English Dub Season Review: Listeners Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Listeners begins when a normal boy named Echo discovers a mysterious girl he calls Mu who has lost her memory. There are monsters called Earless around, and they can only be fought off by Players — of which Mu happens to be one.

Together, the two of them embark on a journey to discover Mu’s identity, find a legendary Player named Jimi Stonefree, and maybe just save the world while they’re at it. Their travels take them across the world to a number of places including a boarding school overrun by drugs, a fabled land of Love run by a Prince knockoff, and a city called Londinium where the poor are dying and neglected.

In the end, Mu is overtaken by those who want to use her to do harm, but Echo comes through for her in the best way he can — by showing her that everyone is worthy of love.

Our Take:

When the first previews came out for Listeners, I was optimistic. It looked like a super neat show, with high-quality character designs and gorgeous art. When you add music into the mix, the potential ceiling grew even higher. We’ve seen a lot of great shows use music to enhance the stories, such as Carole and Tuesday and Hibike Euphonium. Unfortunately, Listeners probably isn’t going to go down in history alongside those classics. Maybe it shot for the same goals, but it gets lost along the way.

The main problem that Listeners has is that it’s trying to hard to be too many things, and as a result, none of the things it is are that great. Along with themes of music and connection, there are heavier things running underneath the show including topics of acceptance, creativity, passion, and finding your place in the world. There’s just a lot going on, and it’s too much for 12 episodes. Perhaps it was originally intended to have more episodes or encompass two seasons, but judged as a single season, it’s overloaded and bloated.

There are several long running questions and mysteries throughout the show, but by the end none of them are really addressed substantially. Mu and her connection to Jimi perhaps the most puzzling. Is she his little sister? His reincarnation? A form of the Earless all along? I’m still not entirely sure after watching all twelve episodes, and that’s not a good thing. It’s okay to leave some stones unturned by the end, but even when Listeners does try to answer questions, it does so in the blandest, least specific way possible.

The Earless, for instance, are described as monsters who have been terrorizing the world for years. But in the finale, a few sentences about peace, love, and harmony from Echo are enough to make everyone realize that they are one and the same thing, despite their outside differences. Like, these are shadowy ghost creatures than can grow to huge sizes, but sure, as long as they like music too, I guess everything will be a-okay now.

There are also more major answers that just don’t make sense at all, like how Nir’s friends Ritchie and Lyde show up without any fanfare at her high school in the final episode, despite dying like halfway through the season. (They had a funeral and everything!) It just cheapens the show and feels like a cop out. Viewers shouldn’t need to read a manga or listen to interviews with the creative team to fill in gaps the actual show left unfilled.

Having said all that, there are good reasons to take a chance on Listeners. It does have great character designs and art for most of the show, and the overall themes are nice enough, if too broad. If you really enjoy Prince or Jimmi Hendrix, Listeners might find a particular home in your heart.

At its own heart, Listeners is a love story. But not about a girl and a boy, though — at least not necessarily. Rather, Listeners is a love letter to music, self-expression, and even life itself. It’s a show that shot for the stars, and hey, even if it didn’t manage to land the ending, the journey was kind of fun, like an album you listen to once and never think about again.