English Dub Review: Takt Op.Destiny “Awakening -Journey-

Overview

Picking up from the previous episode, Cosette transformed into the Musicart named Destiny who proclaims that her mission is to eliminate the D2s. Destiny bestows a conductor’s baton upon Takt, and he uses his Conductor powers for the first time. And then, they are confronted by two individuals: Lenny and Titan. They are an official Conductor and Musicart from the New York Symphonica, which was the strategic headquarters to fight the D2s.

Our Take

While this feels like what the 2nd episode should’ve been, it also sets up the main plot. Also, we got to see some new faces in the show for the first time in the form of Lenny and his musicart named Titan who are mostly an info-dump to our leads (and the audience) about what the “D2” creatures are, where they came from, why they hate music, how the Musicart’s were created, and the limitations of Destiny’s powers along with the strain it puts on Takt during battle. Given what we know now, they can only hope that Cosette’s personality will be restored once they go to New York.

On the subject of these creatures, after seeing the first two episodes, these “D2” creatures are quite various in terms of monster designs but many of the ones I saw up until that point were pretty ape-like in terms of how they move and position themselves. But this time around, we even see ones that were quadrupedal like lizards, weasels and ferrets. But it’s clear that much like Listeners with their “Earless” monsters, we’ll most likely be seeing more unique D2 monster designs somewhere down the line…

Overall with how weirdly structured this story is, at least we now know what the hell is going on. I don’t know who’s drug-addled decision this was, but this isn’t a proper way to write a cohesive plot to make what feels like the first two episodes into the 2nd and 3rd. Other than that, the visuals and animation are what you can expect from Madhouse or MAPPA were as high quality as you can get, and since this is a music-themed show, we can’t have that without an energetic and emotional soundtrack which thankfully manages to hit all the right notes even if it stumbles a bit plot-wise.