Story – Nonexistant, each episode is completely disconnected from any other. The primary goal, to get gold in the national competition, is set in the first episode, but is then promptly forgotten about until the very last episode. Each episode has “mysteries” that are either painfully obvious (blue’s clue’s level) or absolutely contrived. (a piggy bank house) Things simply fall into place, more often than not, with our main characters doing nothing. One episode just glosses over all our core characters realizing one of their aunt’s past love interest was a mass murderer. (this was the entire mystery of that episode, the conclusion of an whole episodes runtime.) Upon the realization, no one so much as bats an eyelash, and within 30 seconds it’s swept under the rug, and back to happy go lucky characters, because “mystery solved!” Consequences are something this anime clearly thinks is beyond its audience’s conceptual grasp. Each episode gives you the strong impression that this story was written by the egocentric mind of a young child, specifically a person who has yet to realize that other people experience life and have emotions and that there is a reality outside their perception. The end result is an insultingly bad story.
Animation – Little to say, considering the amount of exposition for the sake of exposition, most of the run time consists of still shots with moving mouths. It’s not that animation is inherently bad in any way but there’s not much of it. It’s nothing remember.
Sound – There are token bits of instruments being played for a couple seconds about once an episode, and then finally for a couple minutes at the final episode. Which is nice, but to say they are forced in is putting it lightly. Instruments are only there because it was on the checklist of things to put in the episodes. Even in final (and only) performance, it seems like the studio really didn’t have any interest in including people playing music. As such, by and large everything is forgettable. The story does the music no favors, and constant exposition relegates any music to ambiance.
Characters – One dimensional, ever character can be summed up as “the person that was the focus of problem X in episode X,” completely emotionless, and devoid of any awareness of their surroundings or other people. They accomplish nothing, they learn nothing, and each episode is as effectively a hard reset of the characters. As for the main characters, Haruta will have exposition to spout, regardless of there being justification for him having any knowledge of a situation. He has the answer because the script dictates he’s the “guy with the answers” character. Chika is there, because we needed to have a girl for the marketing. The show could replace Chika with a different generic extra every episode or she could be removed completely and it would have little to no effect on the show. She is nothing more than a cute face to put on the series.
Final Thoughts – One of, if not the single worst anime I’ve ever watched. There are no redeeming factors. To add insult to injury, this show being billed as ‘childhood friends saving a failing Wind Instrument Club,’ definitely garnered my high hopes heading into it. Hopes which where swiftly pounded into the dirt, as the description on the tin is an abject lie. This show has nothing to do with music. All the work to get to nationals is canned as happening off screen in 10 seconds at the start of episode 11. This is not an exaggeration, the work to achieve primary goal laid out by the show, is given a whole 10 seconds of pre-episode exposition to say that the anime couldn’t be bothered to actually show any of it. In reality, the show could have been done with any club, it being a Wind Instrument is completely irrelevant. It’s blatantly obvious the only reason HaruChika got animated was to cash in on the success of Hibike Euphonium because there are some instruments in it. Completely horrible.
Add to list