I could waste a lot of time here talking about how shitty isekais with overpowerful boring protagonists and high-school themed stories are plaguing the world, but heck, no. Carole & Tuesday goes further beyond simply breaking the mold of the industry. It is a charming tale with one hell of a soundtrack to seduce you. Yeah, forget about the issues of the anime industry and dive into this sweet ride.

Tuesday is a young rich girl with dreams of living the way she wants to, which she cannot as her strict mother only wants her to stay put and silent during the upcoming presidential campaign. Tuesday’s answer is to escape, running away to Alba city, where she meets another lonely girl named Carole. Together those two start to pave their way in the music industry, facing challenges and honing their immense talent along with plenty of friends and a few rivals.

It’s simple

In a way, Carole & Tuesday is a simple tale. It is about two friends working together to face the hardships of life while pursuing a dream and meeting people along the way. It is a coming of age tale of classic elements, such as presenting episodes where one or another faces dilemmas or when they need to face a setback to their plans. It works though. Why? Let me try to explain.

It has twists

Although the heart of the tale is simple, its details are certainly not. Carole & Tuesday takes place in Mars, for starters. Yeah, the red planet. This is set in a distant future and, although it has plenty of references to musicians we know, it can use this new and futuristic land to make a world of its own, with its own stars, political scenario, and problems. This helps to make Carole & Tuesday feel relatable to just the right degree, as fiction takes over to make things more exciting and original.

Additionally, it offers the point-of-view of not only the two protagonists, but also of Angela, their rival. While Carole & Tuesday take the path of traditional bands of the 70’s and the 80’s, making their songs home, playing in the streets, and moving slowly through the guts of the music industry, Angela is a pre-built superstar, honed by super agents, media conglomerates, and even political influence.

Yeah, Angela

Smartly, although Angela is introduced as an annoying girl who has everything she wants and conquers stuff much more easily than Carole & Tuesday, the show keeps long enough with her to show that she suffers too and, most importantly, that she has great talent as well. She is no villain, she is just another musician walking a different path, which slowly presents issues of its own as well.

Angela’s presence is of real importance to make the setting feel alive, because it is in her arc where we see much of the dirty game of influence and politics taking place. Sadly though, Angela herself is left undeveloped, as her issues about her own mind are only slightly mentioned and are lost in the middle of all the “bigger” stuff happening around her.

And it has funny characters too

Of course, Carole & Tuesday meet a lot of people in their journey to stardom, and most of them are funny and interesting additions. In fact, the show invests a lot in the duo’s manager, Gus and in a weirdly interpretation of modern DJs portraited by Ertegun. Although these side-characters are much more one-liners than the rest, they work well enough to provide a change of pace from Carole, Tuesday, and Angela, while also helping to establish the fictional music industry of Mars and its issues and quirks.

It’s about music

Well, that’s obvious from the premise, but let me get something straight: there has never been an anime with so much music going on that I’ve heard of. Yeah. Macross has its singing ladies and rock band, but music only happens once in a while. Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso is about musicians too, but it is much more about their personal problems. Carole & Tuesday is, directly, about the songs the duo makes and, most importantly, about their performances.

Every episode is bound to have two or more 2-minute-or-longer performances from one of the tale’s musicians and, man, they are a blast. There is music for every rhythm and style, from Carole & Tuesday sweet songs with guitar and piano to raps, techno-stuff, and whatever else you can think of. Impressively, most of them are of incredible quality too. A show about music with great and varied music? Well, hell yeah.

It could do more though

Carole & Tuesday does a great work at delivering thrill, especially when problems occur right before a performance or when Tuesday’s mother seems like a threat to the girls’ dreams. However, when it needs to be emotional it falls flat most of the time. That happens because many of the emotional problems the two protagonists face are handled far too easily and far too quickly, basically in the very same episode. Their issues never hang long enough to be a bigger problem for the duo and it seems just a hug is enough to solve them. Considering one girl is a runaway and the other an immigrant with no parents, the show could certainly be a lot more provocative in this regard.

At least, in the later part of the show, some heavier topics around immigration and freedom of speech start to take over the background of the tale, giving more weight to what Carole and Tuesday do, as well as making the presence of every other musician even more important than before. It works well to close off the show, although it can get a bit tacky and mushy for its own sake.

It’s also not very good-looking

I mean, sound-wise? This is massive. Animation-wise? Not so much. Although Carole & Tuesday does have an amazing art style with a throwback feeling of the late 90’s animes, it feels stiff and clumsy most of the time, with plenty of scenes being really ugly too. Bones can do a lot better than this. Fortunately, the special effects and coloring can make some parts of the tale a more attractive visual experience.

Well, Carole & Tuesday was weird for me. For some reason, before watching any episode of it and just reading about its first episodes, I somehow put in my brain that this could be the best show of one of the weakest years of modern anime. After watching it, well, it seems that was true all along.

Carole & Tuesday is an outlier. It is so much better than everything released this year, which was mostly boring isekais, a beautiful shounen with destructive cast, and horrible CG shows with no emotional power. What is most impressive for me in here, however, is how much music they put in a show without derailing the stuff to the traditional idol market. The songs, the funny support cast, the sweet main duo, and the intriguing rival makes for Carole & Tuesday a complete ride with excitement, contemplation, politics, and even competition.

Need a new show? Well, you just have here one of the best of the last few years.