Carole & Tuesday – 10 – Out of Whack

It’s the semifinals, which means bringing in a new guest judge to replace the AI dog, and it’s none other than DJ Ertegun, whose troubled history with Carole & Tuesday should have precluded him from judging at all, but I guess Mars Brightest doesn’t do much research!

One thing’s for certain: in a a tough competition where personalities can clash and tempers can flare, MB has appallingly bad security. Consider Cybelle, a stalker Tuesday never should have had to interact with again after she lost in the quarterfinals.

And yet here she is, in the green room, getting in Tues’ face and intimidating her with her unpredictable, capable-of-anything, nothing-to-lose vibe. Then Tuesday simply runs after Cybelle…and Carole lets her! So I ask: where the fuck is security???

When GGK dishes out more cosmic prattle and then performs a competently-produced song with like seven words in the repetitive lyrics, Tao finally pays Angela a visit to tell her they’re changing her song at the last minute.

GGK impresses the judges—who it should be said are easily impressed—and Gus and Dahlia continue their juvenile little competition with poor Roddy in the middle acting as a conduit for their barbs. I’m just not getting much out of the friction between these two.

Once again, Angela delivers the best song of the episode, though that’s not a high bar to clear, with a genuinely catchy pop number that honestly wouldn’t be out of place on a Top 40 radio station. The only strange thing is how it ends: the vocals and music just…stop. On a dime. Seems more like an AI production bug than a feature.

Meanwhile, instead of preparing for her performance with Carole, Tuesday has her priorities all out of order, running around the studio like a headless chicken looking for a Cybelle who is clearly not there anymore and furthermore, doesn’t want to be found. Carole wants to give Tuesday a present, but every time one of them shows up in one spot, the other has just left.

Angela ends up beating GGK, and heads to the showers afterwards, leading to a very suspicious scene of Katie Kimura dropping her smile and staring at the phone Angela left on a table. Is there more to Katie than hyper syncophant? God I hope so, because Angela’s path to becoming a pop star has seemed way too easy so far.

As Pyotr performs another mostly meh pop performance, Tuesday returns to the green room to find a present on the table…but not Carole’s present. The chaotic scrawl wishing her a Happy Birthday suggests it’s from Cybele, who must have doubled back after Tues followed her.

As for the contents of that present? My guess is dry ice, judging from the white smoke cloud that surrounds Tuesday as she clutches her hand in pain when Carole enters. Since Tuesday needs that hand to play guitar, a dry ice burn is going to be a big problem.

But all this could have been avoided with some, any backstage security procedures. Cybelle’s revenge, if that’s what this is, only happened because the show decided that Mars Brightest is not a professional company of long standing capable of protecting one of the four contestants who were whittled down from a quarter of a million. That seems awfully implausible, but here we are. Better break out the aloe!

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Carole & Tuesday – 09 – Blessing of a Goddess

Carole & Tuesday don’t sing on the second day of competition, but Gus has them attend the studio anyway so they can scout the next four contestants. One of those, Cybelle, continues acting extremely stalker-y, brushing Tues’ hair without asking first, and suggestion they form their own duo without Carole. In other odd pairings, Dahlia ends up sitting beside Gus, but nothing much comes of it. As for Angela, she wants to know where the hell Tao is.

Tao is there, but seems content to stand in the shadows rather than engage with anyone. The first pair of contestants performs, starting with GGK, FKA Twigs’ Martian anime counterpart. The song is crisply produced and competently sung, but falls down on generic lyrics. Definitely not ear-bleedingly bad, but thoroughly MEH.

The gender-fluid Mermaid Sisters, on the other hand, had me howling with laughter as they proceeded to sing all manner of profanities in sweet Barbershop harmonies. It’s by far the most English swears I’ve ever heard in an anime, but it ends up disqualifying them, and the competition has to paused when they lash out at the judges, giving GGK the win by default.

Cybelle and Angela are next, with the former telling Tuesday (not asking her) to hold her before she takes the stage. Cybelle then bites Tuesday in the fucking neck, confirming Carole’s insistence that Tuesday extricate herself from this weirdo as soon as possible.

Turns out Tao isn’t interested in Angela or any of the other contestants performing that day; instead, he asks C&T who writes their lyrics. They tell him they do, with no AIs, and he kinda just goes “huh, okay” and leaves without seeing Angela, much to her chagrin.

As intolerable as her character is, Cybelle actually delivers one of the best performances of the entire show thus far. Why is that? Because she’s not singing awful English lyrics; she’s singing awful French lyrics.

I don’t speak French, so if I switch off the subtitles, it just sounds like nice music, which it was. Not earth-shattering, but nice. If only all the songs were performed in French, or Japanese, or any language that could cover up the hack lyrics.

It’s just bad luck Cybelle wasn’t paired with the Mermaid Sisters, Fire Brothers, or OG Bulldog, or she would have advanced. Instead, her first opponent is Angela. And whether or not the entire production is rigged towards her winning, she still puts in IMO the best all-around performance of the competition with the very catchy “Move Mountains” song, showing that she definitely belongs there.

Angela beats Cybelle easily, but Cybelle seeks consolation in Tuesday’s arms, attempting to goad her into making a new duo together. It’s here where Tuesday finally rejects her, and Cybelle storms away in a huff, her shock quickly turning to anger.

This is most definitely not over (she has Tuesday’s contact info, after all), so now in addition to having an extremely tough opponent in Angela to defeat, they’ll have to deal with the consequences of Tuesday not dispatching her earlier. Doubtless hell hath no fury like a Cybelle scorned…

Carole & Tuesday – 08 – Standing Out the Least

On the first day of the Mars Brightest #0049 competition, Angela is introduced to her new manager, the young, eager-to-please Katie Kimura, whose only role throughout the episode seems to be servile minion and target for Angela’s generally mild abuse. There are celebrities far more spoiled and mercurial than Angela.

This also marks the first time Carole & Tuesday are in the same room with Angela, officially bringing their stories together…though Angela breezes right past the duo without talking or even noticing them. Tuesday later learns a valuable lesson about not so carelessly giving her contact info to a stan so obsessed they decided to compete in the same contest and actually made it to the final eight.

With introductions out of the way, we’re treated—or more accurately subjected—to the first four performances. We begin with two really old brothers playing death metal until they literally drop—a joke eliciting perhaps half a chuckle and absolutely nothing more—and Pyotr with a competent but utterly generic pop song with what sounds like auto-tuning, which you’d think wouldn’t be allowed in a singing competition.

Pyotr beats the old dudes, so we move on to the next faceoff: C&T versus “OG Bulldog”, a horribly uncool hardcore gangsta rap cliche who ends up singing opera-style, which…I’m sorry, is just really fucking stupid. Carole & Tuesday follow, and reliably serve up their unique(?) blend of aggressively pedestrian soft rock, forgoing lyrics for half of the song and instead making “oooh-oooh” and “la la laaa” sounds. Real groundbreaking.

When it comes time for the three judges (a female Simon Cowell, a gay dude, an an AI dog) to make their decision, OG Bulldog is essentially disqualified when his mother takes the stage and attests that he was never a gangster or drug dealer, just a timid young man who worked at a drug store. 

The lady Simon tears into C&T, calling them the “most normal”, “plain”, and saying they “stood out the least,” but they didn’t lie about who they were, and they somehow managed not to be worse than whatever “opera rap” is, so they win round one!

It was good to hear one of the judges say what I’ve thought all along about C&T’s amateurish, empty, Diet Coke-sweet music, but then along comes Angela to back it up with some strong negative opinions of her own, and I am here for it! (Katie Kimura also comes by, but as with the rest of the episode, she’s utterly useless.)

‘Granted, she confronts C&T because she identified them as rivals, and despite hating their music, probably realizes the competition could easily come down to the two of them. Last week I suggested that maybe the perennially alone Angela might befriend the same-aged C&T, but rivals will have to do. As the reality TV adage goes, “I’m not here to make friends.”

So, as usual, low marks for the musical numbers and tired reality TV tropes, but decent marks for finally bringing the three heroines together by pitting them against each other.

Carole & Tuesday – 07 – Whatever Happens, Happens!

C&T rebounds nicely this week, thanks in part to a new, more proportionate opportunity for the girls: this time, instead of playing in front of 100,000 people, they join the 200,000 who want to be contestants on the popular Mars Brightest talent competition, a sure way to jump-start their careers.

This week also marks the first real connection between C&T and Angela’s storylines, as Tao has Angela entered as a “special guest” contestant on MB, putting her in competition with the other two protagonists. This could mean the three could be in the same room together, or maybe even talk to each other!

The main issue is Tuesday, or rather Tuesday’s status as a runaway, which she doesn’t realize until they’re already in line for the auditions (which are about as weird and woolly as one would expect from such a large pool of potentials). If her family catches her on camera, she’ll be made, and they’ll come for her. Mind you, Tues doesn’t know her bro already found her, but chose to leave her alone.

This brings us to the best part of this episode, and why it was so much better than last week’s: We don’t actually hear Carole & Tuesday sing anything. This might sound counterintuitive, but the worst element of this show about a musical duo getting their start is their music—their first guerrilla performance at the music hall being the sole exception.

Mind you, just because the songs stink doesn’t mean all the music of C&T is bad. On the contrary, the incidental score is above average, and we get a particularly nice melancholy synth suite that plays along as we watch Angela decline to move back in with her Mama (who was her Papa before gender reassignment).

Instead, Angie chooses to live alone in her sparse, modern place where she can breathe, away both from Mama and all the trappings of her past that threatened to “suffocate” her. Her annoying AI only gets four “ANGELA!s” in before she shuts him up. Somebody needs friends, and I can think of no one better suited than Carole & Tuesday, even if they’re artistic and professional rivals.

As if hearing me say “your songs are bad and you should feel bad,” after auditions Tuesday slides into a slump, brought on in part by learning more of Carole’s story as an Earth refugee and orphan who had to survive on her own.

Tuesday’s family may be loaded (with cash) but she’s also loaded—with all the problems being the daughter of an important politician and little sister of a Harvard elite. She admits she’s a little jealous of Carole’s lifelong independence and self-sufficiency.

In light of her new friend, who has helped her in this new world, Tuesday resolves to hold her head up and stop cowering in front of the cameras. If her mom finds her, so what! She’s going for it, side-by-side with Carole.

After learning that Gus spent all their modest Cydonia earnings (980 Woolong) on gambling (not a good look Gus!), he, or rather Roddy, give them the good news: They’re among the eight contestants for Mars’ Brightest! As we saw, a good portion of the competition were horrendous, but considering there were 200,000 of them to contend with, this feels a bit neat, tidy, and easily done.

But it’s not like they weren’t going to get in, because this means they’ll be facing off against Angela and Tao. Even if I’m not particularly looking forward to hearing what new syrupy-sweet drivel they’ll sing next, I think I can tolerate it for the sake of watching those four characters, who have been kept apart thus far, finally collide.

Carole & Tuesday – 06 – Kicked Up to the Big Stage

Right off the heels of their first sparsely attended gig, Gus has a second one for them, courtesy of Hofner (through Beth). They’ll be backing up Omega—and their notoriously flaky drunk frontman—at Cydonia, one of if not the biggest concert on Mars. They’ll be playing to one hundred thousand fans who wanted to hear Omega. The prospect of all those hostile people “breaks” Tuesday.

Oh yeah, the show’s tomorrow, so they have to spend part of the night and the train ride there writing and practicing a song. Everything about this gig is already ridiculously implausible…and I’m not talking about them being on Mars! Even with the explanation that no other band would bother if there’s a chance Joshua will play, it makes no sense for Hofner to not already have a list of professional bands eager for their shot backing up Omega.

But whatever, Carole and Tuesday are super-lucky! Fine. And the place is pretty cool; we finally get a good look at Mars’ rolling red hills and valleys, and Cydonia looks kinda like a Burning Man-style oasis in that wasteland.

Carole and Tuesday have some time before they go on, so they soak it all in, including, hopefully, some of one of their favorite singer Crystal’s air. Meanwhile Roddy does his job as DJ Ertegun’s AI operator, and Ertegun plays the same track we’ve heard to a delirious crowd.

That crowd’s reaction is somewhat outsized for what sounds like someone hitting a 2003 Casio keyboard’s DEMO key, but again, whatever.

Joshua arrives, and there’s a funny sight gag where he seemingly steps surefootedly out of the car, only to crumple into a human slinky; dude is tossed, which means C&T are most likely on. Panicking in their trailer, they eventually go outside, only to run into Roddy and Ertegun.

They run and hide—because he can’t press charges if he can’t catch them, I guess?—and end up in the smoke-filled trailer of “Skip”, who is very spooky and threatening at first, but gives them the most uninspiring inspirational speech before going on stage and performing what was actually the best piece of music in the episode, but which was still pretty bland, with lyrics that might be forgivable if written by a middle schooler.

When Joshua can’t take the stage due to some kind of “Beetle” problem (or is it “Beatle”?), C&T take the stage for him, with the reception you’d expect from people who paid good money to see Omega, not two amateurs with one official gig under their belts.

If I’m sounding overly harsh about this episode, it’s because this episode was harsh. Also, because the show believes C&T to be some kind of generational world-changing talent. But I’ve reached my limit.

Here’s the thing: the “Dancing Laundry” is vapid trash. I wouldn’t throw trash at them if they played it at a concert I attended—that would be despicable—but I would probably walk away to buy some beer or get in line for the toilets…anything to get away from that.

But here’s another thing: C&T actually are good by the standards of music in this world. Ertegun is a hack, Skip is inskipid, and the less said about Omega, the better. The duo still took the stage, played as hard as they good, and endured the abuse of the crowd until Omega took over.

I just couldn’t feel that bad for Tuesday crying afterwards, because from my ears they did nothing to turn that crowd around, and as unfairly impossible as a feat as that might have been, if C&T are as good as everyone says, then why not have them win that crowd over? They like all the other crap we had to listen to!

The last nail in the coffin of this stinker of an episode is Crystal, who to her credit seems like a nice lady, comforting the duo and giving them kudos for persevering in front of such a hateful crowd. But even the mega pop star can’t help but sing lyrics that sound like they were generated by a computer algorithm…a bad one.

Carole & Tuesday draws you in with its lush and intricate setting, warm, likable protagonists, and game supporting cast. But then somebody starts singing and you have to turn down the volume and hope it stops soon, and all the show’s goodwill is spent. It’s a big problem. In the future, on Mars, music is apparently terrible.

Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo featured good music from real artists, and neither of those Watanabe shows were even about music! How could the ball have been dropped so badly here? MAL doesn’t even list anyone on the staff as responsible for music. Maybe computers really did make it…

Carole & Tuesday – 05 – The Trees in the Wind Will Lead the Way

After burning down a famous DJ’s house and getting taken in by a scambot, the C&T Dream Team needs a win desperately…not to mention some scratch to keep the lights on! So Gus and Roddy set out to meet with their connections in order to arrange the duo’s first gig.

On the Angela front not visited last week, Mama comes to her daughters defense, accusing Tao of treating her like a lab rat due to his background in neuroscience. Tao’s rejoinder is to bring up Mama’s assault charges…and her apparent “androgynous” status.

Finally, Tuesday’s brother has arrived in Alba City, determined to find his sister and bring her home as per their Mama’s orders.

Upon trying to meet with his old pal Hofner without an appontment, Gus is met by stubborn guardbots, whom Hofner himself orders to stand down, after which Gus is able to voice his intent to do business.

Tao takes Angela to Schwarz, an investor at Intergalactic, and asks her to sing an a capella song she learned during the car ride to convince Schwarz to invest 12 million Woolong.

Roddy meets his friend Beth, who owns one of the last independent clubs, and asks her for a slot for C&T. The overarching theme here is, in order to make it big, you’ve got to put in the legwork, and connections are key.

C&T’s only connections are people with connections, who happen to have faith in their talent and charisma. As for Angela, she sings well (though I’m not a fan of the lyrics) and gets the 12 mil…but like us is still unclear exactly what Tao has in store for her.

Tuesday’s brother finds Carole’s landlord utterly unhelpful in positively identifying his sister, who gets a job as a poster girl for a food truck while Carole unsuccessfully walks AI pets. On the bright side (literally) the lights come back on and Carole’s AI suitcase finally makes it back to her.

Finally, there’s C&T’s first gig where they knew they were being watched. Despite the somewhat dingy digs and just ten people in the audience including him, Roddy considers this a seminal moment, the genesis of what will become a great musical duo, where those ten people will be able to say “I was there.”

Mind you, Roddy is pretty much in love with C&T at this point, so he might be biased. I for one found the song perfectly inoffensive but the lyrics were trite and cloying. It’s hard not to be harsh on the pedestrian nature of their tunes when the entire premise is that the duo are some kind of rare and monumental talents that will literally change the world with their music.

But if those in the world of the show say they’re really good, that’s I guess all that really matters. Watching Tuesday perform is enough for her brother to seemingly give up his search and let her be, despite the blowback he’ll get from Mom. I just wish their songs were amazing full stop, not just “amazing” in the context of the show.

Carole & Tuesday – 04 – Caveat Emptor Robotus

Unsuccessful in collabing with DJ Ertegun, Gus presents his second idea for Carole & Tuesday making it big: a music video. Despite my initial suspicion that they’d try to make it big without AI, they end up buying a 19-Woolong robot who will direct, film, and edit.

The low, low price immediately threw up a red flag for me, but the crew presses forward, throwing out a king’s ransom in pop culture references from Thriller to The Avengers, which the robot somehow manages to make sense of, and then provides a list of required things.

Gus meets with his stylish ex-wife Marie for her know-how with hair, makeup, and wardrobe. Perhaps impressed he’s off the bottle and serious about helping some new talent soar, Marie agrees, despite no upfront payment.

The SpielbergBot, AKA IDEA, turns out to be a beer fanatic in the vein of Futurama’s Bender, and mostly lazes around watching TV as C&T write a new song for the video (incidently, the one that plays over the end credits).

Meanwhile, Roddy manages to score an expensive car courtesy of DJ Ertegun. When Roddy is initially dishonest about knowing the girls, Ertegun flashes a number of looks at him—accompanied by hilarious EDM sounds—but ultimately helps his young friend out.

C&T meet Marie’s wardrobe friend and lover, then try on a number of outfits in another montage as Roddy practices his dance moves. When he shows up in the car all debonair an’ shit, the girls aren’t interested in him at all, only the car itself. Roddy also provides the “giant robot” in his ultra-rare limited-edition resin models, which IDEA will scale up in post.

The day of filming begins, and it’s a bit chaotic; befitting all the myriad ideas everyone threw out at the beginning. C&T jump from setting to setting and costume to costume with no real consistent narrative or theme, and from the look of Roddy by the end, something terrible happened to Ertegun’s car.

We then learn while IDEA is having a bath back at Carole’s place that he’s running some kind of scam on the humans, insulting their intelligence and threatening Carole’s owl alarm clock not to snitch.

Gus and Marie have a drink to celebrate the wrap of the video, and both admit to how much goshdarn fun they had getting back in the game like that. Marie even wonders what went wrong with their marriage, insinuating it wasn’t all Gus’ fault, then tells him she’s getting remarried to an amazing woman.

When IDEA is done editing, Carole, Tuesday and Gus prepare to watch with baited breath, while Roddy stays home and finds out on the news that IDEA is an AI scammer. It’s news delivered far too late, as after they watch his train wreck of a video (most of which isn’t even in focus), C, T, and G all glare menacingly at IDEA before boxing him up and sending him back to the fulfillment center.

After two episodes of relative realism (aided by coincidence and fate, but still realistic), C&T gets a little more madcap and cartoonish, and everyone is a little dumber for one episode as they put their complete trust, time, and effort in a totally dubious mechanism. Their “guerrilla” performances at the music hall and laundromat feel at once more effective and more sincere than any cut-rate video production anyway. When you’re broke, elegant minimalism is key. This was all too baroque.

Carole & Tuesday – 03 – ASCENSION!

After a rough first impression (I believe accusations of cyberstalking are leveled), Gus Goldman introduces himself to Carole & Tuesday, dropping names left and right. Unfortunately, the pair is #notimpressed because they don’t remember Bruno, Justin, or Brian Epstein—being from a much younger generation.

Brass tacks: Gus knows talent when he hearts it, and if they want to do what they do for more than just fun, he wants to be there to help them. His enthusiasm and earnestness make up for his underwhelming Wikipedia page. But since nobody’s become a commercial hit quite yet Gus has to insist his talent pay for their own Margherita.

Meanwhile, Tuesday’s mother leaves getting her back to her son—lest police involement sully her campaign—then (presumably) retires to the boudoir with her toyboy. How I hope Tuesday’s bro doesn’t try to drag her back to this horrid gilded cage.

As Angela is asked 37 questions on some kind of vlog of her life (and introduces her extremely annoying AI pet rabbit Aladdin), C&T are at the laundromat waiting for their clothes to be done.

Tuesday likens the still, then suddenly-spinning clothes as mirroring the two of them, and Carole starts stomping and clapping out a beat, with Tuesday joining in and the two starting to sing an impromptu song (albeit one that is not clandestinely recorded).

Just messin’ around in the laundromat is a kernal that germinates as the two refine the music and lyrics, and their song is the soundtrack for a montage of their day in the life in Alba City, all gorgeously rendered and adding to the lush textures of both the sprawling city and their digs.

As for Gus, he vows to lay off the sauce now that he has a new client. Whatever his reasons for copying Motörhead in the past, he seems genuinely determined to put a human musical duo on the map—no small feat in a Martian cultural continuum in which AI has taken over so much of the creating.

What was billed as a trip to a voice coach friend of Gus’ turns out to be…something else entirely: a SPACE YOGA session so bizarre to Tuesday’s sheltered psyche she fears she’ll have nightmares about the experience.

Angela’s experienced at Artience is no less nightmarish. When she can’t hit a high note, Tao activates her restraints and deploys all manner of nasty-looking torture instruments, all an elaborate artifice in order to goad Angela into screaming…and hitting that high note she thought impossible.

She still voices her complaints to her mother, a former child star herself. But her mom insists she keep at it, lest she become as forgotten as she now is due to people moving on and her career not moving on with it. This looks like a classic vicarious parent situation. I hope Angela actually wants to continue as Tao’s guinea pig for her own sake, not just Mom’s.

Thanks to Roddy, C&T score a meet with the famous celebrity DJ Ertegun, whose sold-out megashows are the toast of the town. When they arrive at his waterfront mansion, Gus is prepared to make the pitch, but he’s held back by Ertegun’s security, leaving C&T on their own among the tacky pop art, including Banksy’s self-destructing painting!

Ertegun makes them wait as he talks on the phone by the woman-filled pool, but when he finally comes in, he initially scares the shit out of them by seemingly stripping in front of them; mercifully, he’s got boxer briefs on, and merely shed the robe so he could do some push-ups while he raps with them.

Either Roddy didn’t explain why C&T wanted to meet with Ertegun, or Ertegun didn’t listen to him (probably the latter), because Ertegun doesn’t know why C&T are there: he assumes they want autographs, selfies, or…him (Gus warned earlier them not to give him a leg massage).

When he learns it’s a pitch, he immediately shuts them down, rejecting them without so much as listening to a single bar. Why is he so confident they’re boring generic trash? Well, for one thing, “he’s DJ Ertegun,” which is apparently sufficient explanation. But for another? Because they’re not AI. Like Tao, Ertegun doesn’t trust humans to make good music, except through technology.

Tuesday wigs out and burns their lyrics with the DJ’s cigar lighter, setting off the sprinklers before running away. Ertegun doesn’t seem particularly miffed that all his goofy art is getting doused, but I imagine T&C left an stronger impression on him!

Carole & Tuesday – 02 – Discovered by Fate

The narrator again refers to the “Miraculous 7 Minutes” before we return to the story of how Carole & Tuesday got there, starting with Tuesday’s first morning waking up somewhere other than her mansion. While Carole is out of there not long after 7, it takes much longer for Tuz to wake up, and when she does, immediately demonstrates her utter ineptness when it comes to cleaning.

Meanwhile, Angela finishes up a photo shoot at a studio where everyone applauds and gushes over her, something she’s obviously taken for granted all her life. When she arrives at Artience Lab, she doesn’t get that treatment she’s so used to. If anything, Tao (voiced most imperiously by Kamiya Hiroshi) treats her like a nuisance. But as long as he creates the perfect song for her, she doesn’t care.

If Tuesday is terrible at cleaning, Carole proves equally terrible at holding down jobs. Hired as a professional mourner at a funeral, she ends up laughing hysterically when a butterfly lands on the priest’s head, earning her her second pink slip in as many days. It’s clear if Carole can catch a break with her music, she’d be a better fit for that than either crying or serving burgers to misogynists.

That night, Carole remarks that if she goes to bed in the wrong state of mind she’ll have nightmares, so she and Tuesday exchange mentions of things that they like, and find they’re both big fans of both Cyndi and Crystal. Carole also learns Tuesday is a total rich girl, complete with a limitless black credit card—but Tuz can’t use it or her family will find her.

The next day, Carole and Tuesday are out on the town on a mission: use the real grand piano at the Martian Immigrant Memorial Hall’s main stage, where DJ ERTEGUN is already setting up a future show with one of his producers, Roddy.

On the way, Tuesday sees her mom on TV—turns out she’s the governor of Herschel state, and potentially running for president—but doesn’t let Carole in on that nugget of information.

Back at Artience, the rocky road continues as Angela is subjected to a mechanical chair of torture as she sings scales for Tao to analyze. When she hits the chair in anger, Tao seems to have more compassion for the machinery than her, whom he calls “a bigger piece of junk than expected” under his breath but over enough for her to hear.

When she asks if he’s really human an AI, he replies that he gets that a lot, then gives her a bone-chilling smile that proves her point all the more. This is a dude who has been surrounded by technology, he’s basically lost the basic skills that make us a social species. At the same time, he’s not wrong that 99% of music is AI-generated and most people can’t tell the difference, so Angela is at a distinct disadvantage trying to force her way into the industry.

C&T arrive at the music hall, and when they’re turned away by an assistant, they barge in anyway, take the stage, tune up, and play their first song, “Lonliest Girl,” with full lyrics and much grander acoustics. It’s a lush, soul-stirring sequence, reminding me of the performances in Your Lie in April. The animation is G.O.R.G.E.O.U.S. Like the OP, it gave me goosebumps.

More importantly, it pretty much destroy’s Tao’s assertion about “the warmth of humanity” being a lie. Roddy records the guerrilla performance on his phone, basically falling in love with the duo in the process. Moments after they finish, security starts to chase them around the hall, and Roddy captures that too! None of Tao’s fancy AIs can hope to replicate the anarchy or spontaneity of two young women eager to make a name for themselves.

Running off once more, C&T have no idea what just happened, but are simply enjoying the adrenaline rush of getting in, playing on the big stage, getting out, and getting away with it. Roddy uploads the footage of them, and the video quickly goes viral, making me wonder when Tuesday’s brother will see it (because there’s no way she’s going to stay hidden from them for long).

Even the drunken ex-music producer hears it. He’s so drunk, he initially yells at the woman at the bar to shut it off, and very nearly gets into a fight with her man. But when he stops and listens some more, he’s absolutely smitten, and apologizes for his behavior before running off and getting his old friend Roddy on the horn.

Through Roddy we learn this guy’s name is Gus, and he wants to know who those two girls were. Thankfully for him, Roddy has The Mad Internet Skillz, and in less than half a minute has not only found C&T’s Insta, but pinpointed their address as well, as the location data of their rooftop photo wasn’t hidden. Oops!

The next morning unfolds much like the previous one: Carole getting up and Tuesday…not. Carole punishes her laziness by placing guitar picks on her eyes, but before she can snap a funny photo Gus starts trying to knock her front door down, bellowing like a loon about the “gig being up” and ordering them to let him in.

Turns out this is yet more evidence that not everyone in this world knows how to properly express their intentions, as he ends up coming off as way more of a threat than a boon to the girls, who are scared out of their wits until he mentions he’s their new manager, and their fear instantly turns to bewilderment. And that’s how Carole & Tuesday were discovered! It happened pretty damn fast too, considering there’s twenty-two episodes remaining! This is going to be epic.

Carole & Tuesday – 01 (First Impressions) – Looking for What’s Missing Together

Tuesday is sick of feeling alone, unfulfilled, wasting away in her family’s massive manse in Herschel. She wants to make music, so she packs up her Gibson guitar and autonomous suitcase, slips out the window, and hops on the midnight train to Alba City.

It’s an elegant opening sequence that shows us everything we need to see without excessive exposition, and shows us the details of this intriguing future civilization on Mars, full of nifty tech and gleaming buildings, but also goats. There will always be goats.

The moment she wakes up and lays eyes on the city for the first time is also very well done. I was a little worried for Tuesday doing what Cyndi Lauper did and going for broke on a dream, but also immensely excited.

Meanwhile, in Alba, it’s hard for Carole to go for broke when she’s just flat-out broke. She at least has an awesome loft thanks to a kindly landlord, as well as a nifty uni-hoverboard to weave through the city churn to her awful fast food job where she’s berated and propositioned in equal measure.

Like Tuesday, we learn a lot about who Carole is not merely by listening to her monologue, but by watching her live. I also love her robotic pet/alarm clock owl, Ziggy, as well as her take-no-shit face upon being hit on by a rude customer.

Tuesday’s great first day in the big city goes about as well as you’d expect; her luggage is quickly swiped as she stands still taking everything in, just after Carole tells us that Alba is a city that will chew you up and spit you out if you don’t stop moving. Incidentally, after two customers spit out food Carole served up as a measure of revenge, the restaurant spits her out, and she’s suddenly jobless…and not for the first time.

As perky on camera as she’s surly off, Angela fires her human manager for booking her nothing but shit jobs like dressing up like a giant durian for a soda ad. She feels she’s above such bullshit, and like Tuesday is trying to take the next step.

After a shit day, Carole sets up her Nord keyboard on a bridge and starts tapping and humming out a pretty, sad, lonely little melody to complement the sunset, assured that no one will stop, listen, or be moved.

So it is most fortuitous that Tuesday finds herself on that bridge just as Carole is playing, and she stops, listens, and is moved. She even comes up with lyrics for it on the fly, which Carole likes.

When a cop shows up to break up her busking, Carole splits, and Tuesday follows. They introduce themselves, and perhaps a part of both of them know right then and there that their lives have been changed forever by their meeting.

As Tuesday’s emotionally distant workaholic mother delegates Tuesday’s running away to her son and gets back to whatever work she does that makes them so rich, Angela’s battleaxe of a mother and manager takes her to see Tao, a music producer who has only worked with AI “talent” until now. If Tuesday feels lonely and Carole feels trapped, Angela is straight-up bored, both with her career and her life. Tao’s warnings don’t deter her from persuing a singing career by any means necessary.

We’re then introduced to the first male character, a former music industry participant (performer? producer? both?) drinks himself into a stupor, asks for the music to be shut off, then promptly passes out on the floor.

At Carole’s super-cool crib, something magical happens. Tuesday whips out her guitar, and Carole her keys, and the slowly, tentatively start dipping their toes into the pool of musical collaboration.

It’s a wonderous thing to see unfold, and like Tuesday’s runaway scene, it’s a picture of narrative elegance and purpose. As they get more and more comfortable singing and playing together, they emit an aura of rising warmth. And they feel it too: this is what both of them were missing: each other.

Carole takes Tuesday to an utterly gorgeous city vista on the rooftop, where they make their first collab official by taking a selfie and posting it to an Instagram story called “Carole & Tuesday”, which is a great name for a musial duo. They’re going for it, and one more look at our drunken ex-music producer suggests that he’ll be instrumental in helping them climb out of obscurity and into the big time, just as Angela is entering a new chapter of her life in that same space.

In the first truly excellent episode of the Spring, Bones, Wantanabe Shinichiro, seiyus Ichinose Kana and Shimabukuro Miyuri, and the all-important Wantanabe anime element of richly-integrated music (which doesn’t skimp on the always-lovely diminished sevenths) all conspire to create a epic, heartfelt genesis of a friendship, partnership, and evolution of the lives of two young women who, as Cyndi said, Just Wanna Have Fun. And I am here for it!

Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou – 10

This week, the girls find a train, a radio signal, and a furry companion. As usual, they are absolutely dwarfed just by the vertical scale of the train, to say nothing of its length. Judging by the number of “robot corpses” strewn across its interior, it seems the design had to accommodate robots far bigger than humans.

After Yuuri experiences the boredom of waiting for the train to reach the destination, she and Chito do what I do when possible—head to the front. Yuuri points out that they’re going faster than usual because they’re moving on a moving train. It starts a fun discussion about the rotation of the earth and relative speed.

If there’s a commonality to these little talks it’s that it reveals both that Chito is very bright and just doesn’t have all the words needed to describe the scientific principles she understands, and Yuuri, while perhaps less bright, nonetheless comes to some perceptive conclusions of her own, despite having even less vocabulary than Chito.

At the end of the line they alight from the train and continue through another vast expanse of infrastructure. For a moment, Yuuri picks up something on the radio: what sounded like a sad song.

They look for a way to ascend to where the waves will be stronger, and happen to stop right on an ascending platform…only it either needs maintenance or wasn’t meant to convey humans and kettenkrads, because it moves extremely fast and stops on a dime.

That leads to a great bit of physical comedy as the girls and rig keep moving even when the platform stops; naturally, Yuuri lands on her feet. They’re met at the top by an eerily red sunset and a much clearer and more consistent transmission of the song, which is indeed sad, albeit very beautiful and moving in general, especially combined with the sad sunset.

I especially liked when the graininess of the radio feed gave way to a clear, crisp performance of the song. I just wished they could’ve tuned the radio to something more upbeat; they could’ve used some cheer after that last song.

When they come upon a massive hole—with another massive hole in the level above—Yuuri wonders if it was caused by the battle all the broken weaponry around them was used for. Chito surmises the hole predates the weapons, and that the hole was more recently merely a venue for a later battle. In any case, the image of a tank being repurposed as a fountain by nature and gravity is a sight to behold, especially when Yuuri literally soaks her head.

In what looks like a rocket tube, Yuuri finds a strange creature that neither she nor Chito can quite place, and so settle on “cat.” While they don’t mention it themselves, it very much also resembles those tall white idols they’ve encountered here and there. When the animal makes noise, the radio seems to translate it, even though the animal only seems to be repeating the girls with slight variation.

While the end of the train line and the sunset provided suitable ending points for the first and second vignettes, the third looks poised to continue, as the “cat” follows the girls, who decide to keep it with them for now. As Chito puts it, they’re always throwing things away or using them up, it’s nice to add something for a change.

Mori no Yousei: Kinoko no Musume – 01 (First Impressions)

for a short period of time, this character was on fire for some reason…

The Gist: A nationalist tourism piece for Japan that asserts that Anime (or Anime-chans) are real there. It’s set in a magical realm past the mushroom circles and gates found all over Japan.

It looks vaguely like an MMO running on a Sega Dreamcast and features looping character animations and empty conversations with random Anime-chans that can be found there, narrated and guided by a male fairy. There is forgettable JPop in the background.

The Verdict: thankfully, Mori no Yousei: Kinoko no Musume is only ten minutes long. That’s ten minutes longer than it could be and I have no understanding who this program is for, as it the low-poly models, hyper saturation, wash out, and light bloom make it look worse than most modern tablet games?

I don’t get this at all…

ClassicaLoid – 01 (First Impressions)

The Gist: Kanae is a sad, lonely girl who misses her late Grandmother. Kanae lives in a huge mansion covered in musical icons but, more importantly, she’s surrounded by selfish pricks who won’t leave. Unfortunately, a developer has purchased the building and is about to demolish it.

However,  looses his cool when, yet again, he is interrupted from eating Gyoza. Beethoven gets on the roof and magically transforms, blasts music, and scares the developer’s construction crew away. (more specifically, he conjures ghosts for everyone to dance with and turns a pipe organ and a recking ball into mechs that dance)

Later, in the offices of a secret organization, it is implied that Beethoven is an alien. (a ‘classical-oid) So… that.

The Verdict: the visuals are over the top but fairly average in rendering, as is the humor. Despite their charms, I can’t say I actually like or empathize with any of the characters either, because they are all selfish and absurd.

Ultimately, ClassicaLoid doesn’t earn a space on my review docket but I can recommend the first episode. Especially they dialog-free opening scene that matches music to cooking.