This post, for the uninitiated, covers Rhyme Anima seasons 1 and 2, so obviously, spoilers ahead! You may also need to read up on the previous Hypnosis Mic posts I’ve done (linked below the cut).

Synopsis

[See this post for rough details of the 1st season and this post for additional details for season 2.]

Source Material

Music project.

To detail the minutiae, Rhyme Anima has the rough story beats of the first division rap battle. For Rhyme Anima+, it’s an anime-only storyline which was billed as being post-2nd division rap battle, but is mostly devoid of 2nd DRB developments.

Temporally, Rhyme Anima was originally going to air in the summer of 2020, during the hype of the 2nd DRB…it should have aired about 4 months out from ARB‘s release on the 26th of March 2020 (itself postponed due to COVID) but ended up more like half a year out, while the manga DH & BAT, FP & M+, Dawn of Divisions and BB & MTC+ were ongoing. Meanwhile, Rhyme Anima+ was released in a lull between the 2nd and 3rd DRBs – the drama tracks had finished their coverage of the 2nd DRB, while in terms of the relevant manga, DH & BAT+ and FP & M+ had finished while BB & MTC+ was wrapping up its coverage of the 2nd DRB, while the 10th live show Live Anima, featuring songs from the EPs Homies and Hoods, was still upcoming in 2024. This rough timeline should detail why Rhyme Anima, as a whole, plays fast and loose with the canon of Hypnosis Mic – developments were happening as the anime was released and promoted.

Main Studio

A-1 Pictures.

Anime Season

Fall 2020 for Rhyme Anima, fall 2023 for Rhyme Anima+.

Story/Characters

Rhyme Anima+ was packed from beginning to end. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (24 minutes disappeared every week, which is a good thing for something I made appointment viewing during the simulcast for both seasons!), but it was maybe trying to have too much in one neat plot, between giving all 21 characters (6 divisions + main Chuohku trio) + Secret Aliens + TBH division their own time to shine. The middle episodes of Rhyme Anima+ seemed to have themes for the sake of simply having something to move the plot along. Rhyme Anima, on the other hand, has more space to breathe, but was quite clearly going through introductory stuff before the big battles at the end. The fact we got Dotsuitare Honpo and Bad Ass Temple animated at all in Rhyme Anima+ is leaps ahead of when we were happy to just have little 2D animated snippets and 3D models of them in the Glory or Dust music video about 2 years ago as of the time of writing ( *sweatdrops* ).

I feel like we don’t learn a whole lot about the anime-original characters…yes, even Page Gotoyama, the robber who appears in episode 1 of both seasons. This makes it hard to emotionally invest in them, even though Rhyme Anima+‘s ending will depend on your emotional attachment to Akira and Satoru and likewise, Secret Aliens’ surprise appearance in Rhyme Anima+ will depend on how much you liked them in Rhyme Anima.

In terms of getting to see your favourite HypMic characters animated and rapping, as mentioned earlier, the anime tries to give each character time to shine so you definitely get that, though Rosho says they pretty much “only met” in season 2 episode 11, thereby situating this in a different continuity to Mixed Up and ARB (where characters openly admit they’ve met due to the rap battles). Jakurai and Hitoya, as characters with ties to season 2’s Kaibyakumon and the greater story of Hypnosis Mic due to their occupations, do get a slightly bigger chunk of screentime so fans of them will probably walk away mostly quite happy with that (I say that as a Jakurai fan myself, so I’m not immune *sweatdrops*). On a personal level, my favourite Jakurai moment out of the 2 seasons is when we get host Jakurai in season 2, episode 5 – sure, even though he’s done similar things in a drama track released during the 2nd DRB era, that wasn’t a visual medium (I would like to see a manga version of said drama track happen…make it happen, [FP & M mangaka] Kiiko Jou!).

However, there is one character that got done pretty dirty – Samatoki, who was mostly characterised by his anger, whether that be with or without cigarette withdrawal. Fans of Samatoki tend to latch on to his soft side (although there is the story beat of Samatoki having acknowledged Nemu is part of Chuohku in season 2, which is only hinted at in season 1, and he does have a moment where he does show kindness for Nemu in season 2, even if it is a hologram), so if you’re a fan of his reading this, prepare for some disappointment. There is another point which can be perceived as a letdown – the one big indication of the 2nd DRB mentioned earlier in Jiro calling Ichiro “aniki” (most notably featuring in the 2nd DRB song Re:start!!). If you’re a Buster Bros fan who’s waiting for the shoe to drop, then sorry to break it to you: it’s not handled particularly smoothly. For most of the season, Jiro calls him “nii-chan” like nothing’s changed from season 1, then suddenly in episode 10, he switches to “aniki” without the significance being alluded to in any way.

In terms of name puns, there’s a lot over the 2 seasons – I broke a bunch of the Rhyme Anima ones down for the simulcast commentary (link at the end of the post), while I did the Rhyme Anima+ ones for the HypMic server I frequent – as of the time of writing, I still have notes for them but those aren’t as public as the first season’s.

Songs

I feel like some of season 2’s songs were better than season 1’s (although that may be recency bias combined with overexposure from ARB speaking) –Sanity and Next Stage come to mind first as standouts, although Rise From Dead isn’t bad. The range of songs between both seasons – ranging from ghostbusting to an extended Journey to the West parody – really proves you can rap about anything!

I didn’t expect Hoodstar – as an ending song for Rhyme Anima+ or at all in the anime – by a long shot, which was a nice surprise. I like Hoodstar, but as of this post’s writing (on the 30th of December 2023), it’s since been upstaged by Summit of Divisions and possibly Hypnotic Summer in terms of Division All-Stars songs. Likewise, Ore ga Ichiro appeared in an initial Rhyme Anima episode.

Animation

Rhyme Anima looks quite funky. One of my biggest complaints with it was the overuse of CGI models since they’re quite obvious to the untrained eye, so Rhyme Anima+ did well to scale back on the CGI until the end. That said, Rhyme Anima+ does on the whole look better than its predecessor, but it isn’t without its visual faults either. It does bring the CGI models in for the OP and some parts of battle scenes, while its 2D was slightly infamous, in the circles I was in at the time of simulcasting, for appearing at the ends of the episodes where people would care less about watching.

Watch it if you:

• already like the other arms of the franchise
• like pretty boys
• need something over-the-top to “switch your brain off” to

Don’t watch it if you:

• want to analyse the English without considering its nature as a translation (Nick from Anime News Network keeps being salty about how Rhyme Anima‘s bars suck – noting he most likely doesn’t know as much Japanese as I do – and I never have enough gumption or bandwidth to yell into the void when I don’t think he’ll listen to me about it).
• want things to make sense.
• can’t listen to the music for whatever reason (…sure, the visual spectacle is definitely much bigger than other music series, but the music is meant to be what sells the series).

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I admit because I wrote this review up straight after finishing Rhyme Anima+, I’ve skewed most of my information and arguments towards that. If you want to know anything more, then either peruse my simulcast commentary of the 1st season or ask in the comments section.