Why I dropped 'Listeners'

Listeners is a show that I was excited about as a result of it having been produced by MAPPA, who has produced some of my favourite anime in the past few years. Compounding onto that is the fact that it's core is centred around music, just like their previous outing with Shinichiro Watanabe's Carole and Tuesday. As it was with Carole and Tuesday, Listeners is an original story that was created by the musician Jin. This was definitely on the top end of my list when it came to anticipation, and after watching the first episode I was left very underwhelmed.

The show revolves around two youngsters that travel the world in the hopes of finding a certain individual so that they can learn the truth about who one of the characters, that suffer from amnesia, is. Along the way they fight beings called the earless with their portable mech disguised as an amplifier.

Visually, the show was interesting, every episode landed us in a completely new and unique location that was visually interesting. So interesting to the point that you could spend multiple episodes on one of these locations before moving on to the next. The soundtrack is quite enjoyable in its own right and the chemistry between the two leads is quite entertaining to watch.

That being said, the pace the narrative travels in is so fast that you are likely to pass out from the number of G's your body is experiencing when watching the show. Each episode is so determined to be set in a new location that characters barely get time to be developed, character motivations do not have a chance to be properly established, character decisions have little to no logic, and I am left wondering what it would be like if we had spent two days in the same location. Letting characters breath and slow down without having the constant need to progress the plot at a certain speed at all cost like the bus in the film Speed.

The lore of the world is all over the place, even with information being drip fed to you there is a lot of questions I have about the world, the state of things, and the stakes involved. Beyond that, I find there is a lack of believability to the world that we are exploring. This is a result of the environmental storytelling, and the decisions that characters make.

With regards to the environment I have similar issues with Listeners as I do with Final Fantasy XV. This particular final fantasy is one I did enjoy playing, however the world building was not particularly strong, the reason why is because it is set in a world where monsters roam the land. However, the human settlements are not walled off at all and the people are clearly not equipped to deal with any possible attack. It is a similar problem in Listeners. Though they try to wave it aside by saying that, in the starting area, no one goes there and that the monsters only attack the Players (mech riders) is not a good enough excuse when there is no defence at all against the Earless (monsters) from coming and killing humans. This is why I think the world building in Attack on Titan is so good.

The nonsensical decisions by the characters make the integrity of the narrative weaker and weaker. When authorities let characters go for no real reason despite protesting to the opposite just minutes prior is ridiculous. We are constantly told the reasons why characters do what they do without being shown any of it. At times you get the sense that the writer was more focused on trying to get a Nirvana or Prince reference in the story than actually focusing on the story telling.

With every episode that passed I wish we had a twenty five episode season rather than a twelve episode season, just so that there is time for the characters to breath and the world to marinate so that the show can ripen without any extra pressure. There is a lot of potential here and the various locations and characters leave an impact, but without proper development will always remain a collection of characteristics. As such I have decided to drop the show.