Carole and Tuesday: A Critique on its Direction

Don't get me wrong. Carole and Tuesday is not a bad show- the animation is good, and I really like the world building of its futuristic setting. The music, though predominantly pop which isn't really to my taste, is pretty alright. But I think the biggest issue the show has is that it's too ambitious. It has too many ideas that it tries to explore, but lacks a single focus which it can explore in sufficient depth.



The first half of the show feels like it should be some kind of exploration into AI music versus human music. We see Angela being aided by Mr. Tao's AI machinery in order to create the ideal song for her, even later being able to create some sort vocaloid of her which can replicate her singing perfectly. This is juxtaposed with Carole and Tuesday, who write their own song lyrics and make their own tunes. The question posed within the rivalry between Angela and C&T is can AI music, or more broadly speaking any artistic work created by a machine, be the same or better than what is created by a human? Unfortunately, this question is just not answered. Carole and Tuesday do not win the Mars' Brightest competition to triumph over Angela's AI music. And quite frankly, the show makes it hard to differentiate between music made by AI and what is written by humans, it kinda just sounds the same as regular music.

The second half of the show is definitely some kind of allusion towards the current immigration issue in America. Valery is anime Donald Trump with her anti immigrant stance and even before she's elected we see immigrants get arrested and deported by the police. This political subplot honestly didn't have a good resolution. The whole immigration issue is resolved too easily. Valery drops out of her campaign once she finds out Jerry is responsible for the bombing. I had imagined that Carole and Tuesday's final song would be responsible for Valery's change in heart (as cheesy as that would be)- that is why that song is stressed as miraculous at the start of every episode.

Make Mars great again!

Aside from the poorly done political subplot, the second half tries to focus on the power of music to expose societal issues and enact change- for example we see Ezekiel's "Crash the Server" rebel against censorship and "Mother" is basically the uniting "We are the World" of this anime. I do like the heart behind these songs, but I'd like to see their effects more greatly explored. For example, we don't get to see how "Mother", a song intended to bring people together, calms down the anti-immigrant hysteria on Mars.

Aside from those, there are many other concepts that seem to have not bore much fruit. We see the struggles with depression and addiction that are not unfamiliar to musicians, such as in Flora's backstory or in Angela coping with the death of her mother. Angela literally collapses on stage and when Mr. Tao shows up she's fine and done with taking drugs. We see the dangerous side of having a big following, reflected in Tuesday and Angela's stalkers... though after their ordeals nothing changes in the show and life carries on. Also there's thing about the radiation on mars turning people into hermaphrodites which is never really touched on, honestly seeming more like an excuse to just have a bunch of sex ambiguous characters on screen. If you're gonna have it, you could at least go more in depth with it. How are these individuals viewed by society? Are these individuals comfortable the way they are? It's not really needed if you don't go into it.

It's a shame. Carole and Tuesday is really fortunate to have 24 episodes, yet their time is squandered. This is the first anime I think could've done with a shorter runtime. A more focused 12 episodes over a loose 24. Part of the issue is due to director Shinichiro Watanabe's style of making episodic stories rather than having an overarching one, resulting in different episodes/arcs exploring different ideas. But even so his greatest work, Cowboy Bebop, manages to have an episodic structure yet maintain a consistent theme. Carole and Tuesday could've been so much better if it could just find something and stick to it.