Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle - Rhyme Anima

Story-wise, it’s actually kind of lacking. They have these sort of side-stories to sort of show what drives the individual groups and how strong they are. I had the indication that the anime would take perhaps four episodes and show one group per episode, building up the anticipation of the division battle in an appropriate and timely manner. However, slight spoiler, it wasn’t until practically the end of the anime until the division battle took place and even then it was over far too quick. The anime also left so many questions unanswered that you have to wonder if these questions or mysteries should have been a part of the plot in the first place. Perhaps they’re trying to save some stuff for a second season. But, from what I can tell, that isn’t likely. But, there were a couple of good things that should be pointed out. For one, the art style was beautiful. It was sleek and the main characters were unique, whether it came to hair style, eye color, or even eye structure. The rapping, as one would hope, was actually pretty great too! This is the first music anime in which I’ve heard the characters rap but it was truly an experience. For your sake, I hope you’re a fast reader because they really do be spitting lines. Overall, it was a fine enough anime that I enjoyed for the most part and genuinely did not regret watching.

I don't what I expected but overall it was fun, stupid but fun. The characters are silly, overexaggerated , and the rap battles themselves make me curl up into a bowl and laugh my guts out but I got to say I had fun. I couldn't take any of the battles seriously but if you don't mind laughing at the absurdity of an anime , this is the one for you. In terms of story, a lot of mysteries are left unsolved, and the past histories are still barely touched on. Also that last fight 12 people v. 3 talk about unfair, and the opponents didn't even have a chance to fight back. I also wish they explained more in depth about the skills, how they synergize and work with each other. What are the requirements to gain a skill? Are multiple skills possible, etc. The idea of skills gave it a more tactical approach, but the show just mentioned skills then completely forgot about the explanation. Certain raps and songs, like the op, ed, the Ichiro only one, the secret aliens, one in ep 12, are super good and I would honestly love to buy a copy of those songs. The others are also great but not my taste. Overall the animations to match the raps are absurd and funny. The raps appear to give a physical representation on how the words are hurting the opponents, but half the time the words are utter nonsense, and seeing the opponents fall on their ass makes me laugh, like really, you're hurt by this...really?! Outside of the raps the art is fairly average, as well as animation. So...yeah. The large cast is interesting but there's not enough time for me to actually know the characters and their dynamics well as I wish I could, but the show did the best it could with the amount of time it had. When ever the groups mesh its a million times more interesting then when they're off by themselves. The only individual group episode I liked was Matenro's. The comedic timing on that episode was on point! The show was fun and funny. It genuinely brought tears to my eyes , with its absolute absurdity. Sometimes it was slow and the conflict was boring but the characters are what makes this anime worthwhile. If you have time, and need a good laugh. I think it's worth watching! TLDR: This anime is stupid fun!(Note) Don't expect anything more than that.

Hypnosis Microphone as a music franchise is very good. They release sick beats and the rapping is very diverse. The anime on the other hand was a disappointment. I had known Hypnosis Mic prior to the anime release so I know what's up. However, for the people who just saw this anime and franchise for the first time might probably had been turned off by this. There are some moments in the anime that just makes you question why they added that in. The characters are fine. The anime didn't fully show their personalities and interactions with each other. It was just bland. Some characters have very specific traits that makes them lovable but it wasn't really shown in this adaptation. As a music anime, the opening and ending song are good. The OSTs are forgettable, with exceptions. Was expecting sick beats but, I guess it's alright. The battle scenes were utterly disappointing. In the drama track and manga, more characters used their special ability and went all out during the division battle. They also replaced some scenes that can get you on the edge of your seat with something bland and boring. *cough* Ramuda's final attack *cough* The characters have deepen their bonds with their teammates during the battle and it wasn't shown. In short words, the battle scenes aren't worth the hype. So in conclusion, if you have no clue what Hypnosis Microphone is beforehand, you'll be confused with what's happening. It's not a good introduction to the franchise and you'll probably get turned off by it. I recommend listening to their songs on Youtube or read the manga since it has more plot, and it gets into each character's lore more deeply. Example of this is Jiro being a dumbass, Gentaro's voice acting, Samatoki being a siscon, and Rio being a cinnamon roll.

My initial impression of Hypnosis Mic was that it's neither bad nor great. After finishing the series, I realized that while it's not the worst anime ever it's definitely not the best written of its kind. I've seen and enjoyed anime series that go all out with their over-the-top premises. Whether they be "Use [this merch] to save the world" plotlines or logic breaking scenarios, I could enjoy them as long as they are well executed. On paper, Hypnosis Mic's worldbuilding was definitely over-the-top. A Japan run by an all-female government (who banned all weapons and violence) where the only way for people to survive and thrive is to know how to rap and possess the titular hypnosis mic. Watching this show told me to not expect any serious discussion on how a seemingly warless society works from the ethical ramifications behind hacking people's brains with raps for the sake of world peace to how no one in the shady side of things thought about smuggling banned weapons such as guns and knives. What really mattered to this series were the raps and characters as the latter ended up in weird situations. Unfortunately those ideas were poorly executed on practice. The writing was definitely not the show's strong suit. The way the show was paced made the world of Hypnosis Mic lose its appeal. Nothing was well explained or established. I said it before, but it's poor world building if I'm required to look at other sources just to understand how the world works. The main cast lacked chemistry. They were merely walking archetypes with personalities defined by one to two gimmicks. Their cast management wasn't as bad as B-Project's, but it lacked the impact it needs to make me care about any of those characters. For instance, when the characters were in grave danger at the climax I could care less. Speaking of the climax, the final episodes of the series felt rushed and incomplete. The Division Rap Battle the show kept on hyping up since the beginning felt lame. In the final moments, it's implied that the Party of Words was involved in this conspiracy and was preparing for a new plan since a certain project failed. Though as it is, I could care less. Even the rap battles weren't exciting. Aside from the competition, all battles that the main cast have against a couple of thugs turned out one-sided. The thugs didn't even rap. When there was an actual match, all I got was people blasting words at each other. Maybe it's the language barrier that made me unable to see why person A's word play was better than B's to justify why he's able to wear him down. Another factor is that I'm not into rap music, so there's some bias there. Animation was very static outside the rap battle segments. Characters would barely move during conversations, giving the impression that they were glorified mannequins. The artwork was pretty good. The character designs were colorful and fun. The animation during the rap battles were definitely enjoyable and expressive. The OST was okay, though I'm not into raps to begin with. The VAs clearly gave it their all to sing all those songs. Overall, I'm not sure if I should recommend Hypnosis Mic. It's not offensive, but I don't find it enjoyable either. I guess it's another harmless run-of-the-mill series with lack luster writing. If you're curious, go right ahead.

I think, LITERALLY, everyone should watch this anime, regardless of which anime genres you prefer. I really really enjoyed every episode of this anime, even if the use of 3D animation was a little jarring (at first), it has a really good plot which ramps up as you watch so it doesn't really get boring. Compared to other anime this anime is wholly unique, the soundtrack bangs too! (in fact before even watching this anime some of the songs were on my playlist). So, i highly recommend this anime, not only is the music banger but also the animation style and character designs are so appealing to the eye, there is bound to be at least one character youll continue watching just to see.

There are way too many characters for how little characterization they get. If you check the MAL page, they have every member of the 4 rap groups as "main" characters and calling them all "main" characters is generous. There are clearly leaders of the rap groups and while they don't fare much better, the side characters are each assigned a personality trait and told to stick to it. Dice is the gambler Jyuto is the cop who I guess is technically dirty but, like, he seems to be doing his job just fine to me Saburo is the hacker brother Speaking of which, I'm not entirely sure what Jiro's deal is. He just kinda exists. If it wasn't for Saburo's hacking, the whole Buster Bros could've died in a fire and I wouldn't have missed anything tbh. With the exception of Busujima, I don't think any of them outside of the main 4 have any real reason to want to win outside of bragging rights. Even then, they're just kinda flaky reasons and they don't spend enough time to give any of them any sort of weight. When [team] won the rap tourney, I was like "damn, that was kind of underwhelming". I guess I rep the Mad Trigger Crew but they're not exactly going down in my best characters of all time tier list. They spend the first, like, half or so on episodic adventures trying to acclimate us to the characters but I don't think it worked out all that well. Maybe if it was JUST Ichiro, Samatoki, Ramuda (speaking of which, I kinda get why they did it but dear God, his voice is so annoying), and Jakurai, they'd be able to give them enough time to breathe but with TWELVE people, it gets crowded. That's to say nothing of the Party of Words (ignoring the whole "boys rule, girls drool" concept of all the rappers being boys and the tyrannical dictator party being girls because that is a whole weird issue in of itself) who are kind of forgettable and the OTHER group of three characters who for the majority of the story are just dicking around as photographers. The music is... fine. It's decent enough to make the show watchable but I didn't find many, if any, tracks to be all that memorable. When they rap, they also turn into 3D models for some reason? I don't think there's any real reason to watch this unless you really just wanna see cute boys for 13 episodes and even then, I'm sure there's better. The characters are thin and the music is forgettable in a show focused on rapping where they rap in every episode. It wasn't bad, I guess, it was watchable, but I also don't really see any need to seek it out.

Not gonna lie, the plot was absolutely batshit. Seeing the criminals pull out mics instead of guns was so funny to watch and trying to understand what is going on in this alternate timeline of Japan was certainly fun to dissect. This is basically a so bad that it's good kind of anime that makes it a fun watch due to how logic completely is not a thing in this show. The music is nice, honestly with multimedia anime projects like these they can make pretty good bangers. I guess the plot of seeing these groups of people from each prefecture crime fighting can look silly since all they really are doing is... rapping and all. My fave is the Ichiro guy lol

so, hypmic's anime.. i didn't mind it, unlike Ensemble Stars's anime adaptation they didn't overshoot or actively try to adapt an incredibly long story that would have been too difficult/cumbersome to adapt into animation; instead they made their own separate canon that didn't veer too far from the main timeline and general premise of Hypnosis Mic as a whole. which is a good thing. so, a spoiler-free overall thoughts of the anime as a whole..? again, its fine. nothing mind blowing or overly crazy, found it to be fun and laughed a lot. the only nitpick is the group exclusive to the anime called "Secret Aliens", found their divison to be under developed and admittedly shoe-horned in. There were a few scenes with them but they just weren't executed very well, with dialog being very stilted(besides their names being absolutely insane amalgamations of sentences). there clearly was potential but they weren't doing anything with it. aside from the stuff surrounding Secret Alien(though i'll go back to T.Rex for funsies), i didn't enjoy how the anime characterized Ramuda Amemura.. I'll need to go on a small tangent to briefly explain this, while it is true that Ramuda has genuine differences in mood and switching on a dime in some situations; its not in the way the anime depicts it(especially in the manga and audio dramas). i won't get into spoilers but a lot of how he acts is specific to people prying at his past or due to his other work(not his job designing clothing). Dice also has a similar change but i think it weirdly fits, he acts more bubbly and brotherly with the members of Fling Posse(especially with Ramuda); Gentaro is also more playful and direct; with a larger focus on quick qwipes directed at Dice(on small rare occasions, Ramuda as well). it's clear the writers had tons of fun with the dynamics regarding Fling Posse. The Halloween episode especially highlights this, moving onto the other divisions. MAD TRIGGER CREW isn't too different from the main timeline so i don't have a comment, Buster Bros can be said in the same regard though the exchanges between them and Secret Aliens is.... Something, but I will admit; their focused episodes were admittedly quite boring and not overly entertaining. found myself dying to just skip to the section of the episode focused on the other divisons. Materno is interesting, Dice and Hifumi are much more chaotic and i genuinely like it. Jakurai is also interesting in that we get to see him more at his job and more of how he acts while in public, still the same ol'Jakurai but with more details and situations in depth. in regards to T. Rex it didn't help that many hypmic fans who either used to be or like Ensemble Stars joked about T.Rex being very similar in appearance to Adonis, which still give me a good chuckle. in the end, would i recommend this anime? well, if your a mega fan of hypmic? you might like this or eye roll, especially with how funimation handled Gentaro's subtitles(still see people complaining about it to this day). but for newbies to the franchise? eehhhh, maybe? i think it'd be fun to watch with someone unfamiliar with the story, maybe with a swig of beer.

As someone who´s been a big fan of this project since it started, I was very adamant about starting this anime. Usually, anime that gets adopted from gacha idol games ends up being mediocre at best and this was certainly one of those cases. Art and Animation: The moment that the A1 pictures logo popped up I knew exactly what to expect. When the characters are standing still and not moving, the art looks fine, but the moment something moves the quality drops significantly. The characters themselves are quite colourful and flashy, but even that isn´t enough to distract someone from the awful 3D animation that is mixed in. I´ve never seen the need to animate the rap battles in 3D as the characters most of the time just stand there flailing their arms about. Music: So, this was an incredible disappointment for me…Why they felt the need to make all of these new anime-exclusive songs that sound so soulless and boring, is beyond me. In my opinion, all characters have great VAs, the songs that were written for them in the anime just don´t do them any justice. There was maybe one song that stood out to me (Shibuya Ghost Night), and the others were pretty much forgettable and honestly not something I can see myself listening more to than once. This should´ve been the main focus of the anime, but they failed to capture the feel of other HypMic songs. Accompanied by the awful 3D animation the rap battles are a chore to sit through. They already had all of these perfectly fine songs written and recorded already so why ruin the main selling point of the franchise like this… Story and Characters: The story is an interesting aspect of this anime. While it works in game form when you only have it written, it turns really weird when it´s accompanied by visuals. Fighting crime and pointing at knife-armed criminals with a microphone just does not look right. It makes the scenes where they talk about criminals and drug use all that more insignificant. There is no world-building, so whatever nonsensical situation happens you just have to accept it. Either the anime should have been a bit longer or focused more on just one thing. I don´t think the one episode per division thing worked well to introduce the viewers to the society, characters or the whole mic system. The characters are what saves the anime for me. They all have their own unique quirks and personalities and while these were not as fleshed out as they could have been, seeing them interact with each other is pretty fun. The designs fit the characters perfectly and while colourful they are not obnoxious to look at. The mics and speakers are ridiculous aspects of their designs, but I think they were incorporated in a way that doesn’t make them stand out too much. Enjoyment? I probably wouldn´t enjoy this as much if I wasn´t already a fan of this project. Not something I would recommend as an introduction to the franchise.

First things first, I'm not a fujo, so normally I wouldn't gravitate towards shows like these, but upon discovering the director for this was also responsible for Symphogear G, GX, and XV (and ...AXZ...), I simply had to give the show a shot. And honestly, this is just Symphogear with guys. Hell the first episode even begins with a Kirika/Shirabe esque moment with the 2 Buster Bros "sneaking" around like idiots. The show is simply stylish. Similar to Ono Katsumi's work on Symphogear, the act of singing, or rapping in this case, is given such a bombastic and over-the-top flair that it becomes so engaging you wouldn't want to take your eyes out of the action even for a second. While the action is generally intense, ironically the main draw of the series, the rap battles, which only happen at the end I might add, are the weakest point where each team just takes turns rapping in place without much of the creativity that can be seen in the earlier episodes. Quite possibly the most amazing thing about this show is how it manages to avoid cast bloat despite featuring 12 main characters. The same season this aired, I watched Assault Lily which only had 9 characters but I can only recall about 3 from it as I was watching. In Hypnosis Mic, despite its short run time, the show manages to make the most of it by giving each character a distinct personality that differentiates themselves even within the same group, making each character immensely likable is also no small feat. Unfortunately I wasn't too big on the actual music, apart from the OP, some songs by Buster Bros, and that one song by Secret Aliens. Kudos to the translators for making the english lyrics rhyme though. For me, the show has always shined brightest during the slice of life scenes that predate the actual rap battle near the end, and the moments where you follow each group in their daily lives is ultimately much more endearing and memorable than the mangled weird plot they have that doesn't even have the courtesy to have a proper conclusion at the very end. Ultimately, if you're after some dumb but fun action that's confident in its stupidity and embraces it with much passion, you can't go wrong with this show. It's a fun romp with a great cast, but don't expect much from its story. 7/10

The story of the show was pretty good. There wasn’t enough information to pieces 2 & 2 together. Toward the end of the series it had a continuous storyline but in the beginning, the characters’ stories were told at different times but they were connected but sometimes I feel like some information is missing. The story was pretty complex but it's not too much for it to be confusing. It was fine. The story was pretty predictable. Every episode ended in the same way but it was pleasing to watch. There wasn’t any filler episode and the pacing was alright. There was some comedic stuff here and there but it doesn’t give me the sci-fi vibes. The art is standard-fare is the art style that you usually see. The art style does fit well with the story. They both have that edgy vibes. They were some CGI but it wasn’t too bad. The CGI was there where it needed. Sometimes I didn’t notice there was some CGI in there so that tells me that it blended in well. The animation was nice and clean. Not sloppy. The background sometimes was distracting it was kind of hard to focus more on the characters. The character design does of course match well with their personality. The designs are very unique. You can tell who is who. The voice actors do match well, but when it comes to rapping I don’t think so. One voice actor did have to adapt their voice and it didn’t match well with that one character. All of the characters are well-rounded. They all have 1 major strength and some flaws. I did relate to one character since because i’m the oldest sibling and that character is the oldest sibling I can truly understand them. One character became stronger at the end and was able to defeat some people. The antagonist had some motivation but it wasn’t enough info to justify why it's kind of more like the antagonist was there just to be there. The supporting cast was flat not enough uniqueness. They barely did anything well except for one supporting character but that’s it. The characters are not memorable they’re very typical. I think you guys will like it. It’s a show where you don’t have to think a lot about just something you can enjoy. I do think other non-anime fans will like it because it deals with rap and rap is pretty popular in the music industry. I’ll probably not watch this again. It’s not worth rewatching. I’ll probably forget that I watched it. But it’s pretty good.

Hi, everyone! Welcome to another review! **Note that this was written at two different 'stages' while I was watching the anime**. This is what I wrote having watched 4 episodes and I believe I will sustain my POV until the end: As a rap battle IRL enjoyer, I actually found this anime immediately disappointing. I expected the bands from the opening to encounter and actually DOING a rap battle but this is rapping against bad guys one-sided; hence where's the battle? If you want to watch this because you like rap battles, then take that into account cause you're not getting anything until the end I guess. The story is so bad and stupid imo. I really don't care about what happens. I feel it's overly complicated to follow and I sense they made it that way to make it look 'serious' and/or 'cool'. There's no need for a story here, get a bunch of guys rap and that's it. I also don't understand why this anime isn't categorized as comedy because it stars off with a funny premise. Maybe they should have gone that way and it'd be much better imo. I really liked the designs of the speakers, they are really cool, I did enjoy that. The desings of the characters are basic and stereotyped, the only one I found appealing was Ramuda as most people according to the number of favourites/likes it has in this site and also some friends that I know that like the series. Voice Actors make a good job rapping and talking is ok. Ramuda particularly sticks out for obvious reasons and I don't find him annoying tbh. I wish I could have enjoyed the rapping scenes more because it was either choosing to read the lyrics in the subtitles or watching the animation so it was very tiring to have to stop to read the stupid lyrics and miss the visuals. Ah, yes, the lyrics suck most the time, you don't really care or feel the losing side are getting 'owned' and there's no memorable punchline, which is something that rap specially stands out over other genres. I liked the OP and EDs, specially I sometimes sang along the OP when it gets to the part that goes ''Hypnosis action ends corruption...'' till the end. I would cut some bits of the opening song but that's about my taste and all the guys styles had to be shownso I don't mind it. In short, this anime is eye-candy (not a really good one if you ask me) and cool. Just a product to sell merch, promote the Android game, etc, with no real substance and that's very fine. It comes from Japan, after all... If you like this anime, that's perfect, but unfortunately I found other eye-candies with actual stories that are interesting to me so I know it's possible to combine those and make a decent piece of work at the very least (*Kuroshitsuji cough cough*), nor to say a Masterpiece (*Pandora Hearts cough cough*). I will force myself to finish the anime because I believe there's gonna be a rap battle in the end and that's what I'm looking forward rn: a direct confrontation from the bands in the arena (which, very probably, will end as a draw of some kind or be interrupted as for fans not to kill each other over who was the winner). ------------------------------------------------------------ Now that I finished the anime I have to correct myself that indeed there was a winner in the end. But not that it matters so much. Still the plot was really boring, a lot of lack of info, no sense in the antagonists actions, things that came up of nowhere, no building, no nothing. The only way to enjoy the anime is to watch it completely brainless and not paying attention to what's really happening. Other than that, you'll feel either fatigued after a chapter, or two tops. Anyways, I don't care too much to even discuss aaaalll the details that made this a bad anime. I wish ALL the anime was like episodes from 8 to 11 because that's what I was aiming and I DO like the songs but well, guess they couldn't resist the urge to make an edgy story to this. Man, I even feel bad because this COULD have been a really good anime... T_T. I do not recommend to watch this to be completely honest unless you are very young and didn't watch a lot of animes cause you're gonna get mentally tired when the anime tries to explain itself. If you're interested in the OST or the battles, just watch them on YouTube (I should have done that). 4.5 out of 10, extra .5 'cause I'm comparing this to Basquash and it's slightly better just for the songs. Well, that's it! I hope you enjoyed reading my review. Bye-bye~ ^^/

The art is pretty much the best thing in the anime, the colors and art style are good, but I got one problem, the 3D animation. The 3D animation makes the rap battles less attractive than 2D. Also, the story doesn't make a lot of sense, sometimes it's a bit confusing. (They don't explain the whole story, just some flashbacks of some people, but can't tell what really happened) Then there's the voice acting, I personally didn't like it, It didn't really match the characters, but the music is fine. (This review is written by someone who hadn't play the game nor read the manga yet :D)

Almost every episode of the Anime, even if I remember correctly, you really encounter a different rap duel in each episode. You're really excited about the meaning of Rap parties. (I didn't start from the drawings this time :) so as a result, the anime in the music catagory I watched decisively is decisively among those I found successful. All of the drawings are very good, I was able to choose a favorite until the last 3 episodes. Doppo, well, I like this character a little more than I like myself. I think his story was quite original, but the possibility of a new season coming up is hmm... it's a little thought-provoking, maybe we'll get some news next year, but I don't have much hope that you'll come. Well, I guess I don't have a lot of criticism for this anime.