Fukumenkei Noise, or Anonymous Noise as it is also referred to, follows a high school girl searching for two boys she used to be close with. Nino, as she is called, lost touch with them and is trying to reconnect with them through song.
[youtube https://youtu.be/771Wow–Tps]
Studio: Brain’s Base
Genres: Music, Romance, Shoujo
Rating: PG-13
Based on eponymous manga by Ryoco Fukuyama.
Started airing: 11th of April 2017
Number of episodes: 12
Episode duration: 23 minutes
In the past Nino has had to say goodbye to two guys she got along with, her first love Momo and Yuzu, a boy who composes music. Nino promised to keep doing what she loves to do, which is singing until they hear her voice again. Now that all three of them are in high school; will the two boys reunite with Nino? And what challenges will they face?
Rating: 65/100
Fukumenkei Noise has some great characters and story to it, which alone are enough reason for me to want to start reading the ongoing manga that it’s based on. Nino and the two guys she’s dying to meet again, Momo and Yuzu, are more complex then they appear. Their past and current relationships are shown to the viewer and although there is some drama it isn’t a depressing series to watch.
Despite my enthusiasm for the detailed and evolving characters and story the score doesn’t quite reflect this positivity. That is because of one very crucial part to every anime: the animation. Or really the consistency of the quality of animation, characters and surroundings and the style of animation, or rather lack thereof. This series switches from 2D to 3D animation, and the 3D animation looks quite cheap. There is a lot of repeated animation, a lot of dramatic animations that don’t quite make sense and quite a bit of bad quality. This forced me to bring the rating down to what it is now, the storyline alone and the well-drawn and animated bits made for this grade.
If you are looking to see whether the story will intrigue you enough to look past this anime’s flaws, or if there really are any flaws in your opinion: Make sure to watch it from start to finish.
I am honestly hoping for another, better animated, season. And if you’d like to know why I feel this way about this series: Keep reading!
The story
As expected the storyline of Fukumenkei Noise focusses a lot on music, there is a lot of music in this anime and the characters’ main interests usually revolve around either singing, playing instruments or writing music themselves. The other genres are clearly visible throughout the anime as well, as there is a lot of romance or at least romantic conflicts in this series.
Personally I found the unexpected twist, romantic conflicts and general developments in this story addictive as I genuinely didn’t see all of it coming. And what I did see coming was still portrayed in a nice way.
The characters
As you watch this series you will be given quite a bit of background on Nino, Yuzu and Momo. Their past, but also their present, relationships are explained and shown to you. This gives you a lot of insight into their feelings then and now, but also into what made them who they are.
You watch them as children, but also as high schoolers who have clearly changed over the course of the last few years. They’ve grown up but some have also grown scared of opening up or reconnecting with old friends.
Nino tries to put her emotions into music, but so do most of the other characters. While their personalities and coping skills differ all of them were very relatable to me, as you get some insight into what made them who they are, and you get to know them more and more over the course of the twelve episodes in this season.
The animation
Unfortunately, the sore spot of this anime. As I mentioned the animation and consistency in style leave a lot to be desired. From the over dramatic singing, which is clearly not properly lip synced, when Nino sings ‘lalalala’, to the bad 3D animations of characters on stage. The close ups of characters show quite a bit of quality, but the full body shots often look bad and like the animators either ran out of talent or time. This is a shame, in my opinion.
The style itself, when properly executed, is not ugly. In fact it looks pretty cute and the characters each have their unique looks to them. Seeing as the studio behind Fukumenkei Noise, Brain’s Base, is responsible for quite a few anime of higher quality such as Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, it is weird to me that this anime came out looking so neglected.
The intro & outro
Usually I would only speak of the intro and outro here, but seeing as this is a music anime there are way more songs involved than just the intro and outro songs. The songs portray the moods of the anime well and fit with the messages the characters try to bring across with their music.
This anime has three intro’s and two outro’s in one season, which makes it way more interesting to watch till the end of an episode. The songs are sung by Saori Hayami and Ayahi Takagaki. The outro’s and intro’s fit with the current themes and bands in the anime, of course.
