Yeah, I like the Ikuhara show more than the Watanabe show. And the thing is, I kind of expected it. I don’t know how my “radar” works – and mind you, it doesn’t always – but maybe it’s a function of having watched so many anime over the years. A preview image, a synopsis, a short video – while instincts are sometimes wrong, they’re right more often than not. And something just seemed off to me about Carole & Tuesday almost from the beginning.
While it’s probably not a fair criteria, I have to say that comparing this series against Sarazanmai does help me understand why I’m struggling with it. Two shows, two directors, so opposite in so many ways. In Ikuhara’s case you have a guy who stubbornly refuses to change his ways (even when he should), to moderate, to get old. And Carole & Tuesday plays like the work of a guy who’s gotten old. It’s doesn’t strike me so much that Watanabe is playing it safe here, running scared – it’s more that it feels like he can’t be arsed to really be distinctive or edgy. My problem with C & T isn’t so much that it’s safe but that it’s lazy.
With that said, unless my memory is faulty (faultier) this certainly is the safest show Watanabe has ever done, by far. It’s a measure of how talented Watanabe is (at gathering talented staff, not least) that Carole & Tuesday can deliver so many good individual moments anyway. I rather liked the sequence at the pizza shop – not so much for anything that was said or the (again, rather tacked-on) sci-fi elements, but just the general look of the place. Watanabe has a phenomenal eye for detail in framing a shot, marrying foreground and background (Ertegun’s mansion is another example). He can’t not be great some of the time, seemingly, just because of who he is.
But still – the situations and characters all come off as extremely predictable and simplistic, and the conflicts as well. I can’t really bond with the sci-fi elements (as I noted earlier, they remind me of an Adachi Mitsuru series where everything looks like the 80’s except one of the kids pulls out a cell phone once in a while). And I’m still not feeling the music, which is pretty important as this is, you know, a music series. I’d still rather have heard the episode titles than the songs that were played in the actual episode.
About the only thing apart from the occasional supernova of Watanabe stylistic brilliance that grabbed me this week were the inside jokes. Like “Bruno’s concert on Mars”, or the “73 Questions” parody, or the Cowboy Bebop currency, the Woolong (though of course Watanabe already did that callback in Space Dandy). As for the trite story about the ambitious politician mom not willing to have the cops find her runaway daughter, or one mediocre music performance on Instagram changing the world, or the product placements – that just all seems like slumming for someone of Watanabe’s talent and stature.
Are the good individual moments enough to sustain me? Over one cour, maybe – over two, probably not. Since Watanabe is not the main writer on this series, it seems kind of unlikely to me that things are going to change in a significant way with the narrative itself. I do expect the music to get better, and if that becomes compelling enough maybe it can be the string that ties those moments together into something that works as a whole. I certainly hope so, because it’s not like we’re likely to see another Watanabe series anytime soon if this one doesn’t work out.
Litho
April 26, 2019 at 11:17 pmIt’s the music that grates the most for me. It’s just so…. mainstream sounding.
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sonicsenryaku
April 27, 2019 at 12:03 pmI figured carole and tuesday wouldn’t be your cup of tea. That being said, I think you’re putting too much of the slack on Watanabe rather than the actual director of the series: Motonubu Hori. Pinning down the difference in roles of a chief director and main director a very important distinction here. Think about your comparisons here Enzo: You’re comparing someone who’s playing the role of chief director i.e C&T, with a person who’s playing the role of main director i.e Sarazanami. I’m not sure if you know, but Sarazanami has a chief director: Nobuyuki Takeuchi. I think your comparison would be more valid if you compared the two people who are actually in the directing role. Being a chief director is not the same as being an actual director in the same way that being an episode director is not the same as being a director. You gotta evaluate the roles with a bit more scrutiny my friend
Guardian Enzo
April 27, 2019 at 12:32 pmOh, I’m aware of that, believe me. And maybe it’s a valid hedge, but looked at another way I think it only supports my argument all the more. We both know Watanabe is the name behind this series – he was the selling point. It’s supposedly his concept and design. And he’s filled the chief director role on his past few series, so that’s nothing new.
No question Watanabe and Ikuhara are filling different roles here, and that’s partly a function of their very different approaches to making a show and their relative quirks. But one way or another, this show comes off for me as bland and lazy, and if one way or another that’s a function of Watanabe just in it to cash the check from Netflix for more vintage jazz vinyl and fine wine, that would really be too bad.
Simone
April 28, 2019 at 5:57 pmIt’s not a good slope to go down, I guess. Reminds me of how for a while we kept having stuff marketed with Gen Urobuchi’s name while with increasingly less actual Urobuchi in it (Suisei no Gargantia and then the trainwreck that was Aldnoah Zero). But I suppose this will do well enough on the mainstream, if anything it’s perhaps exactly the kind of anime Netflix needs as its public face. You don’t get safer and more inoffensive than this.
Simone
April 28, 2019 at 6:06 pmGotta say, this episode also marked the beginning of the plot holes. Scrappy music manager Gus manages to find C&T in five minutes with their Instagram and Google, but Tuesday’s powerful and well connected family and its private detectives can’t? Not very believable, just artificially delaying the inevitable “Tuesday gets dragged back home but somehow convinces her mother to let her pursue her dreams” arc.
The pop culture references are funny but they are really laying them thick, and I find it rather weird when someone in a future setting keeps just referencing XX and early XXI century stuff. What, did music stop after our time? You’d expect to hear newer artists mentioned in there. These guys terraformed Mars, that should be DISTANT future, not 30 years from now. In general the sci-fi setting is very shaky, and I don’t see why they couldn’t avoid the problem simply by putting this on Earth in the immediate future (the AI composed music is relatively more believable, we’re almost there). Also, they have AI singers and composers, but human DJs, huh. I’d say an AI DJ seems the easiest accomplishment…
Also, when asshole DJ dude tells C&T their song will be generic and samey… yeah, I guess it’d help if their songs weren’t generic and samey. As things are, gotta give credit when it’s due, Ertegun’s right.
Guardian Enzo
April 28, 2019 at 6:14 pmAlso, Tuesday is obscenely rich. Why was she so shocked by Ertegun’s opulent house?
Simone
April 28, 2019 at 8:24 pmHuh. Good point.
kiwi
April 29, 2019 at 12:55 pmi can totally see why one would be skeptical about this show….
however I’m a simple lesbian and Carol & Tuesday themselves warm my cold dead heart and i don’t have room left to be cynical. ^.^
also i guess I’m a watanabe diehard… (cept zankyou no terror… didn’t connect w/ that one at all)
I’m definitely seeing this one through.