The Rise to Stardom
- Episodes : 24
- Genre : Music, Drama, Sci-Fi, Romance
- Airing Date : April 11, 2019 – October 3, 2019
- Producers : Bones
Contains Spoilers
Carole & Tuesday Introduction
Where we last left off with our previous review, Carole & Tuesday competed on Mars’ Brightest, the Mars version to singing shows such as American Idol, etc. Due to circumstances out of their control, Carole & Tuesday were disqualified on a technicality but not wanting to win fair and square, Angela, another finalist, requested that they perform. Though they couldn’t officially win, their talents were still acknowledged by the audience and the judges. Shortly after, they focus their efforts on putting out an album while at the same time, solve personal issues from their past.
1. The Story Develops More
With Carole & Tuesday progressively gaining fame, you also see the story as a whole develop a lot more beyond its musical qualities. You see the titular duo also come to face some unresolved issues from their pasts such as Carole reuniting with her long-lost father (and an old friend from her childhood), and Tuesday with her extreme right-wing mother and her brother. You see them wanting to resolve relationships from their past so they can become better people. You also get some development and resolve with Gus and Angela, so all the core characters have a role to play and contribute.
2. The Music Industry
OK, we can’t speak from personal first hand experience, but based on reading first hand accounts from numerous famous musicians, this anime does a great job of showing how cut-throat the music industry is in a nutshell in both a traditional and modern day sense in the second half of this anime. At first, they’re given a recording contract but Gus, their manager, felt the contract wasn’t a reflection of what they were worth. Granted he presents himself as an idiot and is prone to making mistakes, but Gus knows what he’s doing and he refuses to sign the contract and instead makes them go independent and if they succeed as independent artists, than they can get a better contract. After that, you see how they struggle with getting a producer and how that producer, who is the oldest of old school by future Mars standards, has high expectations of them by repeatedly calling their songs shit as they record in a run down studio. You see how it may be fun and games at first, but it’s really hard work!
3. It’s Politically Relevant
As we head towards the conclusion of the series, the anime becomes politically relevant to what’s going on in the US with Trump’s public anti-refugee and anti-immigration stance and the news of ICE detaining immigrants. With one of Carole’s childhood friends, who is residing on Mars on an expired green card, he gets detained by MICE, the Mars equivalent to ICE and is scheduled for deportation just like many detained immigrants in the US. To top things off, Tuesday’s mother is running for president on an anti-refugee platform and most of her rhetoric is obviously reflect Donald Trump’s, and now she wants to change her heart.
1. It’s Politically Relevant
Yes, we can agree that it’s rather funny that we recommend this series for being political, and we don’t recommend this series for being political. We understand the argument that people don’t want politics, regardless of orientation, in entertainment. However, art as a whole has always been political whether it would be direct, or subliminal. Much of rock music, especially in the 1960’s and 70’s were political due to the issues going on at that time. Much of Marvel’s comics that debuted during the Silver Age came out during the height of the Cold War and reflected that along with domestic issues of those times, most notably prejudice. Literature has also been political beyond 1984 and Brave New World. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was also a reaction to McCarthyism back in the 1950’s.
Yes, we were talking about how the anime obviously takes jabs at Trump for his anti-immigration policies through Valerie. However, as Valerie is only a candidate and not president, you can’t blame any of the MICE raids on her since she has no authority. In that same sense, we also don’t want to take any definitive sides in this debate since we can also acknowledge that Obama and other Democrats have gone on record speaking against illegal immigration (or undocumented migration) and ICE raids operated under his administration as well.
Final Thoughts
With the decade about to come to a close, we have to say that this is probably one of the best anime titles to have come out during the 2010’s! If you were to give us a top 10 list of best anime of the 2010’s, this would certainly rank on that list (though we can’t say where exactly we would rank it as of yet)! Granted music anime has been done plenty of times, but Carole & Tuesday take the genre to new heights. It has very powerful messages of family, friendship, and acceptance. By taking place on a future Mars, it gives viewers more of an opportunity to reflect on what kind of future we want if we wish to lets say migrate to space. Maybe where we live may change, but probably not our culture. However, there are some aspects of our culture that we have to change such as how we treat people from different backgrounds and if we all end up on Mars one day, it has to give us an opportunity to let us see we’re not at all different and we must treat each other equally. As another iconic and wise music duo once said, be excellent to each other and party on, dudes!
Author: Justin "ParaParaJMo" Moriarty
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