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Nanabun no Nijuuni, also known as 22/7, is an anime to promote the virtual idol group of the same name.
The story is split up into two different things. One part of the story is the tale of modern day 22/7, along with their producers and a wall that prints out commands that are literally impossible to obey, and the other part of the story is the backstories of the characters.
The backstories of the characters themselves are hit or miss. Some are bad (the red haired one, whose episode was pretty bad overall, and manga girl who never got her story tied in with anything), some are pretty enjoyable to watch (Toda Jun, Akane's). I found it pretty obvious that the point of the stories was to make you feel for the characters themselves, since if you get emotionally connected to the group you're more likely to look up stuff about them, as was the case with me and Miu, the main character.
The main story is good for the first three episodes, with a focus on Miu trying to get used to being the center of the group and being an idol in general. Then, after that, the backstories start popping up and the main story basically takes a backseat for a really long time, up until episode 10 where 22/7 gets disbanded by the wall.
Did I mention the wall? It's a really dumb plot. I thought it was clever at first, since the wall never explicitly guaranteed the 'success' of 22/7, just that it would exist, and that it would be doing things on specific dates. The wall's orders are things that are going to happen, even if whoever reads it doesn't want it to, like said disbanding. But the problem with the wall is that it's never explained. It's never explored beyond the first episode. The fucking thing is just a Deus Ex Machina to keep the plot going. There's no explanation of what the wall is in episode 12 either, even after Miu breaks the (stone) wall open with a (luxury) chair, all we know is that the producers have apparently been stalking the group since they were kids, like fucking weirdos. Hell, the thing gives out another order even after they break it open and say they're not listening to its orders anymore.
It's sort of like they wrote the whole plot, but forgot to have anything to tie it all together with, so they just came up with Wallgod. The backstories, while nice, end up hurting the main plot since focus is usually torn near completely from it as the backstory is usually more interesting.
I'd have honestly been incredibly disappointed if I was actually expecting the wall to go anywhere, but I think I was just more happy that it wasn't Wizard of Oz bullshit.
The animation is great, but also frustrating. I always feel like there's a little more that could be done despite how well the animation is done usually, like maybe a few extra frames to carry the weight a little further with certain movements. A lot of people confused it for Kyoani though, so I guess that's a good sign for it.
There's also CGI animation in it. The most glaring of it is used for dancing scenes of the group, with some mixed in traditional. The dancing was fairly well done, and I believe they're doing it because of motion capture, so I don't have any real problems with it. Other CGI was done for budget cuts, with the typical sort of approach anime uses to this. Certain scenes used budget CGI in a fairly clever way by knocking it off to the sides where most people wouldn't have focused.
Probably the episode with the worst animation is red haired girl's. I think that one actually made me a little sick watching it, in spite of the fact it's supposed to be pleasing to look at since it's the swimsuit episode. A lot of things with the animation in it just didn't sit well with me.
I'm not the most musically inclined person, so I wouldn't really know how to rate the music. None of it sounded particularly off to me, but aside from the OP none of it stood out to me either. The ED changes every episode so maybe I just wasn't used to hearing the same songs, but if this is an anime about a musical idol group it's probably important to have at least one of those songs stand out to a viewer like me.
And then the voiceacting.
The voiceacting in this series is incredibly controversial among Japasnese audiences, something I earnestly didn't realize until I was done watching the series. I did see preliminary responses to the voice acting from watching the trailers on Nico Nico, but I didn't realize just how bad the reception was until today.
To put it short, the seiyuu for the characters in the show are the same line-up as the live idols. The thing about this is, these idols don't really have seiyuu experience. At all.
This hit really hard with the main character Miu. I didn't see much criticism of her voice acting in the English-sphere (I didn't see much of anything really), but in the Japanese sphere her voice was absolutely panned. Many people called her 下手 (heta), poorly skilled and 棒読み (bouyomi), monotone. It was apparently so bad to their ears that some people dropped the show entirely over it, or never picked it up. I even saw the aggregate reviews on Yahoo were 1 star, with pretty much every single negative review stating that the reason they hated the show was because of her voice. There' also a 2nd monotone character some mention but I'm not 100% sure who this is, maybe they mean Akane?
Which is odd, because I loved her voice. Miu's voice, character, and the animation of the series in general were the three reasons I liked the show enough to watch it all the way through. When I went to look up stuff about 22/7, it was primarily to look up stuff about Miu, and see more of her. Her character is probably the best done overall in the entire group, and I got really into her story at the start, and the only thing keeping me from completely laughing at the end was her resolve. It sounds like there's honest, genuine shyness in her voice which fits the character to a T in my opinion. I honestly think these reviews have completely overstated the 'badness' of it.
and don't say "can't understand good/bad voice acting if it's in a different language" i watched it with the fucking subs off
Overall, the best part of 22/7 were the characters themselves. There's nothing really complex about the plot other than how exactly it came to be as it is, which I'm scratching my head over because who could think that "random wallgod that we never explain" makes a good plot? The animation's only real problem is that it felt like there were problems with the budget in a lot of areas, as if things needed to be 'cut back' or else they'd run out of money. And the music didn't really stand out to me, although I didn't find it annoying either.
I don't really like number ratings so I'll just say that I'd recommend watching if you think the characters are cute and would like to see their backstories and interactions and that I'd not recommend it if you were thinking there was going to be something really clever happening with the wall plot.
I probably just wrote this whole thing because I didn't like Japs shittalking Miu. My opinion is practically polar opposite to theirs. Also 22/7 is supposed to be the fraction for Pi apparently, which I also didn't know until after I watched the show. Maybe I'll see some of the 計算中 episodes if I ever remember to do that, although that doesn't have anything to do with the anime and is more like an idol group "interview" show or something from what I can see. Sorry if anything I stated seems unclear, since I should've gone to sleep at least 2 hours ago.
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