English Dub Season Review: SHOW BY ROCK!! Mashumairesh!! Season One
Overview (Spoilers Below):
Show By Rock!! Mashumairesh!! relates the story of Howan, a foxgirl from the countryside who has a simple dream: to become a big time star in the big city. She finally gets accepted to audition with a high-level producer but absolutely blows her chance in epic failure fashion.
Luckily, there are plenty of other people who haven’t made it big yet in the city, and Howan quickly meets up with them and they ask her to join their group as the gang tries to form a band that’ll become big enough to make them famous stars the world round.
Our Take:
COVID threw some serious wrinkles into the anime dubbing production line, and Funimation is still working on recovering some of the mojo it had going into 2020. Show By Rock!! Mashumairesh!! is a series that originally aired back in the Winter 2020 anime season, which means it’s over a year old at this point. Funimation is releasing the entire season dubbed now, however. Better late than never? Well, it depends on what you look for in a series.
The show opens with a foxgirl named Howan singing about vegetables in a very high-pitched nasally voice. I probably wouldn’t recommend anyone continue past this part if that doesn’t sound entertaining to you, because there’s not much else going on in this show. Howan is an utterly bland and clueless protagonist who experiences the struggles the come with leaving her tiny hometown in order to head for the big city to try and debut as an artist at lightning speed.
She quickly meets up with a musical group in need of a new member. Luckily, all the current members are as bland as Howan so she fits right in. There’s the energetic one, the cool one, and of course, the quiet yet imposing one who talks in a monotone voice.
In the end, SHOW BY ROCK!! Mashumairesh!! simply does not do enough to differentiate itself or make a case for why it needs to exist. For people who like this kind of thing, there are previous seasons of SHOW BY ROCK that do it much better, and for people who don’t, this is not the series that’s going to change their minds. The characters are dull, they don’t change or receive any meaningful development throughout the course of the show. The animation is basic and uninspired. Even the music is subpar, and this is a show that’s presumably about music. SHOW BY ROCK!! Mashumairesh!! does not rock. It doesn’t really even try, which means I can confidently say nobody really needs to try this show out, either.
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