Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle - Rhyme Anima

“And they’re ‘rhymes wack, you hear’?” HypMic.......is a mess. A massive, massive mess. The dialogue is stilted, the tone bafflingly serious despite the premise, the lighting weakly considered, characterization inconsistent with numerous unearned turns, animation mediocre at best and empathetic context missing. Yet, somehow, it manages to be a really funny time. “So Bad It’s Good” is hard to truly quantify, since it depends on what can crack the spectrum to any particular person beyond average, everyday badness. However, most of the time, when applied to anime, it’s used to refer to something that tries to be dark and miserable but comes out as comedic instead; Assassin’s Pride,Mirai Nikki/Big Order, Ousama Game, Mayoiga and the early episodes of Arifureta as common go-tos. However, those shows tend to operate too much on misery to really hold any likable impressions for my part. Garzey’s Wing is a popular go-to for this category, moreso because of how absurd its entire conceit is than edge falling flat. Hypnosis Mic, though, champions being so bad it’s good for the sheer WTF value nearly every episode. It’s almost impossible to tell how much of the show is merely being an advertisement for music CDs, and how much is the animation team trying to make some sort of grand cohesive tale out of thin air. This push pull between corporate ad and direction vision gives the show a distinct flavor of entertainment. The core idea of the plot is that somehow, in some way, every normal weapon was banned from existing, except for microphones. An all female government is in place, which holds a rap battle tournament that four teams of three, who were once together in a group called “Dirty Dawg”, prepare to join. Any worldbuilding required to make this all happen is borderline nonsensical. The idea of an all-female government taking power, getting normal weapons totally banned (when most people IRL can easily slip illegal marijuana) and standing being asserted by rap dominance naturally only make since by Yu-Gi Oh/Jojo logic, but that just makes things more exciting. The sheer absurdity of these facts plastered onto what’s otherwise a fairly normal setting leads to some hilariously goofy moments. HypMic’s first eight episodes are essentially prep to get viewers to know each of the four teams, titled Buster Bros, Mad Trigger Crew, Fling Posse and Materno. Aside from Buster Bros they aren’t even in careers associated with rap, some being doctors, salarymen or military men. To get the audience to pick favorites among these Sonic Heroes, the show runners decided “let’s throw these pastel colored fujioshi avatars into deafeningly serious plots that’ll have nothing to do with anything else!” The plots tend to have a lot of threats thrown each team’s way, with the power of corny camaraderie to save the day. If nothing else, these episodes do a passable job showing why each team cares about their respective members. But remember, weapons are banned in the world of HypMic, so how are all these conflicts solved! RAP BATTLES! Scenarios where guns and grenades would exist are replaced by microphones because that’s just how the world works and everyone completely accepts it. The sheer power of rap allows teleportation, and it’s a sight to behold. Bank hostage situation? Rap Battle. Yakuza caper? Rap Battle. Mortgage scheme? Rap Battle. Illegal drug deals? Rap Battle Murder framing? Rap Battle. Terrorist bombing specifically to prevent one team from participating in a rap battle? Rap Battle. Only getting a B on my college final?! Rap Battle. These rap battles are the only times the show gets to add flair where there generally IS none. Most scenes have no flair; the animation is choppy, the lighting poorly implemented and garishly bright enough to make you think all the available colors got used on the character designs alone. With realistic backgrounds featuring absurdly costumed characters, you get the type of wacky dissonance that can elicit a chuckle all on its own. That said, the scenes before one of these conflicts get going with flat exposition are some of the only times the show is actively boring, little but basic partnerships to pass the time. Once the conflicts get into full force and get solved with a rap at the end, then it’s a blast. So how about the raps themselves, likely the main reason you’ve checked out this anime? I’m happy to report that they’re absolutely wild. If you’ve watched Epic Rap Battles of History before, they provide a good sense of what to expect; killer beats with over-the-top visual effects in conjunction with mad disses. Given the language barrier, I can’t tell if the animators took influence from them, but it catches a similar vibe. At some points it’s more effects than animation, with different filters thrown about, kanji and battle effects splattering the screen during the rap. 2D characters swap into CGI and back and forth, but the timing of the rap music videos is on POINT. It’s clear this is where the most effort went, for good reason, but it contrasts greatly to everything else in the anime. Props to the translators for creating subtitles that seem to fit into rhyme scheme. It’s hard to tell how well the seiyuu ACTUALLY sing the lyrics as someone who doesn’t understand Japanese, but if I could judge, the Buster Bros have the most amount of oomph and flow to their lyrics while Materno seems like they struggle with nailing lyric flow the most. The raps slap, and when they don’t, they’re so silly it’s hard not to laugh at them. Of course, the galaxy brained writing doesn’t stop once the division rap battles in title begin. If anything, the presentation gets even more bizarre. There’s attempts to add some angsty spice by implying that one character was involved in what happened to another character’s sister. Of course, this drama lacks the punch it needs without proper context. Because there was no time to build that up in the 8 episodic segments before that. Shonen battle mechanics get introduced! Now every character has specialized “traits” that only appear as they rap! Once again it’s spontaneous, poorly built up, and means nothing outside of specific scenes, but it adds to the general madcap nonsense that is this show’s existence. At around the same time, one character rather inexplicably appears to be a twist villain, with a more sinister grin and complicit goals. Yet, before the episode is even over, they’re instantly talked out of it. It’s almost incredible how the show decides to hold off on its conflict. This is then doubled down further by having two morality turns in incredibly quick succession for events the audience never got to see, only to have neither of them mean anything soon after. You can’t make this up. Despite all of these issues, the big conspiracy plot keeps rolling, with a repetitive background score of funky fresh beats even in the serious scenes. It’s fitting at times when things are more lowkey but only makes sillier any attempt outside of that. Like trying to understand its attempts to tell a story and remembering; we’re watching working professionals stuck in the rap circuit. Hypnosis Mic is a respectable anomaly of confused existence and cloudy vision. In this bizarre place where it’s narratively, tonally and structurally nonsense, but it somehow works to be entertaining. What makes the show so bad it’s good for me is that I just can’t tell what they were really going for with this story, beyond an attempt to show off seiyuu vocal range to mixed effect. The characters have light chemistry with their team members, but any attempts to develop anything fall hilariously flat. Its plot goes through every spectrum of tense you can think of under a weak production that gives it no gravitas. It’s a 3/10 for serious merit, but a 7/10 for enjoyment, so 5/10 is a fair way to place it. You might not find it hilarious, or just be interested to see all of the raps out of context, yet for me it hits the perfect spectrum of unintentionally intentional comedy to make it worth something.

Hypnosis Mic is set in the future where the government is overthrown by the all female "Party of Words." They ban lethal weapons and force citizens to defend themselves via Hypnosis Microphones by rapping. Our story centers around the 4 teams representing 4 districts of Japan, Ikebukuro, Yokohama, Shinjuku, and Shibuya, as they prepare and compete in a division rap battle. As someone who watched idol anime growing up, I was intrigued by this concept, so I followed this anime during winter 2020. The art style is very bright and colorful, and it brings life to the mildly chaotic world of hypnosis mic. One thing thatI found amusing was how you can tell most characters apart based on hair color. The animation is also pretty solid. This anime used a combination of CGI and 2d animation. The CGI looked great, especially during stages, and the 2d is solid too. The music in this anime also exceeded my expectations. The only "real songs" you get are the op and ed tracks, besides that the music is more like verses from the respective rappers. I never really found a song to be bad, I just personally liked some "songs" more than others. One cool thing they did was that they gave each team their own version of the ed track, which was fun to see. Now, onto the characters and actual story... It isn't that great. The first few episodes were fun, I enjoyed seeing the teams and their day-to-day lives, but as the series progressed and got closer to the final division battle, you notice that a lot was left out. Without spoiling anything - certain characters have past conflict with each other, and besides the occasional insult and flashback, we don't get that much information on their past. So, when it comes to the final rap battles, there isn't as much tension between the teams as needed for it to be a high-stakes battle. The characters themselves are very distinct, and can be identified by their occupations and hair color. You get to see the contrasting dynamics between teams which also helps for characterization. There isn't that much development between the cast, and when it does happen its short and sweet. I started off anime only, and went on to read the manga, and I was shocked by how much was left out from the anime. But, there's only so much you can do in 13 episodes. With all this being said, I still really liked this anime. In my opinion, if you watch hypnosis mic with a critical lens, then you're watching it wrong. Not all anime has to have a complex and detailed plot to be worth your time. Overall, Hypnosis mic is a fun, and colorful anime with a diverse set of characters. It's a weird concept, and the plot could be better, but these shouldn't put you off from watching the show. If you like music in anime, want to watch something fun, or are a simp, I totally recommend. If you want something plot heavy, or are more critical of your media, I say to give this one a skip, or read the manga. This is my first review, Thanks for your time :)

The introduction to the beloved multimedia franchise establishes serious concepts with a likable cast, but has trouble utilizing them to any meaningful degree, coming off as insincere. The streets of Tokyo have been rid of weaponized conflicts. Spearheaded by the Party of Words, a coup d'etat has radically transformed the way of living for the Japanese populace, springing up a matriarchal society where women alone are in positions of power and men are segregated to regions called "divisions" where they have to settle disputes by lyrical battles through the use of state-issued augmented microphones and with it either gain or lose territory; naturally, any other formof violence is strictly prohibited, including non-state issues mics. Through this mechanism, women have taken the lead where men has failed since time immemorial, to construct a society wherein peace and order are upheld in the truest sense, curbing of freedoms but a small price to pay for that worthy endeavor, surely. And thus would be the premise to our title. All of this may have sounded very enticing, and Hypnosis Mic too, is quite enticing in some respects. But you might puzzled as to why I'm phrasing it like my description and the show are two separate entities. And that's because, well, they are. The show could not possibly be more dissimilar than its premise would have you believe. I'm sure you the reader can attest to this, while reading the start of this paragraph, have you honestly thought, even for a second, that I was talking about a different show? Because see, HypMic ARB is hopelessly ordinary, and don't get me wrong, some of my favorite shows deal with the mundanities of life, but in a world that is supposed to feel extraordinary, it sticks like a sore thumb. I want the characters to feel the weight of the system under which they live, to have the fangs of tyranny seeping into their corner of the world, and seeing their opposition forming the baseline of their character. Unfortunately, vast majority of the show goes on like nothing abnormal is happening at all, and the last 2 episodes a last ditch effort to get things back on track to what the pilot episode promised, but too little too late... The characters are your usual diverse ensemble cast who share roughly equal screen-time as is the case for idol or idol-like shows. Normally this will result in the cast ending up being tropey and weak, and while I can't entirely deny this in the case of HypMic, I argue that it does more than most of its kin. There is some genuine attempt to individualize each character beyond just superficial elements like verbal tics and hair colors, during its runtime all 4 of our division will be facing certain turbulences—some serious and some more light-hearted—that communicate parts of their identity to the viewer in a surprisingly apt manner. Jakurai-sensei's comatose patient for whom he blames himself and suspects foul play, the brief moments where Samatoki seems to have concern for his teammates like not wanting to involve them to his familial issues, Rio's loyalty to his former Navy general, and yet him opposing his fellow comrades in their Machiavellianistic ways... these sadly do not tie up to some grand narrative, likely due to time limitations, but it shows that it's not just about pretty boys dissing each other. A good litmus test for well-put-together characters is, in my view, to read a random part of the script and attempt to identify the speaker, and I believe HypMic fulfills that criterion relatively well. Art and animation are largely inoffensive, but staticity of frames is noticeable in certain parts. The CGI for rap portions are not jarring in the slightest, impressive even, when it's at its peak. The tracks are obviously not on par with the franchise's discography, but nothing to scoff at all the same. The character design has been a strong point of the franchise since it's very inception, and this adaptation is no different. All in all, it's an amusing "pick your favorite boy" kind of show that is bogged down by not having much to do with what you'd expect a show with concepts of such caliber to have.

The Hypnosis Mic anime was a very hyped anime within the HypMic fandom, but I can't help but feel like it just completely missed the mark entirely. As a fan of the original multimedia project, the anime pales in comparison and was just not a good show on its own either. What is Hypnosis Mic? It's a multimedia project created by King Records with character designs from Otomate (Idea Factory). The premise of HypMic revolves around a fictional Japan run by women where weapons are illegal and men fight for territory using the power of rap. The story follows the relationship between ex-The Dirty Dawg membersYamada Ichiro, Aohitsugi Samatoki, Amemura Ramuda and Jinguji Jakurai and why they are are all at odds with each other. HypMic has been around since 2017 and has spawned multiple CDs, drama tracks and 5 manga series, each detailing the storylines of the main protagonists and what happened when they were still part of The Dirty Dawg. The so-called rap battles done in the project are an opportunity for fans to interact with the project and directly affect the outcome of the battles. Fans can buy CDs of the respective rap battle and inside each CD is a code that they can use to vote for the winner of the battles. This also affects the story of the universe, as each character faces consequences for winning/losing the rap battles. The anime was hyped up to basically be another adaptation of the first division rap battle arc. Fans from the music and manga were aware of the results of the division rap battle being depicted, but were excited to finally see the rap battles be depicted visually with animation, rather than with static manga panels or audio. The animation itself was pretty standard. The usage of CGI wasn't too intrusive/distracting. The character designs are classic fujo bait material, which is the reason why I got into the series in the first place. The raps were very creative and felt true to the original music style. Though they had to compose new raps for the actual rap battle part of the animation, the new songs echoed similar sentiments to the original music. I found myself enjoying a lot of the songs and still listen to them regularly on Spotify. The story is by far the most disappointing part. Though the rap battle tournament was still the same in terms of the results, everything else about the story was a mess. The anime spent way too much time setting up character introductions and very little time on the relationships between the characters outside of their respective divisions. You don't really learn why Ichiro and Samatoki hate each other nor why Ramuda and Jakurai are at odds with each other. You don't learn about The Dirty Dawg rap group until the very end of the anime, even though the reason for the entire story stems from that rap group and is the central event stressed in the other media. These relationships are explained in the manga and drama tracks but failed to be captured in the anime. The anime introduced new original characters that were never seen in the previous media and they served little to no purpose until the last 2 episodes. The story diverted significantly from the canon that has already been established, which is a major disappointment for those who have been following the HypMic story for so long. Even as a standalone anime, the story makes no sense and suffers from "13 episode syndrome". There was just way too much source material for the animation team to condense into a 1 season anime and make it coherent and they did not manage to do that. The HypMic anime is nothing more than a series to get your toes wet and a way for King Records to sell more HypMic merch. If you found yourself intrigued by the premise of the anime, then you will want to go out and seek/buy the music and the manga for more information. If you didn't like the anime, you may still find some value in looking up the source material, since the pacing in the manga and drama tracks are much better for telling the story. Overall, this show is just disappointing in terms of being an extension of the HypMic multimedia project and as a standalone show. It's just fujo bait without a coherent story and decent J-Rap music. I wouldn't waste my time watching this show if you're intrigued by the premise; just go read the manga or listen to the drama tracks on Spotify instead.

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