.  On the other hand I’m heartily glad to see Watanabe get a 24-episode commitment, though part of me screams out in frustration that it didn’t happen with Sakamichi no Apollon.

Given that this is a two-cour original series, it’s obviously going to be impossible to reach definitive conclusions after one episode.  That said this is a first impressions post, and what I guess I’d say is that I wanted badly to love Carole & Tuesday right out of the gate, but I didn’t quite get there.  I see a world of potential here, the budget is obviously ample (as it is with all Netflix anime productions, and besides – it’s Bones), and there’s tremendous talent on display.  But the actual narrative didn’t connect with me much, as good as some individual moments were.

Carole & Tuesday is, fittingly enough, the story of Carole (Shimabukuro Miyuri) and Tuesday (Ichinose Kana).  The latter is a pampered Cyndi Lauper-loving rich girl who runs away from her mansion in the wealthy hamlet of Herschel City to the big city of Alba, Gibson in tow.  The former is an orphan living fairly rough who plays her keyboard and sings on the street and gets fired repeatedly from service industry jobs.  Tuesday is 17, Carole seemingly about the same.  There’s also a drunk named Gus (Ohtsuka Akio, whose presence improves any show lucky enough to have it), who used to be a music producer but now passes out in dive bars.  I think you know the next dance, dear readers.

By the way, this is all happening on Mars – and this is 50 years in the future.  And I have to say, it’s kind of a depressing take on the future because it looks basically like the present – traffic, social media, Jack Daniels – with some rather pedestrian sci-fi touches.  Frankly the sci-fi element feels kind of tacked-on and irrelevant, though that certainly may change in episode to come.  Neither Carole or Tuesday (or anyone else we fleetingly meet) makes much of an impact, but the setting is quite lovely even if it doesn’t look all that futuristic, and obviously Watanabe’s scene compositions (he did storyboard the premiere at least) are often breathtaking.  Plus, the owl alarm clock was cute.

If I have a concern here, it’s that a gritty sci-fi about music seems almost too on the nose for Watanabe Shinichirou, given that both right in his wheelhouse.  And if the sci-fi seems a bit uninspired, the music (composed by Canadian singer/producer Mocky and performed by Nai Br.XX & Celeina Ann) is likewise somewhere south of breathtaking in the first episode.  It is only the first episode of course, but in a series about music the music pretty much has to be really good, as it was in Sakamichi no Apollon.  I have faith Watanabe will deliver on that front – it just might take a little time to ramp up to it.

So in sum, for me Carole & Tuesday was a collection of mostly impressive and occasionally stunning individual elements that never quite came together into a compelling package.  Given who the showrunner is and that we have two cours, my expectations are still pretty high here.  And there’s no denying that where a show with this masthead is concerned, the standards are unfairly high – Watanabe may not be in a class by himself but it sure doesn’t take long to call the roll, and he’s competing with his own brilliant career to a large extent.  I expect Carole & Tuesday to be good, but what I hope is that it’ll be great, and anything less will be just a little disappointing.

ED: “Hold Me Now” by Nai Br.XX & Celeina Ann