Shin’ichiro Watanabe (渡辺 信一郎) is a director is most known for his classic anime Cowboy Bebop (カウボーイビバップ), which is definitely one of my top ten favorites. He also did Samurai Champloo (サムライチャンプルー), another of my favorites. Both of these are great not just because their stories and characters, but their wonderful music.
Recently I heard there was a new series of his available on Netflix called Lazarus (ラザロ), and after watching the preview it looked promising, though parts of it were quite reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop (not a bad thing). While I considered watching it, something tugged in my mind that needed to be done first.
A few years ago I had seen the first episode of another of his works, Carol & Tuesday (キャロル＆チューズデイ), but I never kept watching after that. I only remembered a little bit about it, and the reason I stopped was a bit unclear, but I think it had something to do with disappointment of expectations that it didn’t seem like a Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo.
But on a whim I decided to start watching Carol & Tuesday again, a story about two girls’ struggles and rise to success as singer songwriters in a futuristic society on Mars. Being a bit of a musician myself, in theory I really should like a story about musicians. (Not to mention, I am a pretty big sci-fi fan.)
My rewatch of the first episode was enjoyable, and within a few weeks I finished the 26-episode series. By the way, I’m generally not the type of person who binge watches, and only try to steal a free hour here or there in the evenings.
Overall the element of music was the best part of the anime by far. There were a bunch of songs made just for the series that were performed not just by the main characters, but also a few side characters. One of my favorite parts was a show similar to “American Idol” where a handful of musicians competed with greatly different appearances and styles. I liked a majority of the songs, and there was a huge amount of creativity and heart put into these.
But my excitement peaked around halfway through, and in the second half for some reason I started to lose interest. I think that was partially because of the time spent on political things as well as side character stories. I frankly just didn’t care much about the other characters and wanted to see and feel more about the two girls (though the other characters all had some connection to them).
I don’t want to give away any specific plot points but the ending felt a little cheesy, and even the songs felt like they were starting to lose passion (though that may have been because of my decreasing interest).
The Japanese used in this series wasn’t too difficult and didn’t contain too many technical terms. There was a bit of more casual language thrown in, which is always good to hear. I watched it in Japanese without English subtitles, but as most (all?) of the songs were in English, there were Japanese-subtitles for them. I found these interesting to read since they were often not literal translations, but more in line with the overall meaning, and matching the pacing of the English lyrics. This allowed me to enjoy the songs in two languages simultaneously, which was a nice bonus. I will say that the characteristic oddness of English-language songs in Japanese anime was still present to a certain extent, meaning there were lyrics that sounded a bit unnatural.
I was thinking about what might make this good anime into a great one, and the conclusion I came to was a bigger focus on the music itself (including the process of making music), and less of a focus on politics and side characters.
Having said that, while I am not able to put this on the same level as shows like Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, it does stand out as the most interesting and fun anime themed around the process of creating and performing music (if there are even any others that fall into that category).
I did a quick search and found out that the singers who performed the roles of Carol & Tuesday actually gave live concerts at some point in time. Had I been watching this series when it first came out, maybe I would have a chance to see one.
If you are into music, this series is definitely worth a watch.