As always with this kind of post, spoilers ahead.
Visual Prison
As I pegged from it from the beginning, it was exactly like the HypMic anime – mostly music video-style snippets framed around a greater plot. However, it was a lot campier in the way only visual kei can be and contained more screaming. I don’t think I saw the “Guil is on the verge of death” plot point coming until it actually happened, although that seems to be more trying to invoke melodrama and/or poor signposting rather than genuine surprise. The CGI is also what you’d expect for character models with more details than the technology can handle.
To be honest, this is just the sort of thing you turn your brain off to after a hard day’s work, especially if you like music or bishonen. That said, be ready to hear fangirls screaming – and lots of it…
Takt.OP Destiny
Its budget is more than a game adaption should have and that makes it attractive in a “style over substance” sort of way. Then again, it’s also the result of what happens when you put MAPPA and Madhouse together.
I read a bunch of spoilers for this by sort-of-accident (read: I had “spoilers on” on TV Tropes), so (Takt OP game and anime ending spoilers!) I knew Anna would eventually take up the mantle of Takt’s Musicart. However, this brings up more questions than it answers – what happens to Takt’s half-white hair? Does he properly get his arm back? Cosette’s body must have died, while Destiny’s “soul” was preserved in that necklace, right? Questions like that.
I know this is a rather short post, but I eased off watching anime for the fall 2021 season. Now I’m working pretty much full-time across several partial jobs, it seems I probably won’t watch as much as I used to…unless I can make my anime-watching schedule as regimented as it used to be like when I was studying.