So I finally got around to watching Ya Boy Kongming / Paripi Koumei, and while it started out quite strong, it sure managed to leave me with some mixed feelings about it by the end. Mostly since for a show about music, the music in it was just... lackluster. A full review: 
To get it out of the way: both the OP & ED were great! But they weren't originally composed for the show. And this turned out to be a double-edged sword, since the show's own music production just couldn't hold up to the "borrowed power" of its OP and ED songs, in multiple ways.
Like in the Eiko training episode, they kept singing the same song over and over and over again, and when characters comment on "how much better Eiko sounds now", I'm pretty sure the audio was still the exact same one that they kept repeating throughout the episode...
And the biggest letdown of the show? Eiko's "ultimate song", the "highlight" of the finale... which turned out to be the most milquetoast pop song in the entire series. Literally the supposed "overproduced" rival song we heard in the penultimate episode was more interesting.
On a more positive note, the rapping was a delight throughout the entire show, and extra special shoutout to the translator(s) who no doubt put a lot of effort to making it all work in English - you did a wonderful job! There was so much of it, and you nailed it!
On the whole though, I can't help but think back to Bocchi the Rock for comparison, where the music producers on the show truly understood the assignment and came out with a original soundtrack so much better and stronger than what we got in Kongming.
Like in Bocchi, we got not 1, 2, but THREE highlight performance songs, and they were all truly highlights. And we got to hear an entire fumbled song performance, in stark contrast to Eiko's static training journey. Music-wise, it succeeded in all the things Kongming failed at.
Moving on from music, character-wise Kongming was def the star of the show and the concept of applying ancient war stratagems to artist promotion was excellent, so the fact that it got less focus in the second half with the rival drama also contributed to the mixed feelings.
Kabe was the second highlight, both in having a decent amount of solid backstory as well as fun interactions with Kongming. The club owner was also a fun one for his Three Kingdoms nerdery and how much energy that produced whenever he was sharing screentime with Kongming.
The weakest link unfortunately ended up being Eiko herself. She got the least amount of backstory of the major characters and her personality was basically just "I wanna do music!" Even her interactions with Kongming were pretty one-note. Made some good funny faces though.
So that was Ya Boy Kongming. Would I still recommend it? Yeah, it is a funny series and I had a good enough time with it. But it sure starts out stronger than it ends because the latter half spends more time with the weaker elements of the show, which is a shame. ★★★★☆
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