Anime: Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad

when i found out about this series i was like.... 'woohooo !!!' i had found something i was exactly looking for and for the first time ever!! ....Beck is a series dedicated to rock music though they couldn't put up much effort to make a blast off it.... on the other hand it leans mostly towards the plot which isquite a decent drama... a regular kid who gets slowly pushed towards liking music and so he picks up a guitar to find his place on a music band.... The strongest part about BECK is the characters and their interactions to the surroundings, it's been handled beautifully... not too much comedy nor too serious.... just warm, decent, goofy and cheesey people :D About the animation.... well theirs nothing much of an eyesore in this part, not at all fluid :( just try overlooking it and i bet you'll enjoy... lastly wanna say... don't expect too much out of the series, neither do you have to take it as for a bullshit xD... just hope for something moderate and you'll get the best out of it ;)

Beck is a slice-of-life/romance/motivational show about everyday teenagers aiming to become *random shounen lead pops up* THE BEST MUSIC BAND IN THE WORLD! Now before I start I have to clarify how slice-of-life is for me the dullest genre imaginable. What saves face is when they try to mix it with something else besides that. Romance is the easy way most of them head for. We can’t have a series about everyday people who can’t have love problems, right? And since this is an anime, we just can’t have a show without an indecisive lead or the world will come to an end. Ok, we might as well throw in some youths who want to accomplish something great and awesome that will inspire the audience to cheer for them. All that sound just fine and we can have something good if all go well.

… And guess what, they didn’t. It is a fine romcom of a show if this is all you ask for, which is at best a completely average anime for me. Teen flicks are not exactly the brightest or most well made shows, you see. Reasons?

The production values are messy. There is a huge quality gap in several episodes and the result just makes you think they were running out of money half the time. It is also very confusing to see them looking cool in one scene and like stupid caricatures in another. Something which does not count as artistic choice but plain laziness.

The songs are not as awesome as they are supposed to be. For a series about a band that claims to aim for the top and doing pretty well in terms of popularity, the songs don’t exactly excuse it. They don’t sound as amazing as they are supposed to. In fact, most sound pretty average so you can only think they are popular only because people with no taste cheer for them.

Their English pronunciation plain sucks! They aim to be the best in America when they can’t even talk properly. Maho in particular is supposed to know it perfectly and she obviously can’t speak English. I know that the songs and the language are “supposed” to sound great and that the viewer is “supposed” to suspend his disbelief long enough to accept a series where the band is a lot better than it sounds. But come on, it’s not like we couldn’t get a far better soundtrack or proper English-speaking voice actors. This again feels lazy.

The romance part is completely useless. Seriously, it is there but it never seems to matter. EVER! This is the story of some teens who want to be the best in the world and not to score with some girl (who conveniently is in the same band). In fact, they can get all the romance they want from groupies as soon as they succeed. Instead of that we get this juvenile romantic triangle of sorts which doesn’t matter. It’s also counter-productive for many, since idols have to be virgins and pure for their fans to like them.

The main lead is too indecisive. Seriously, Yukio is shown to be antisocial and reluctant most of the time and yet we are supposed to think he wants to show his worth and cheer for him as he struggles for acceptance. Sorry but I can’t suspend my disbelief that much. People who want to take over the world (at least the musical one) are supposed to be cocky sons of bitches and not these frail chickens.

The story is very simple and is even left incomplete. Well, there is no need to further analyze that; simple stories are easy to get over and incomplete ones are extremely annoying. Yes, you can still read the continuation in the manga but this is a review of the anime.

The anime is not very motivational. Seriously, it ain’t. If its goal is to make you cheer for some simple guys who aim for the top, then the whole thing is done lazily. Just compare it to the far greater response other music band anime had. Detroit Metal City, Suzumiya Haruhi, K-on, shows that inspired thousands to either start their own band or at least scream in joy every time they hear one of their songs. Beck didn’t have this effect because the songs weren’t that good and the protagonist was neither a death metal king of demons nor a cute loli. HE WAS A CHICKEN!

The anime is not realistic. In case you wonder “It’s anime, of course and it isn’t” I just have to mention this because most people who like it keep yapping about its realism. The above anime I mentioned are to them too unreal but Beck is down to earth for having average everyday people. That is so sweet; too bad they are drawn lazily half the time, their songs are not that great, their English is terrible, the romance is out of place, the lead is a chicken, the story is incomplete, and I don’t dance like an idiot every time I hear them perform. And for Pete’s sake, WHAT DOES A MOTIVATIONAL SHOW HAVE TO DO WITH REALISM? They aim to take over the music world; does that sound like something everyday normal people would do? Normal people just want a job, money, sex, and/or lots of time wasted on their hobbies. Jeez, get your facts straight already.

While this review will probably be ignored due to the over 10 others eager to share their thought, I feel inclined to post a review that isn't a
tounge-up-its-rectum homage to Beck. Also, please pay the larger percent of your attention to the actual review than the scores for a more "well-placed" bitch-slap to your fanboy face. Without further ado let's get this review going.

The anime kicks of with a school setting revolved around the boy, Tanaka Yukio, nicknamed "Koyoki" and his life as a middle school student. He soon bumps into Ryuusuke and his trusty dog, beck, unknown of the path he is soon to follow.
The story continue to introduce the viewer into more and more of Ryuusuke's world of music from the perspective of Koyoki, who finds himself more and more intrigued by this music scene.
Slowly koyoki, learns to play guitar, acquire new friends (and enemies) and gain attention with his "self-underrated" vocal ability that will be the beginning of Ryuusuke's newly formed band "Beck" (named after Ryuusuke's dog), and their journey towards fame.

Animation
The graphical quality is easily spotted as sub-par. While one might be able to look past the characters twitching here and there and some of the uncanny movement, it is crucial for the animation department to nail down the playing of the instruments accurately, when the anime revolves around music.
The movement is more often than not out of sync with the actual sound. This isn't helped when the scenes suddenly shift to cell-shaded 3d models to feature the playing of an instrument. The transition is about as smooth as the crater-filled surface of the moon.

Sound
A word to best describe the sound is "unstable". The anime has a huge focus on music, but is equally split with western culture and the English language, yet it is poorly delivered. Many of the voice actors struggles with notable accents when speaking English. Many lines sounds awkward in both grammar and pronunciation, and this problem carries over to the songs as well.
American voice actors are brought in later, and their performance is average, if not below, at best.
I will NOT say anything about the songs themselves as music is subjective.
When conversing in the native Japanese, the voice actors is at least above average.

Story
Simple, really: A story of a boy overcoming his insecurities and a band's struggle for fame. Many episodes sway away from the main story and can be considered related, but forgettable.
Despite being about music, and the music scene, the story dwells heavily on Koyoki's angst and melodramatic behavior. This isn't a problem specific to Beck, but more a problem on the stereotype Koyoki is based on. I expected a "Band's story" with emphasis on music and art, but it merely scratches that, only to wash hands afterwards. It might as well be non-existent, since the anime becomes so character-driven that one might wonder why they didn't just make an anime without the implemented music scene, to focus on the teenage anxiety that plagues the music and instrument themes.
But again, the problem is less the story itself, and more the characters that live it out.

Character
Good characters have equal amount of weaknesses AND strengths. This balances the way challenges are resolved and the story progresses, however Koyoki is so badly stereotyped into this "more wet between his legs than an old man with a bladder problem" characterization that makes my eye twitch everytime he talks (not literally of course). Koyoki's angst always shines through and always in such melodramatic fashion that makes the anime "Boys be" look like a f*cking Steven Seagal movie. To have Koyoki stand up for himself now and then would really help the viewers to realize his evolution, and help him stand up on more than JUST vocals as his strength.
*Spoiler alert*
ANYONE would've been pissed when Kitazawa Rikia broke his guitar, much less allowed Tanabe to play on it to start with. I mean he could've at least told to truth to Saitou, when he asked if the guitar had been fixed, It wasn't as if it was his fault to begin with, so why lie?. No excuse, can justify this.
*end of spoiler*
Koyoki aside, the other characters are again, average. Maho was one of the more interesting, as the impression we get from her as a person is a function of the actions she performs. I'm thinking the lines of "Durden" from "Fight Club"(1996) if you've seen that movie. Non-of the other characters stands as bad as Koyoki, and that might be, because he gets so much of the attention, and also why I scored characters so low.

Value
There wasn't really much for me to actually get from "Beck". A character driven themed on anxiety, you can get by watching "Boys be", because what I expected, much less WANTED, was a story with a main focus on music, but used the character-drive to introduce the viewer to more of this world, not the other way around like "Beck" does. I hope that explain why I scored Value as low as i did.

Enjoyment
I did not enjoy Beck as much as others, in fact, it was a great insult to me that will be explained in the "additional" discussing under this.
I got tired of it around episode 6 where i realized that the music theme that hovers over this anime is nothing, but a cloud under the thunderstorm that is a teenage drama soap opera with all the love polygons, negative tensions and blurry ambitions.

Additional
When I sat down and watched this anime, I was (as I've already said) hoping for a clear music themed story, with emphasis on the band structure.
I wanted a story about the love for music and what it means to be in a band, but there's so many warning signes that send you right off. The way the band settles. Ryuusuke forms a new band. Fine, but why? We never really get a hint of how much he or HOW he loves music. A band is usually created for a higher purpose than "wanting to be famous". This has bad morales written all over it. You play and continue to play, because you like it, fame or no fame.
When the opening song starts, and you know you're gonna watch a music themed anime, the chorus "I was made to hit in America" would, and was for me, a big "f*ck you" to everything i found myself to be expecting.
Even when Taira (Beck's bassist) decides to join Ryuusuke, i said to myself "friendship, like-mind and "he's more about the music" was the things i expected him to join him in on. Instead, he answers: "Magic". To which I stop myself from watching temporarily. Not because of the love for music, but because he thinks Ryuusuke's band has got the "magic" he has been looking for? This reveals not only bad characterization, but overall bad writing tracked back the manga itself. I am ... disappointed. Maybe you wont, but if you are musically interested, this will be pain to watch, not hear, just to watch.

Story: A lot of people tell you this story is stereotypical. It is a coming of age story, yeah. This kid Yukio is the usual Japanese submissive, and he hasn't done anything with his life. He has to write an autobiography for school, and he doesn't have much to say past "I was born." Through a bunch of events, he hears rock for the first time. He meets a talented guitarist (Ryuusuke) from a popular band and ends up jamming with him, and eventually joining a band himself. He turns out to have songwriting talent, and he works his ass off on guitar. There's a couple of girls in his life, one that he's known since childhood and one that's Ryuusuke's brother.
The main thing that's cool about all this, is just the memories it brings back of discovering so much rock for the first time, and sharing that with people. Having all these cool music conversations with my friends. The guy that made this series really knew his rock. At the end of each episode a video plays that's basically just a clip show of all these rock portraits, with like Joey Ramone and the Residents and Kurt Cobain. Yukio used to listen to some pop idol, and he was a pussy. Then he heard rock and he became a rebel. And you get to see all these events unfolding, him attending different concerts, playing a song over the intercom for his school (which he compares to the scene from Shawshank Redemption), making friends with this kid that sticks up for him and gives him a Dying Breed bootleg, learning guitar from an old Olympic swimmer with a love for British rock... I don't know what else to say. There's a scene early in the series where Ryuusuke is saving Yukio and his friends from some thugs. The cops are coming, so he tells them to follow him into an alley, so they won't get caught. Later you see him pushing a gun into this big dude's head, just daring him as they cry for their lives. Then they find out it was a toy gun and they kick his ass and throw him in a dumpster. If all this doesn't sound cool to you, I guess you don't have a soul. But this anime is not stereotypical by a long shot. Can you name another anime that mentions Jimmy Page?

Character Development: Completely excellent and the main thing the show has going for it. This is a character-centric show. The dialogue has some real substance a lot of times. It's not really quotable or anything, but it isn't the same three phrases over and over, either. It's pretty funny sometimes, too. There's this guy Chiba, who ends up as the vocalist for BECK. The first time they show him is up to bat at a ball game, with this other vocalist on the pitcher's mound. The pitcher's aim sucks, and he hits Chiba. The catcher says something and Chiba punches him, starting a riot. The next time they show Chiba, he's meeting Ryuusuke, Yukio, and some others to watch a gig where that other vocalist ending up taking the stage and singing. Chiba showed up holding a bunch of drinks he stole for no reason other than kleptomania. He's probably my favorite character. There's also that Olympic swimmer guy, who really rocks at guitar and wants to get his bird to sing. Ryuusuke has a guitar with its own back story, riddled with bullet holes. To get into Grateful Sound, he meets with a guy named Leon or something, who picks him up in a helicopter. Leon's muscle points a gun at his head, and Ryuusuke says, "Just shoot me and get it over with." Early in the series, he's breaking up with a girl, because she makes him choose between her and the band. He also has a pet dog that the band's named after, some kind of weird mutant mut stitched together from six different dogs, which is also how he meets Yukio.

Sound: The music is great. One time BECK is playing in concert, and the riffs and vocals remind of Rage Against the Machine. Then they cut to the chorus, and it's more like Nirvana, which is kind of weird, and also they throw some melodic bass in there. Most of the stuff is along the lines of 90's alt rock and grunge. I'm impressed by the music they made for this series, though that "Blue Moon Sways" song gets old pretty fast. Don't really like the opening theme, either.
Now, the rest of the sound is a bit less good. If you're watching the Japanese version, especially. At first I thought they were trying to make Ryuusuke sound like John Frusciante looks, since they already based his look off of him. And Maho sounded Russian or German or something. I guess those are Japanese accents. I don't know. It's just really weird. They sound fine in Japanese, but I'm not a native speaker. The English dub is more consistent, but I find Yukio's voice a tad annoying at the beginning. He gets a bit cooler, and then it's okay. In the original audio, the American characters switch between English and Japanese a bit, and that's lost in the dub, but it's not that important. Watch 'em both.

Animation: Yeah, not great. It's not about the animation, though. It'd be great if they could animate a blistering guitar solo, but fat chance. It's passable most times. You get used to it.

Enjoyment/Value: You can probably tell I enjoyed this. If you like the kind of rock that BECK focuses on, you should probably like it. Just having real character development and dialogue sets it apart from the majority of anime. The animation takes it back a bit, and the voice acting can be a bit patchy in Japanese. But do you pay attention to that stuff, honestly? This just fills some kind of special spot when you watch it. It's inspiring. I'd rank it with some of the best stuff out there. When I first tried to watch it, I couldn't do it. It seemed too normal, and boring. That was years ago. I'm telling you, this is worth it. Give it a chance. It's one of the few that makes me really laugh sometimes, too, and that's kind of rare. This is quality stuff.

Good show, but couldn't they do an English course before starting?

A series about music is always hard, since you actually need to have good voice actors who in turn also need to sing well. And when it comes to be good music, it's still a matter of preference. And while the show itself is pretty interesting and the music is fairly decent, the songs are in my opinion nowhere near good.

The story on the other hand is done well and the show is interesting and doesn't become uninteresting along the way. But having read the manga before watching the show, there are a lot of disappointments despite the show not being anywhere really bad. It's a pretty nice show to watch, but there are also a lot of aspects where the show simply fails – technically, every time they used English. And when it's about singing in English ...

Animation: Starts off brilliant, only to see it degenerate every episode.

The series starts off with excellent animation, as shown in the OP-animation. Many CG backgrounds usually scream for a huge contrast with the drawn characters, but – just like displayed as the dog walks onto the road in the OP-animation, it simply works here. There is no contrast between the background and the characters and in the first few episodes it stays that way. Great animation and perfect integration between fore- and background.

Unfortunately, this doesn't last all the way. By the time we have passed the first 10 episodes, the animation has detoriated to what I feared: the characters do not integrate that well into the background anymore. This makes the characters look out of place in the fully-CG background. Fortunately this happens only every now and then and not all the time, so I thought I could live with it.

But if that was the only bad thing it would be okay. Unfortunately they kept doing it more often, to the point where the final episodes were pretty bad in terms of animation. Re-used scenes when they were on stage also happened more often, giving the end of the show a really bad taste of animation.

Sound: Good voiceactors, but none of them have heard of the language English.

English
The voice actors were good – as long as they didn't need to speak English. Too bad the show consists of parts where characters are supposed to be fluent in English, or where Americans appear in the show. Many of them are shockingly bad in their pronunciation, regardless of whether they were Japanese, Americans or Japanese fluent in English.

I've been in Japan myself and didn't have much trouble understanding them when talking to the few people who dared to speak English. But nearly all of those spoke better English than anyone in this anime. The only people who were doing a fairly decent job were Ryuusuke (3 out of 10 lines were flawless, the rest was pathetic) and Goldy. It wouldn't have hurt to hire a few native speakers in order to spell out the lines for a couple of characters. But it certainly wouldn't have hurt to let someone check the text before putting them into the show. Quality Control is also necessary, after all. Even fansubbers know that, so why doesn't the core business?

The songs

This also affected the songs, as it's really shocking if you hear major songs being butchered by lousy pronunciation, not to mention the cripple lyrics as Japanese people oftentimes don't have a clue about grammar or spelling. But besides that, considering the story's about some great band with a great singer, Koyuki doesn't really excel in that.

It's a major issue with music series, they have to live up to the greatness the manga tries to convince the reader. But where a manga lets the reader imagine how it sounds, the anime actually has to produce the sounds. And there is where many shows fail.
Koyuki has a decent voice, but despite him having a certain original voice, his singing isn't exactly much above average and that breaks the spell somewhat.

Story: Anyone seen KareKano?

The story plays well, despite them taking out several character-driven side stories. This becomes especially true when they suddenly start talking about an idol singer; in the manga Koyuki has been thinking about her for quite a while, but in the anime they never bothered with that detail – until there's a conversation about it and Koyuki turns out to be a fan.
The same thing goes for a few other details where you can find yourself wondering if you've missed something. Nevertheless, the story emits an atmosphere which causes the show to never become boring. The plot paces itself well, the characters fit in perfectly and except for the ending, the series never really does anything wrong storywise – except for the ending.

If anyone has ever seen KareKano, one understands what I mean. A photo album which skips through a whole arc, whereas the manga had spent several volumes showing what they had done there. It simply feels cheap.

Characters: Technically, no bad characters despite the numerous characters in the show.

I can't really say anything except that the characters are good characters. Round personalities, interesting characters and plenty of development despite not really focusing on them.

In the manga there are often subplots which involve one or several characters and focus on their own development, but despite the anime cutting those out, there isn't any real loss. This also because the anime only covers roughly 1/3 of the manga (of which the last episode covers ~3 volumes out of those ~10 volumes; the manga is 34 volumes) and most of those developments have yet to be used. So for the anime this suffices.

What's the most surprising is that despite the show involving so many characters, they all feel realistic. Even the side-characters have value in the plot. This is very much worth a mention here.

Value & Enjoyment: Good series to watch.

All in all, the show is a fairly good watch. If you can live with the bad English pronunciation, the lousy English dialogues at times and the mediocre singing, this series doesn't do a whole lot wrong.
The atmosphere is excellent, the story plays well and the series simply stays as interesting as it was in the beginning. Despite the flaws, the series is still interesting and the characters make up for many of its flaws, so I can imagine how many people will appreciate the show for what it tries to show.

Overview
In general, Beck is an overrated anime following the rags-to-riches rise to fame of an aimless, oft-bullied teenager named Koyuki as he discovers music, picks up a guitar and joins the band BECK.

Animation
The animation in general is below par. Poor art, jerky motion, and endless reuse of the same clips leads to tiresome viewing. One would expect a little effort directed towards making the guitar-playing (and other instrumentation) look realistic, but this is not the case.

Sound
Probably the saving grace of the series, the music is decent and pretty catchy. The english lyrics in some songs, poor as they are, are a little annoying, but I suppose understandable and possibly realistic.

The seiyu are average. Ryusuke (one of the band members) and his sister who have supposedly spent over 10 years in the US have extremely poor american accents and a disgraceful command of english grammar that tend to get on your nerves.

Story
While the story itself holds water (albeit in leaky fashion), the direction is singularly below par and ruins any flow there could have been. Threads are almost never tied off. Odd love triangles pop up here and there, characters vanish here and return there, abrupt spats and reconciliations that would seem out of place in soap operas and so on.

Character
The only characters with any build-up are Koyuki and Ryusuke and they are botched by poor direction. The supporting characters such as Koyuki's pervert friend, his crush, Maho, his mentor, Saito etc. are absolutely ruined.

Value
You can watch this anime once if you are a fan of music or watch some of the performances from Beck's "Greatful Sound" concert a couple of times. No more.

Enjoyment
There is a certain degree of enjoyment that can be derived if you are a fan of music, guitars and bands in general. If you are not, give this a miss.

If you are looking for anime related to music, I highly recommend that you look into watching Nodame Cantabile and perhaps even Kaikan Phrase before you dig into this.