Dynamic Chord Review – Dynamic Only in Its Name | The Horrible Anime Quest Starts

Hello everyone and welcome to our place!

Pffff what a trip it has been and I’m only in the very first show for the Horrible Anime Quest! If you don’t know what this, it’s basically a quest where I go to MAL’s worst rated Animes, watch them and then review it. You can find all the info here. Why am I doing this, you ask? I think I just found out that I’m a masochist!

Well, I was able to finish (don’t ask me how) the worst Anime I’ve ever seen in my life! You know when something is so bad that you just end up laughing because of how bad it is? (Probably, because you don’t want to cry…) Well, this was one of those, except where laugh turned into cringe the more I watched the Anime. Well, let me give you the name of this anime (like you didn’t read it in the title already):

– Dynamic Chord –

 Synopsis

So… Hmmm… Well, first of all is a male Idol Anime show! Second… The anime is basically about 4 different groups which are all below the wing of the same record label. The name of the bands are: rêve parfait, Liar-s, KIOSHO and apple-polisher. The name of the record label… Hmm… I don’t even know (?) I’m pretty sure they mentioned it like once or twice in the beginning of the show, but I don’t remember.

The anime is basically small arcs of 2-3 episodes about each band, except for rêve parfait which get 2 arcs (I think they are the main ones).

So, yeah… That’s the 12 episodes right there! Without further ado, let’s go to the juicy part where I tell you EVERYTHING that is wrong with this anime!

Story

Story? Which story? Nope, there is no main plot here, or any kind of conduction line throughout the Anime. Nope, things happen and they get solved and that’s it!!! In fact, even when things happen and seem pretty bad, they are solved in the next minute so you don’t feel even the slightest preoccupied with these characters!

An example: guy running his bicycle falls of it because of a dog and the image makes you believe that is going to hit his head in a really sharp stone. This, of course, makes you think: “oh my god! How are they going give the next concert in a week if he’s going to…..” and bam! He’s alright! Only got an injury in his arm and everything is cool! It’s so fast that you don’t even have time to finish your thought process!

More seriously though, the story starts with one of the groups (don’t ask which one because they all end up blending together in my little brain) with the singer running away from the group and not telling anything. This is a huge deal of course! But, after the 2nd episode surrounding it with no kind of evolution you just stop caring. In fact, everything is solved in such an easy manner that you think to yourself “Why did I care in the first place? Clearly it was easy to solve!”.

From there you go the other arcs, you will get a guy with creativity block which the conclusion is that he was just sick, one group that were not happy because their manager decided to take a deal from a company to produce music for them, a REAL creativity block and… That’s it? I think it is… Sorry, it’s all so interesting that I don’t even remember! (sarcasm)

The story starts weak, especially when it gives you a recap of what happened almost every 5 minutes (probably they think we are Dory from Finding Nemo), it gets a little better in the middle (not great/good, but bearable) and then there you go again to terrible. It’s a rollercoaster with the highest points being just a little above the sea level…

Characters

Well, you have 4 bands with 4 guys each one, plus 2 managers and a director. That makes 19 guys total in the story which have at least some kind of screen time. This way, you should expect that at least I would like one of them, right?

Well, in fact, I think I would like them all, if I had the chance to know them at all! Let’s see, there are way too many characters to focus in a 12 episode show, but it will be even worse if you don’t get the slightest presentation about these characters. By the end of it, they just blend all together and I can tell you that I don’t remember even one name from those 19 guys! I don’t even remember the cat’s name for god sakes!

The main reason for this is the way they present the characters which is… They don’t! A new character appears from nowhere, from a band that had not yet appeared in this Anime and the way they decided to include that character in is just by making the character that you already know (in this case you don’t, but well…) calling by his name and saying which band it is. But, in a way that show that they know each other and therefore there’s no need to tell much more about the new guy. Guess what, one minute later I didn’t remember neither one, neither the other…. Maybe they are right! I’m Dory from Finding Nemo.

But ok, there are many Animes that make this kind of introduction. The problem is, in Discord Chord it does not get better! You don’t even have 5 minutes focused in one character! Not even when the arc is about them!

Do the characters grow, make good (or bad) developments? I don’t know, I don’t know them! Maybe they do, but for me they are all just one guy blurred in many different faces!

Animation

Should I call it animation, though? For an Anime which has “Dynamic” in the name I never seen such a stopped animation. In fact, most of the times it appears more a slideshow of nice pictures than animation at all! You know, they move the camera up, down, side, everything to try to show movement, but the fact is… Most of the time there is none!

Then we have the concerts where the characters’ movement while playing and singing which are… not great. The first time I watched one of the concerts I thought this seems more a game than an Anime and BAM! Dynamic Chord is originally a Visual Novel!
So, the good thing I had to say about Dynamic Chord is not even done for the Anime itself.

This good thing is, all characters are really well designed and all the 19 guys are cute in their own distinct way! It’s cool to see so many different characters designed in different ways and I wasn’t even able to see something similar between them. Their faces are built with different traces and not even their eyes really go for a standard! Basically, with this Anime you can get one guy for each hair color in the Hot Anime Guys Challenge (Shameless plug right here!) – of course, there are no girls allowed in Dynamic Chord, everyone is a guy!

Other thing that I really like are the backgrounds! For an Anime which animation is close to zero, it’s strange to see so good backgrounds drawn… But, yet again, probably it was just copy paste from the game!

Audio

Ok, so this is an Idol Anime, so there should be a lot of music, right? Moreover, they clearly state that 4 bands have a different sound! One of them being more rock, other more pop, other more ballad, other more… Well, you get the point! So, I thought “Ooooh! Maybe it’s here where the dynamic in the titles comes to play… Not!

First of all, there is not really a lot of music to begin with. However, in the end of Dynamic Chord you will have a “live” where every group plays and well… They all seem to have the same type of sound to be honest… If it’s good or not, well I try not to discuss music taste so I won’t go towards that path, but they are not for my own taste.

Fun fact! When they are playing their songs by the end you will get even more recaps of what happened to that specific group. Like watching for the first time wasn’t painful enough they decided to make you go through all the process again in the last 10 minutes of the Anime.

Regarding the voice acting, most of the time is bad. But, I’m not even going to say that the voice actors are bad because their work was hard! How the hell do you do a good voice acting when you need to wait around 2-3 seconds for the character do the face animation so you can talk? I’m not even kidding! I counted! So, yeah, nothing seems even average. However, I really think the problem is with the animations. I say this because in the conversations where there is no animation whatsoever the conversations’ audio is not that bad. This, if you don’t take into account that anything is happening in the conversation itself! But, well, it’s better than in the beginning of the anime where there is no talking whatsoever, only static images and some background music.

– Conclusion –

It’s bad… Like, really bad! But, well, that’s the objective of this Horrible Quest, right? 😀 Even if you are really into idols and want to watch good-looking guys, just get the game and play it! I’m pretty sure you will have some kind of character development there at least (It’s an Otomme Visual Novel). But, well… Don’t enter the game without seeing a review of it! Even if it’s better than the Anime, nothing says that it won’t be also terrible xD

In another note, I just had this thought of making a new series from this which would be “What Would I Do differently” and basically pick these Animes and try to change them so they become, at least, bearable… Is that something that you would be interested in reading? Tell me in the comments! 😀

See You Soon! 🙂

(No Merch this week because I only give you merch that I would buy and Dynamic Chord merch is just not happening in my book :P)