WARNING: SPOILERS!
I should warn the prospective reader that there’s definitely SPOILERs here! I consider myself spoiler proof. After all, if it’s ruined just by someone telling you what happens, then it couldn’t have been very good to begin with, right? However, there are plenty of people out there who’d be very angry if they read on only to find a series spoiled for them. So here’s the warning…read at your own risk.
Everything I can say about Carole & Tuesday has already been said, but I’m going to say it anyway. It’s not a perfect show: contests are lost and the protagonists still experience a modicum of success (as happens in the real world, too); missing parents show up with convenient backstories; creepy stalkers are thwarted and injured artists recover with little to no evidence of the physical or psychological pain they’ve suffered. Everything is tied up a little too neatly and I never really felt the protagonists were in any real danger aside from the attack by a stalker and (vague) threats anti-immigration policies and the (blatant) threat of police brutality. However, the show does have a lot of charm and expresses a real love for music with well crafted design.
Plot
Tuesday Simmons is a poor rich girl running away from home when she stumbles upon poor-girl-rich-in-spirit Carole Stanley on a bridge in Alba City, Mars. The two flee a policeman looking to arrest them and wind up at Carole’s place, a run down storage room inside a small store. They play a guerilla performance at the Mars Immigration Memorial Hall and wind up an online sensation due to Roddy, a sound technician, recording and uploading their performance. This leads the girls to Gus Goldman who becomes their manager and starts them on a journey of a lifetime.
They participate (poorly) in concerts as back-up, enter American Idol style competitions (somewhat successfully), perform at more concerts (more successfully), meet their idols (for good and for bad), encounter stalkers, and meet their competition in the form of former model Angela Carpenter and her overbearing mother Dahlia.
Meanwhile, Tuesday’s mother and brother find themselves embroiled in political intrigue as her mother, Valerie, tries to run for Presidential office under a platform of bigotry pushed upon by her campaign manager Jerry. Angela’s issues are also on display as she deals with her abusive mother, a despondent music producer who favors AIs over humans, and a series of incompetent assistants. Tao, Angela’s AI obsessed producer, ends up angering Jerry and his corporate backer who wants to exploit Tao’s AI engineering genius to use the data to set up a puppet government headed by Valerie. Eventually, the would-be President steps down from her campaign, leaving Jerry’s plan in shambles. It all culminates in a gathering of all the artists we’ve met in the series in a final concert to end the political tension, ala “We Are the World.”
Review
First and foremost, you can’t discuss this show without talking about the music. Shinichiro Watanabe, the director behind Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, was behind this series. His love for integrating music into his shows is also on display with this series. The songs are for the most part memorable, especially the starter song “The Loneliest Girl.” Even now, hours after finishing the series, I can still recall the melody. That’s not easy for a woman in her 40s with memory issues. Watanabe also explores other genres here including EDM, country, rap, opera, hard rock/metal, and even electronic orchestra. The characters behind this music are fittingly unique. My favorite happens to be the mysterious GGK, who believes the universe is forcing her to perform and that she dies whenever she starts singing and is resurrected when she stops performing.
Pyotr is also great, and while he displays the usual self centered tendencies of many influencers, I never felt truly annoyed by him. He just happened to have the heart and talent to actually pull off his first time singing. There might just be something behind his need for self validation through his social media presence.
He could have easily been the main villain of the show but he wound up being a decent, supportive person. Crystal on the other hand, comes off as the typical wise mentor/idol, beautiful and kind but also bland.
She doesn’t show up a lot, though. Instead, the true role of mentor goes to Gus and Toby, Carole and Tuesday’s music producer.
They both work to mold Carole and Tuesday into performers worthy of putting out an album. Angela is your typical abused starlet, lashing out at the world like a spoiled brat and hurting everyone around just as she has been hurt.
Great critiques of what to and what not to do creatively are prevalent. For example, the Mermaid Sisters and their use of great melody to back lyrics that would make a sailor blush.
The show revels in its theme of music, from episode titles to character names to even caricatures (I thought I saw Willie Nelson in there somewhere!). If you’re a music buff, you’ll love looking for all the little Music Industry easter eggs sprinkled throughout the episodes.
The dubbed-in singing can be a little jarring since it feels so separated from the audio of the dialog, especially the original Japanese language version. Angela’s vocals, in particular, seem to fluctuate between different singers, sometimes auto-tuned on top of everything. An overall unfortunate issue I’ve noticed with Netflix’s anime is that the Japanese audio tends to come through as a bit tinny, with an echo like it was produced in a small room. In contrast, the English dub comes through crisp and clear. I first noticed this when flipping through the dub options for another show, Super Crooks. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this is an effort on Netflix’s part to steer audiences in the direction of the English dub. I wouldn’t be surprised if investors were concerned about Netflix producing anime, when live action shows might reach a larger audience. There’s another, non-conspiracy reason Netflix wants you to watch the English dub. It’s good. Very, very good. And that’s coming from someone who almost exclusively watches the original Japanese version of shows. It features many of the voice cast I recognize from other Netflix English dubs like Seven Deadly Sins. And fortunately Netflix provides a way to see the difference between the English dub and Japanese version. Simply by turning on the English with Subtitle option, you can see the alternate English translation. Just in case you didn’t know about that.
The animation of Studio Bones holds up, and while some of it is a little stilted, the best stuff is saved for the rotoscoped/motion captured dance sequences. The lighting and colors are beautiful and the special effects for the stages really pop.
Clichés and the convenient plot devices that pop up to solve the girls’ problems, and the show still really tries to reinforce just how difficult it can be to climb to success in the entertainment industry. Happy coincidences like meeting their idols also prove just how much luck plays a part in finding that success. Even diva Angela’s downfall, as predictable and foreshadowed as it may be, is still depressing. She’s one of the main antagonists, and although she rarely interacts with the others, her face is literally everywhere: billboards, TV, and the internet. However, Carole and Tuesday’s march through the industry is sometimes realistically slow and uneven.
Something that should be mentioned is the show’s noble push back against the involvement of AI in the development of art. It goes through pains to acknowledge the merit of independent, human based creativity. Yet this message is coming from the Japanese animation industry: an “art factory” of sorts, known for exploiting its labor for little pay and sparse living arrangements. It’s also a message coming from Netflix, a massive corporation known for using every AI trick in the book when it comes to generating algorithms used to grow its audience. Tao would be proud.
In the end the production winds up being very far from the handcrafted projects it tries to hold up as an example of human merit.
The show also straddles the political divide. On one side it presents a diverse cast and highlights left leaning issues such as police brutality, immigrant rights, and revolution against the status quo. On the other hand, the protagonists fight against limiting self expression and free speech, a point of view that is often associated with Libertarian and right leaning philosophies.
This dichotomy of views is further exemplified in the protagonists themselves with Carole being an immigrant from Earth and Tuesday being the daughter of a presidential candidate who has recently adopted a right wing anti-immigration platform in her bid for office.
So is Carole and Tuesday worth the watch? If you’re looking for a hard bitten look at the trials of entering the music industry, then this isn’t for you. But, if you’re interested in an uplifting tale of two young women looking to make their dreams come true with the backdrop of political turmoil, then this is your show. It offers a bright outlook with a happy ending. The antagonists are either converted to the side of good, or lose their jobs, or die from natural causes not directly related to the protagonists. Sometimes, the villains redeem themselves as they’re passing away. The show also doesn’t shy away from occasionally showing the dark side of the entertainment business as we get a look at Flora, a stand-in for Whitney Houston, and her rise and fall from glory.
We see the lead singer of a megahit rock band drunkenly stumble over the edge of a stage, and Angela nearly suffers the same fate before her industry friends give her the strength to recover.
So, yes. Watch it for the character development, world building, political intrigue, and, most importantly, Watanabe’s joy and enthusiasm for excellent music.
Mystikk Tales 