#etregun

I finished watching one of the best anime I’ve ever watched... even though its final part aired in 2019 and now I watched it in late 2020 during a widespread pandemic. But better late than sorry, right? Right? Anyway, let us move on to the spoiler overview of this Netflix anime.

The story follows a singer-songwriter duo Carole, an orphan girl with a keyboard, and Tuesday, a runaway with a Gibson guitar, that leads them to the “7-Minute Miracle”. Oh, and it takes place on a futuristic city on Mars but we’ll get to that later. Over the series, they grow as musicians and people leading the best song ever to end a series “Mother.” We’re introduce to a variety of characters with their own flavor to add in this series including the larger-than-life DJ Etregun, the model turned singer Angela Carpenter, and the mysterious music producer/AI genius Tao.

In the first part, the girls go through many trials to become famous musicians such as making a music video and standing in at a concert. They later enter the Mars version of American Idol and although losing to Angela due to being disqualified, they only care about playing music together. This part had a lot of fun with the characters while giving us some details about them.

The second part has Tuesday’s mom running for president while pushing for immigration laws against Earth immigrants (political commentary to say the least). Other crazier things happen to other characters while our main girls try to release their debut album with their manager Gus and friend Roddy. Despite cramming a kind of political statement to reflect our world, they ended with a bang having all the singers throughout the series to join into a “We Are the World” style anthem against the oppressive government. Seriously, they send people with guns to shut it down.

This show has its flaws such as not enough time for some storylines while having too many for one character. This happened to Angela Carpenter with a tech-savvy stalker, her mother going into a coma and dying, her downward spiral into drugs, and finding out she’s a sort of clone baby in a span of several episodes of the final part of the series. Also, despite being named after the series, both Carole and Tuesday don’t go through any dramatic change or have any strong personality traits like a lot of main character in anime (i.e. Izuku Midoriya or Naruto) aside from their friendship and when they perform. Sure, they each have backstories like running away from home or meeting an estranged father; but overall, they’re just good characters who make greater music together.

One of its strongest elements is the songs and music. Pretty much every song is so heartfelt and beautifully sung by the English-speaking singers. My favorites include both versions of “Give You the World”, “After the Fire”, “Mother”, and even one of the craziest songs in the show sung by the Mermaid Sisters which I don’t think I can show without getting into trouble, but look it up and you’ll know why. There are so many songs that it’s hard to even pick a few to talk about with a whole array genres and messages.