While manga and drama CDs give characters depth, anime makes them shallow.
Summary:
- Characters from mixed media franchises may behave differently in different mediums.
- Hypnosis Mic is a story about a matriarchal post-war society with rap battles.
- It gained a lot of depth and drama in manga and drama CDs, but anime made the characters one-note.
Multimedia franchises, or mixed media projects, are very interesting because on one hand they use the same characters, but on the other the treatment of these characters can differ greatly from one medium to another. That was the case with Pokemon, Paradox Live, although in a mild way, and now Hypnosis Mic.
A serious premise for a goofy show
There's a second season of anime currently airing, called HYPNOSISMIC -Division Rap Battle- Rhyme Anima PLUS (Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle - Rhyme Anima +), and the fans are seething at the jumbled characterization of some of the protagonists. Hypnosis Mic follows a post-war world where power is held in the hands of women, the traditional weapons are banned, the men are taxed extra, and all the feuds are dealt with in rap battles. It's just that these rap battles are held with the usage of hypnosis microphones — devices that not only amplify sound but are also capable of creating physically palpable manifestation of the mic's owner's powers.
It all started with drama CDs that were describing the lore and making the listeners familiar with the characters. At first there were four divisions, or teams, with three people in each. Then two more were added, and the government was also represented by a trio of powerful female leaders and a yandere.
The story started a bit goofy, because the premise is as hilarious as it seems. But over time, with the introduction of manga adaptation, the story became deeper: it began to involve government conspiracies, a lot of dramatic turns of events and added more layers to the pasts of some characters that furthered their development and solidified their motivations.
The anime was considered a failure by both fans and newcomers
In 2020, the first season of Rhyme Anima was released, and instead of truthfully adapting the events of the drama CDs or the manga it strayed away from them. It roughly followed the canvas but decided to be a simple idol show filled with clichés and not doing much to establish the lore that these characters live in, creating a very jumbled and broken narrative. In three years, the drama CDs and manga have come a long way, and the release of the second season of anime left a lot of people dissatisfied, because the tone of the adaptation, the characterization, and the events depicted in the series share no similarities to the stories in other mediums aside from the character design. The dialog is bland, the characters became more one-note than they were, and the premise of the show that has three episodes released already doesn't seem intriguing.
The anime adaptation of Hypnosis Mic was very hyped within the fandom, but the result has been lackluster, and the second season doesn't seem to change that.