Listeners Season Review

“With the lights out, there’s no danger anymore. Here we are now. Amuse us. Entertain us!”

If I were to give Listeners an award to mark the end of its run it would be the award for, “Series That I Turned On Most Quickly.” By episode 4, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like the show, and any hope it could get better continued to fade rapidly with each passing episode. I don’t know that I would go so far as to call the show outright terrible, but Listeners is a very frustrating watch, characterized by sloppy writing and uneven production. It’s possible I’m being overly harsh, but having forced myself to watch Listeners to the end, I can’t be so kind as to offer it a middling score. In my review of the first episode, I was optimistic about the show, but noted that it was difficult to evaluate the setting and the characters based solely on the first episode. Now that I’m at the end of the Listeners journey, I can safely say the setting is nonsensical and I’m annoyed by the characters. As it turns out, the first episode is arguably Listeners at its very best and most logical, and that’s a pretty damning indictment of how things proceed. It would be easy to say that Listeners is a series that is weighed down by several modest flaws, but, truth be told, if you took away those flaws, I’m not entirely sure what would be left as there exists little narrative that could actually stand on its own.

The story takes place in a world with no music where humans called Players fight against shadowy creatures called the Earless using mechs referred to as Equipment. Much of the series follows our leads, Echo Rec and Mu, as they look for information about an enigmatic player named… Jimi Stonefree… I suppose now is a good time to point out that terminology proves to be one of those “modest flaws” I referenced before. The show lacks creativity, so many of its terms seem uninspired, assuming they aren’t a ham-handed musical reference. One of the key reasons I turned on the show at Episode 4 was because that episode marked the first time I truly understood the central conceit of the series. Each episode is a cluster of musical references to a specific band. The first three episodes were built around references to Oasis, Einstürzende Neubauten and My Bloody Valentine respectively. Of these three bands, the only one I had spent a moderate amount of time listening to was Oasis, and, even then, I couldn’t argue that I was a fan, so the references in the episode flew right over my head. However, Episode 4 was titled “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Needless to say, as a modest fan of grunge music, I immediately got all of the references, from characters named Nir and Hole to the stupid plot point of a drug named Teen Spirit. Up until that episode, the show had been confused and ineptly handled in my opinion, but the revelation that it had been constructing itself around lazy musical references finally contextualized everything. From that moment onward, the primary conceit of the series became crystal clear and painfully annoying. Our characters wander through the works of one musical act to another in the interest of finding the elusive Jimi Stonefree, only stopping briefly to club viewers over the head with the bluntness of the references and to vomit esoteric nonsense about what is going on.

The primary characters, Echo Rec and Mu, aren’t bad characters, but they never stop feeling like two-dimensional knock-offs of Eureka Seven‘s Renton Thurston and Eureka. If anything, the problem becomes worse as the show continues and more and more similarities arise. The rest of the cast is annoying. I could tolerate Nir, a young female Player that Echo befriends, but her character doesn’t get much to do. That might be why I tolerate her. If she was more central to the goings-on, she’d probably be forced to stand in a circle with the others and jabber on about how, “Core parts can be linked,” or how, “It is love and only love,” that can save the world. There are a number of other significant or recurring characters, but they fall into the annoying trap of being constructed around musical references. References are a fun and informative detail when they’re designed to aid the story in a nonintrusive manner, but that isn’t how Listeners operates. Take Denka for example. Here is a silly, flamboyant character who is referred to as the Purple Majesty… he’s Prince. He’s annoyingly Prince. Even when you don’t get the reference, you can tell there is a reference there. The narrative grinds to a halt. It’s possible for characters constructed around musical references to be compelling, but the plot and dialogue never afford them that opportunity. Very little about this world makes any sense. Let’s take the most basic of questions one might have about the show. What are ‘Players’? We know from the first episode that they are people who can interface with ‘Equipment’ using an outlet located on their body, but where do these outlets come from? This is a question which is never properly addressed, even though we see people gain outlets on two separate occasions. Those outlets just spontaneously appeared, but the show seems to imply that this isn’t normal. Questions like this are sprinkled all throughout Listeners, but whenever it bothers to provide an answer, it does so in obtuse vagaries. So, with irritating or bland characters, a narrative that is all over the place and incomprehensible world building, what is there to convince people to stick with this show?

I wish I could say that the show’s production elevates it, but, really, it just prevents Listeners from sinking to even greater depths. In the hands of most other studios, I’d say they did a good job, but, frankly, this seems rather underwhelming given MAPPA’s recent track record. The CG used on the mechs isn’t terrible, but they don’t feel particularly well integrated. This is an issue further complicated by the weird design sensibilities at play. To put it bluntly, I don’t like the designs of the “Equipment” in Listeners. The editing and directing is also pretty bad, which leads to the fight scenes being mildly difficult to follow, and shockingly unmemorable. In my review of the first episode, I made many allusions to Eureka Seven, but it’s actually a little shocking to see how much Listeners recycles visuals from that series, particularly as it staggers towards its end. The music is fine. For a show constructed around musical references, it isn’t as good as it probably should be, but it does its job. In fact, that’s a good way to summarize the entirety of the production for this show. It’s competent enough to do its job, but it does nothing to elevate this dumpster fire.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• There is a joke that comes up on more than one occasion where people address Nir like she is male. I don’t understand this, as nothing about her character design or voice suggest masculine qualities, and it legitimately confused me when Mu had to point this fact out to Echo at the end of episode 4.
• I legitimately had a grimace on my face for the majority of the final episode. I was just done with this idiocy.
• Those who follow me on Twitter may already be aware of this, but I regularly used My Next Life as a Villainess as an incentive to get through episodes of Listeners. It was something of a “How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” type of scenario.
• One might wonder how far I would have gotten into this show, had I not been committed to finishing it for a review. I suspect that I would probably have dropped it after episode 5. Denka is introduced in that episode, and I found both him and the story of that episode to be irritating.
• It was never entirely clear what the villain’s plan was, but I think he wanted to essentially trigger the Human Instrumentality Project from Neon Genesis Evangelion… using music. This show is really dumb.
• While I wasn’t emotionally engaged by the series, I was mildly impressed that it was willing to kill off two characters. However, I completely revoked all kudos the show had earned when the final episode had the gall to reveal, “Nope, it turns out they were alive and well the whole time!!!”
• At the risk of spoiling how it all ends, I want to say that this is just the plot of Eureka Seven, but with all the explanations and world building cut out using a chainsaw!