Carol

The 1-episode OVA “Carol” is the anime portion of a music-themed mixed media project spearheaded by members of the pop-rock band TM NETWORK, featuring character designs by Yun Koga (“Earthian”). The story is based on a novel by one of the band members, which itself is inspired by a concept album the band put out before that. Most of the music in “Carol” is from this album, and the three main male characters are modeled after the band’s members. One of them is even voiced by a band member (and you can tell because of how wooden his performance is compared to the rest). So, is thestory any good? Well, the premise itself is okay, but it’s executed poorly. Concepts are not defined well enough to maintain plot coherency. The gist of the plot is that music suddenly disappears from the world, and an average girl, Carol, is summoned to another world to defeat the demon that’s the cause of this. Right away, we run into a number of problems. Is the demon just stealing music, or all sounds? What is the definition of music here? It’s shown taking the sound of Big Ben’s chime, of all things, which I don’t think necessarily constitutes “music.” It’s later shown doing the same to a babbling brook, birds chirping and people laughing. Since that’s the case, wouldn’t it make more sense to say it’s taking all “sound” from the world instead of “music”? Then again, it doesn’t take away every sound, because people can still talk to each other, etc. after these phenomena occur. Other questions that don’t get answered adequately or at all include why Carol is chosen to defeat the demon in the first place, what the antagonists’ motivations are for stealing music, why those other guys get captured by the antagonists, why that one human-looking guy is helping the antagonists, and why Carol hates sweets so much (a recurring theme throughout the OVA). Furthermore, the ending is jarring and confusing, making you wonder if any of the events in the anime actually happened. The whole thing has an “Alice and Wonderland” meets “The Neverending Story” feel, with hints of “Labyrinth” mixed in, but the end product is not as good as any of those titles. None of the characters are likable. Carol, in particular, is rude to just about everyone for no good reason, and she acts like a spoiled brat most of the time. The three main guys range from bland to weird, and don’t really have any distinct personality traits. The human antagonist just seems to be there to fill a role, and doesn’t have much of a personality, either. The demon is a giant ugly one-eyed blob that wakes up, sashays into the main room (it looks like a stage for a dinner show), steals music somehow, and then exits the stage. Then we have some fantasy-type characters like a talking rabbit, a talking tree, and a giant flying dog with a speakerphone jewel on its forehead. Characters tend to do things that make no sense, and say things that no person would actually say in real life. Every interaction in “Carol” thus feels forced and artificial. The majority of the technical aspects are average. The music, which is supposed to be the highlight of this OVA, is just okay, with the ending theme being the piece that stands out the most. There are a number of insert songs throughout the OVA, but their presence isn’t emphasized, so they’re easily forgotten. All of the voice actors are good, with the aforementioned exception of the person voicing Flash, who is the lead singer of TM NETWORK and not a professional voice actor. The animation is fluid, but there are some recycled frames and scenes where characters speak but their lips don’t move. The art is rather plain, especially the backgrounds. The characters were designed by the creator of “Earthian,” so the guys in particular have an otherworldly “pretty-boy” look. Meanwhile, Carol herself doesn’t look that unique. The designs of the monsters/creatures are also generic, perhaps with the exception of the flying dog/phone thing. There’s not much that could be considered objectionable content in this OVA. Some characters die (but you probably won’t feel anything because they weren’t given time to develop), there’s a little bit of human vs. monster violence (the monsters just turn into light and disappear when killed), and that’s about it. There’s a flashing light sequence around a quarter of the way through the OVA, so you may want to watch out for that if you’re photosensitive. Overall, “Carol” had a standard premise that could have been interesting if developed properly, but it ended up like an aimless fever dream instead. This OVA is not particularly enjoyable to watch, either, and I would only recommend it if you’re a fan of TM NETWORK or Yun Koga.

Haha this is so messy it's almost worthwhile. Japanese intuition is intriguing, even with bad examples like these. Here we have the Alice in Wonderland template, dissected and thrown against several unripe narratives, mainly evolving around an "album" that works as a portal to another world, though it's partly causing the music from the first world to disappear, pun is seriously not indented lol, that's how it really is, it's actually written based on a real band and album. The premise is engaging indeed, but it feels like a surreal aesthetic mix of "post-punk" from the 80s and dungeon myths, it's even weirder than thatif you pay close attention to all the details, plenty of mainstream references too. To add more to the strangeness, the heroine is named Carol while her mean friend is the one named Alice, though the former has the prototype Alice look, she even meets a rabbit in the other world who helps her. This is the part most fascinating to me, as I follow the evolution of the Alice narrative in general. I like though that they turned around the princess saved by a knight stereotype into the complete opposite, the princess is the one who saves the knight, and finally they join to defeat the monster. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you’re weird or consuming magic mushrooms while watching.

I don't think this anime deserves such a bad rap. Compared to most of the newly released anime, which all feel kind of the same to me, Carol was a nice change of pace. Also, if you like the music from City Hunter, I think you'll like the music in this anime, especially the closing song, since it's made by TM Network (the same guys who sing GET WILD). As of this posting, this anime is available on Youtube. Just search "CAROL OVA 1990". Your Japanese listening skills have to be up there, though. There weren't any subtitles :/ Hope you like it!

When I read the brief description of the story, I was sure this was probably some kid's story with a morality lesson or something. As in, something for six year olds. It's a the type of plot you might expect from super magical girl show (a la PreCure) or something. But nope, turns out it's more of a shoujo story aimed at young teen girls (I think the protagonist is fifteen). And the story is played out seriously, at that. Once you strip away the seemingly childish elements from the story description, it does boil downto a pretty standard shoujo story type. Just like, say, Harukanaru or Twelve Kingdoms or Fushigi Yugi. And that is, ordinary teenage girl from the modern day ends up travelling to a fantasy world, gets surrounded by a bevy of pretty-boys who help her along the way, and she has some special position or power that could SAVE THE WORLD! Eh, it's not a terrible story, but it's well-trodden territory, which has been done with much more panache by other anime, than this 60-minute story. And setting aside the story, the artwork is...okay...and the animation is...almost okay. Just give this one a pass, there's other anime out there that does this story better.