Wave, Listen to Me! – 12 (Fin) – Don’t Stop the Signal

The final episode of Wave begins with a high school-aged Mizuho conferring with Kureno about her future. Specifically, she only dreams of becoming an assistant director for a radio station, as she’s more “behind the scenes” in nature. Kureno warns her that most stations won’t give someone with such small (if realistic) goals the time of day.

From there we go back to the present, and to another radio station entirely, where—bombshell—Makie turns out to be “Joker Skonsky”, making her first in-studio appearance. It’s something she keeps to herself, even when Nakamura finds her celebrating by herself with a couple drinks. And why not? After having her life controlled by her bro for so long, she absolutely deserves to go out there and do things by herself and for herself.

Nakamura doesn’t pry, he just tells her he’ll be opening his own restaurant soon, and if she ever needs a paying job, she’ll have one there. It’s a very sweet exchange that never feels the need to get too romantic or dramatic. What it feels like is two good friends on the same wavelength.

Later that night, Minare’s latest Wave broadcast begins with her reading listener submissions from the website and Twitter, responding to them, and eventually picking a winner. It’s actually a pretty standard bit for a show, but since it’s the first time her normally abnormal show is doing it, it has potential to be fresh.

Minare only makes it two minutes in until a 6.8 earthquake rocks the entire island of Hokkaido, knocking out power everywhere. Naturally the station has backup power, so Matou directs Minare to change gears and offer emergency information. At first I thought the shaking was dramatic license, but then suddenly it dawned on me that “oh shit it’s an earthquake!”

In other words, I had the exact same reaction as the first time I experienced an earthquake for real. It’s so strange and disorienting on a primal level, I can’t imagine having to not only keep a radio broadcast going but staying on message and not messing up.

Indeed, you can tell Minare is a bit off initially. Even though she’s pretty dang good at improvisation, she literally never saw herself as a news-reader, which is essentially what she becomes until people start sending messages about their current state.

Matou shows her a note to stop acting like an amateur, and she snaps out of it, returning to her “normal” energetic radio voice as she reads and reacts to the messages.

There’s a sense of community and solidarity continuing the show helps to cultivate even in times when the power’s out and no one knows when it will be back. People need to be comforted, and Minare’s in a unique position to comfort them simply by keeping things as breezy and mundane as possible. It surely means a lot to those who reached out to be personally reassured on the radio!

Meanwhile, the first thing Makie thinks of when the lights go out is “how can we help others?” The answer is heading to Voyager and cooking up some hot food for those who will need it. She and Nakamura get approval from the boss (who was out with Makie’s brother and wants the Gagarin curry out of his freezer anyway) and get to work. Nakamura and Makie really do make a great team.

Before she knows it, Minare’s typically 20-minute program is extended to 90 minutes, finally ending at 5:00AM when Madoka arrives to relieve her and provide relief with her celebrity voice. She even puts on a classic song about looking up at the stars, because what else are you gonna do when the lights are out in the city?

Minare heads to the nap room feeling great about her future in radio, but when Makie and Nakahara flag her down to give her a ride to Voyager to help out, she realizes she can (and should) keep room for a day and night job to make ends meet.

So ends Wave, an anime that marched to the beat of its own drum with its unique and assertive voice and thoroughly fascinating heroine. However accurate it is to real-world radio industry, it certainly felt (and sounded) more than sufficiently convincing for someone like me who doesn’t know a lot about it going in.

It was a strong and surprisingly cozy ending, demonstrating that whatever content you bring to the broadcast table, what’s most important is keeping the signal going, speaking clearly, and connecting with your listeners, making them feel heard and making sure they know you know they’re listening. Whether it’s a Terry Gross interview or the Shipping Forecast, there’s really nothing quite like radio.

Wave, Listen to Me! – 11 – Cough Up the Karma

Minare’s latest weird late-night occult/philosophy radio show continues as Mitsuo climbs out of the ground with his broken neck bent 90 degrees to the side. He invites Minare and “Matt” deep below the Sea of Trees where there’s a reincarnation of Asama-no-Okami (the deity personifying Mt. Fuji), who in turn will offer to take their karma and decided where they’ll be reincarnated, and as whom.

I have to admit, it’s all a bit trippy and bizarre, but aside from a few snickers (the deity decides to send all three to Sweden for their next lives because of it’s “established welfare”), it wasn’t really the funniest bit? More than a comedy, it’s meant to take hold of listeners as they determine which of the three people they’re most like: Matt, who murdered dozens for his work; Mitsuo, who wants to come back as someone who’s more aware of when he’s hurting others…or Minare, who doesn’t want to go to Sweden at all.

At the end of the show, Kureko again leaves a big empty space in the script for Minare to ad-lib, which is what she does best. She provides a litany of things she did in real life to real people (most of whom are listening; and Mitsuo is wearing a neck brace after her suplex), but having all that swept under the rug and being shipped to a new life Sweden isn’t for her. She’s a “wandering Japanese”, with no interest in any other country, and simply wants to return to the Sea of Trees. The deity obliges.

At the post-show meeting, Minare learns the voice of the deity was Chisato and the voice of Mitsuo was Koumoto, while Kureko thinks he got Mitsuo’s character down accurately. When Minare accuses Kureko of hating her for having such huge holes in the script, Matou admits he had Kureko leave lots of opportunities for ad-libbing on purpose, in order to assess and exploit Minare’s inherent adaptability. And adaptability, more than any other quality, is what makes a great radio personality.

Matou informs Minare that her next show will be from an idea she creates, or otherwise acquires from, say, listeners via email or social media. He also encourages her to listen to her favorite personalities on radio to get a feel for the increased freedom the medium provides over TV. That night, Mizuho is worried about Mizuho and her cheerful brave front in the midst of Kureko quitting radio, considering she wanted Kureko on her radio “dream team” once she’s promoted.

That night, Mizuho seems to lean in for a kiss, in what is surely one of the sexiest pieces of animation Wave has turned out—only for her to be rousing Minare to listen to a comic midnight broadcast. Mizuho also tells Minare that Matou is looking for her to create something “wild, living in the moment, and anarchistic”.

Whatever Minare comes up with, she only has one more episode to pull it off. After her momentous victory over Mitsuo, the last two weeks have taken a step back, and overall the show feels like it’s stalled. Still, better to peak in week 9 than not at all!

Wave, Listen to Me! – 10 – The Galactic Campaign

This week, which bears little resemblance to the last, starts with Mizuho asking a departing Kureko if he’s free for a meal sometime. It remains to be seen if Mizuho has feelings for the guy or simply likes and respects him as a friend and mentor, but though Kureko is too busy to commit to anything, Mizuho still wishes him well. All the while, Koumoto, who unsuccessfully courted Mizuho, watches from the shadows…which is kinda creepy!

Whatever Mizuho’s preference in terms of the age of a potential partner, she’s sad to hear that Minare has decided to move out sooner rather than later. Minare has learned from her recent experience that people tend to deteriorate as they come to rely on the kindness of others. She’s even observed that she’s someone predisposed to devoting herself to her partner, feeling as sense of pleasure from spoiling them.

While Minare exhibits signs of growth and self-reflection as part of a larger effort to avoid repeating past mistakes, she also exhibits a blind spot in her relationship to Nakahara. This blind spot is exposed by none other than Makie, who is not only frustrated by what she considers Minare’s continued “toying” with Nakahara, but Nakahara’s lack of interest in her.

There’s every indication Makie wants to move beyond indebted house guest (or refugee, or general object of pity), but whether she’s aware of it or not, Minare is an obstacle to that. For the record, Minare considers Nakahara incompatable simply because he’s so darned self-sufficient: not only is he not one to ask to borrow large sums of money, but he cooks, cleans, and even sows freakin’ leather!

That aside, Matou used Minare’s recordings of her date with Mitsuo (that’s right, she was wired for the whole thing!) in a way Minare did not expect. Rather than broadcast the date either in full or in edited form, he gave the samples of Mitsuo’s voice to a couple of legendary veteran sound engineers who go by the pseudonyms “Katokon and Kakoen”.

Masters of both foley and waveforms, they were able to create a synthetic voice that sounds just like Mitsuo, but can say whatever they require him to say in a broadcast. These two are a couple of colorful characters—you could also call them sound nerds—and Mizuho is delighted by their very old-school foley tricks like beads on fans.

The next episode of Wave, Listen to Me documents the “burial” of Mitsuo by fictional versions of Matou and Minare on a rainy day (to hide the burying sounds). The two foley masters work their magic while Mizuho and Koumoto provide support in this live radio drama.

Once Minare and Matou finish burying Mitsuo, they share a long and passionate kiss…only for Mitsuo’s hand to burst out of the ground and his formerly-lifeless corpse to move and speak anew with the synth voice the master techs devised. Matou’s ultimate goal is to also bury “Minare Koda”, and for a new legendary voice to rise from those ashes. All I can say is so far so good!

Wave, Listen to Me! – 09 – The Ecstasy and Agony of the Man-Child

When Minare gets a friendly text from Mitsuo after her bear attack broadcast, her first instinct is to borrow Mizuho’s laptop so she can Google “how to buy a gun” (much tougher in Japan than the U.S.) with which to shoot him, as she promised herself she’d do.

Mizuho calls for calm, and Minare downgrades her intentions to murdering him socially, via doxxing. When Matou and Mizuho both pooh-pooh that idea, Minare agrees to a date at Mt. Moiwa…with no apparent plan in place. Her only prep involves an “aggressive” outfit and dark red lips, knowing he prefers light pink. It’s the little things!

No doubt Minare’s first question going into the date is What gives with the sudden contact after months of nothing? In that regard, it’s fitting that her outfit includes a sleuth’s fedora. It should be noted that Minare has possibly never looked hotter than she does here, and that’s definitely intentional. It’s provocative, yet also self-conscious.

When they first meet up, she can’t help but blush while thinking how he hasn’t changed a bit. It hasn’t been that long, Minare! He then proceeds to throw her off-balance, first by paying for his own cable car ticket (¥1700 per person—not cheap!), then offering up her favorite torimon, and then handing her a brown envelope containing ¥250,000, half of what he owes her. What gives, indeed!

While pondering the possibility of becoming ensnared in an eternal limbo of debt repayment, Minare’s first word in edgewise is an accusation of infidelity by Mitsuo (she heard from a friend he was walking with another girl). That’s when Mitsuo owns up to the fact he indeed befriended a girl, but totally glosses over the particulars of that relationship and goes straight to the story of her trying to stab him.

Mitsuo is hungry and wants curry, and lets it be known by a kind of specific man-child whine that has an almost Pavlovian effect on Minare. However shlumpy this guy looks and how possibly insincere he’s acting, it’s obvious Minare had legitimate feelings for this guy, and there are parts of him that are still thoroughly disarming.

Here’s someone who planned to kill him when he became an abstract bogeyman, but now, in the reality of their reunion and his M.C.T. (Man Child Terror) field, her homicidal designs all but evaporate. Still, once she hears the details of Mitsuo’s brush with death, it doesn’t take long for Detective Koda Minare to forge a theory about the other woman’s motive: she must have also lent Mitsuo money.

There’s a constant push-and-pull going on throughout Minare and Mitsuo’s date that is both all-too-realistic and extremely fascinating. The pain of his past betrayal and her suspicion over his present motives is always on one end of the scale, rising and falling from prominence as Mitsuo works his practiced Suga charm.

Minare is happy and excited to just be on another date again, after much drinking alone, self-commiserating, and the breaking-and-entering of Oki’s place. She even considers the possibility that even a creature like Mitsuo could change for the better after nearly being offed by the latest victim of his adorkably breezy treachery.

For all his faults, Mitsuo is Minare’s type, whether he’s being “cute”, commenting on her lip color, suggesting they do one activity after the other, demonstrating growth by paying his fair share, or telling her the words “there’s no one better than you.” It must feel so good for her hear words like that from someone with whom she’s shared so much history, both good and bad.

Minare is sufficiently hungry for domestic affection that she slips easily back into the comfort and familiarity of Mitsuo’s place, even reflexively making coffee when they’ve already had a ton of it throughout the day. She also takes comfort in his very specific preferences, like what drink goes best with what food.

But when Mitsuo toasts their reunion and “reconciliation”, Minare’s dormant rage re-surfaces, vowing to keep her heart shut tight until the full amount is paid back. He assures her he borrowed it to be a co-signer for a friend’s debt and always meant to pay her back.

Having presented himself as a Good Guy who helps people in need, Mitsuo’s head finds Minare’s thighs, which he admits he’s missed dearly. Minare, in turn, fishes out the ear pick she left there which is so beloved she gave it a name—Onikirimaru!—and proceeds to clean Mitsuo’s ears “for her own sake and pleasure!”

Since it’s been a while since they’ve done this, she’s elated to find a “gold rush” in there. How adorably disgusting! Not to mention intimate. And despite having planned to kill him only yesterday, she still falls for his upside-down face as he once again points out his preference in lip color, and Minare removes the deep red with a tissue.

It is here, where Minare realizes how Mitsuo’s Man-Child nature seemingly encourages her to take the lead while in reality making her the subservient one. It’s a shtick he probably does without even thinking. But the spell is immediately broken when she spots a strange bit of trash when tossing her tissue.

After a sip of coffee, Mitsuo references the “coffee kiss” they’d often do—another beautiful detail that speaks to the deeply specific intimacy of two former lovers. Minare leans down for a kiss, but stops mere inches from his lips. Suddenly, she’s Detective Koda again, she has Mitsuo in “the box”, and he’s not getting out until she’s heard the unvarnished truth from his un-coffee-kissed lips.

He admits he lost the ¥500,000 at the tracks, but came into the ¥250,000 after helping out the relative of a rich oil executive (again implying his charitable good-guy nature). Minare admonishes him for his get-rich-quick nature, urging him to live more frugally by, for instance, learning to cook.

It’s a lure the Man-Child can’t resist; he assures her everything will be fine; why should he cook when there’s so many good, cheap restaurants? Quite literally taking matters into her own thighs, Detective Koda locks Mitsuo’s face in a leg-lock and shows him the suspicious piece of trash: a free magazine full of recipes with a single dried bell pepper seed stuck to the cover.

It’s evidence not just that someone interested in cooking was in the room, but made Mitsuo’s favorite stir-fry recipe, indicating an intimacy with the other woman he had been concealing from her. No need for a judge or jury; in Minare’s eyes, Mr. Suga is guilty. His sentence is what must be some kind of professional wrestling throw that drives his head hard into the floor.

No longer under the influence of Mitsuo’s smile after seeing him lie once more while wearing it, Detective Koda puts her fedora back on and tells him she’ll forgive the remaining half of the money she lent him. It’s preferable to letting him to betray yet another woman to pay him back.

While she harbored abstract (and ultimately impossible) murderous designs prior to their reunion, this Minare is wiser and more level-headed in her condemnation and handing down of punishment. Mitsuo may be glad to be off the hook for the ¥250,000, but if he was being honest when he said there’s “no one better” than Minare, her refusing to take him back is harsh punishment indeed.

This episode was a thrilling, layered, ultimately bittersweet tour-de-force depicting the games played, battles fought, and lies told behind easy smiles and flirtations of two people. You really get the feeling Minare would prefer being in a happy loving relationship with Mitsuo, but she just can’t trust the bastard, and there’s no indication he’ll ever stop fucking up and lying about it.

As Minare enjoys a decisive moral and tactical victory, the episode doesn’t overlook the bitter tragedy of that. If she’s the hard-boiled private dick in an old noir crime novel, Mitsuo is the “homme fatale”. In the end, her loyalty to the truth and her solidarity with women prevailed.

If nothing else, it should make for a hell of a broadcast…

Wave, Listen to Me! – 08 – The Culture is Maturing

In a heartwarming cold open, Minare rants about how, like mankind throughout history with nature, she’s “lived her life selfishly without thinking about the suffering of others”, with Mizuho being her latest victim (along with a Coelocanth Nakahara and a Dodo Takarada).

But Mizuho speaks up, refusing to be the victim. She’s been told all her life what a nice, helpful, proper girl she is, but it’s not all she is, and it can blind those who think that’s all she is to her actual weaknesses. To Mizuho, Minare isn’t a burden, but a very necessary inspiration.

The two women complement each other almost perfectly, leading me to wish Minare was less jokey about her romantic designs toward her. While Mizuho’s disinterest in one man shouldn’t be seen as a disinterest in all men, so far I don’t see a life partner better for Minare than Mizuho, and vice versa!

And now, back to the studio. We’re back on the night the show opened with: the bear attack segment. Earlier that night, with no ideas of her own Minare is saddled with a “phone conversation with a family member” segment, something which she’s not particularly motivated to do.

The resulting call, however, is hilarious, with her jokester of a dad coming up with increasingly ridiculous origins of her unusual name “Minare”—first because it jumped out at him on the cover of a dirty mag, and second because he combined the first syllable of the names of the three women he was fooling around with before she was born.

When Takarada unexpectedly shows up at Voyager with Makie’s psycho controlling brother, things look primed to turn very unfunny indeed. But when the brother starts ordering Makie around, she manages to stand up to him, and Nakahara even backs her up…though a bit too forcefully, leading to him getting lifted up by his throat and nearly strangled!

We later learn that the brother has a condition in which he enters a kind of ultraviolent fugue state when he senses his sister is in danger. This certainly makes him more of a sympathetic figure but Nakahara is clearly right that he really should seek professional help for it. It’s a miracle he’s never killed anyone during these “fits”!

The bro’s mind is set at ease (or at least his anxiety de-escalated) after a chat on the phone with Nakahara’s sister Maiko about how much help Makie’s been with the baby. Makie returns home to the Nakaharas and I earnestly hope she’s out of danger and the brother gets help soon, but who knows.

Makie may be more naive than the average person due to her extended isolation, but she still knows what she wants, and it doesn’t involve becoming a housewife or jumping between safe houses. It’s even hinted at that her plans for her life may be more ambitious than her hosts. The fact she’s never been assertive enough with her brother doesn’t preclude the fact that she could be if she tried, and when it counts.

Later that night, Minare performs the Bear Attack show, reading at least in part from a hastily but well-written script from Kureko that made it easier for her to do what she does best in the broadcast booth. After the broadcast she makes sure to thank Kureko, who surprises her by saying it’s a “parting gift”; he’s moving on to other things.

Matou hints that those other things involve something called the “Ranzo Arakawa Prize” before we slip into a sepia-toned flashback of a much younger Matou (note the eyebrows) meeting his comedy idol, Sissel Komei. Only Sissels speaks, in what I’m assuming is the Ainu language.

Matou sits all but entranced as she talks about how the Ainu were great tellers of dirty jokes (owing to all the time they had sheltering from the cold)  and the Monty Python style of comedy that’s more about embarrassing yourself than putting others down. She then tells him the name she’d use if she had a child: Mina re, which means “to make laugh”.

Could it be that Matou’s new talent has the same name as his idol’s potential child? If that’s the case, I can understand how he’d feel like finding her in that bar was akin to an act of providence and destiny. Not that I believe Minare and Sissel are biologically related; only in spirit.

We’re also reminded that Minare ended her bear show by promising to murder Mitsuo…who texts her later that night asking if she wants to meet up. All I know about Mitsuo is that Minare claims he stole her money, and that he found another woman after Minare relatively quickly. Suffice it to say I’m eager to learn more about him!

On the whole, this episode not quite as compelling as other recent outings, due in large part to bouncing awkwardly between the A-(Minare) and B-(Makie) plots, not to mention the fast-forwarding of the bear attack, which while practically necessary undermined the episode’s natural pace. Still, it was great to see Makie stand up to her crazy bro, and finally “meeting” Sissel was uniquely captivating. So an “8” it is!

Wave, Listen to Me! – 07 – The Evil is Defeated

 

“I have no doubt other women have thought of doing what I did. They just didn’t do it.”—Abe Saba, who cut off her lover’s genitals while making love. She also worked at a restaurant, FWIW…

Minare’s first radio job in the field is turning out to be a weird one, but she and Mizuho are able to calm Shinji down enough to talk about his lost dead Slavic girlfriend, Azohara Ritsuko. When he proposed they “cross the line” from friendship to romance, they agreed upon a secluded volcanic hot spring in Zao as the dramatic venue for their inaugural doing of the nasty.

However, after disrobing but before getting down, Shinji passed out from the volcanic gasses. He woke up in a cabin, rescued by good Samaritans…but they only found him. For all he knows, Ritsuko could be dead or still wandering around Zao as they speak.

With his tale of woe out of the way, Minare climbs into the ceiling to investigate the stinky dark liquid, and finds an absolute nightmare: six fly-covered garbage bags filled with what she assumes to be the remains of a petite woman, soaked by a leaking shower line.

Minare calls the police, and Shinji is arrested on suspicion of killing Ritsuko and storing her remains in the ceilng. But at no point does Shinji admit this, or even get overexcited: he merely calmly asserts his innocence, all while Minare is certain “evil was destroyed” in that apartment.

In the face of such a traumatic experience (Mizuho got less of the meat juice on her but still needed three showers), Minare crafts an even more fanciful story nevertheless rooted in reality rather than the supernatural.

She imagines that Ritsuka was a Russian spy, and Shinji proposed the remote site to speak to her without being surveilled. Ritsuka was trained to kill if her cover was  blown, but whether due to her love for Shinji or the effects of the gas, she couldn’t do it.

However, neither the murder and dismemberment story nor the spy thriller make it to her first official broadcast of Wave, Listen to Me! The afternoon before the show she stops by the police for questioning, and the real, unvarnished mundane truth is laid bare: the stinking dark liquids, and the bags from which they seeped, were originally put there…by Minare herself.

They were the remains not of a murdered Ritsuka but of 50 kilos of on-the-bone mutton delivered to her apartment by her parents when she first moved there. She stowed them in the under-floor compartment as a temporary measure but then completely forgot about them. They sank through the floor into the space above Shinji’s apartment, mixed with the leaking water, and the rest is stinky history.

This puts Minare in a bind, as she’s facing charges to be brought by Shinji, whom it’s indisputable was someone to whom she did harm, even if she didn’t mean to, and then went further by having him arrested. But Shinji magnanimously provides Minare with an out: she’ll break down the truth of what happened and apologize to all involved. Shinji is in the booth when she does this, just to make sure.

Not only that, Minare makes the theme of the show for, about, and by “people who have caused countless problems for others” in hopes of finding ways for those people (including her) who don’t want their lives going to waste simply because they’re predisposed to such troublemaking.

It’s not at all what she expected to be doing, but rotting mutton comes at you fast, and it’s actually a great subject for a radio show airing so late at night. An audience will no doubt project themselves in the stranger-than-fiction scenarios Minare puts herself, and appreciate how she’s is open, vulnerable, and ready to be redeemed.

She won’t claim to have all the answers—that’s for that sumo guy—but she’ll have plenty of entertaining questions!

Wave, Listen to Me! – 06 – A Warm Fluffy Towel Drenched in BLOOD

We’ve now reached the halfway point of WLM!, and while this week’s installment lacks the adrenaline high that accompanies a live broadcast and the moments leading up to it, it further fleshes out its eclectic, sometimes eccentric, but always authentic-feeling cast of characters, while setting up stranger things to befall Minare on her path to becoming a radio star.

We learn more about Minare through those she came from, starting with her dad when she accidentally calls him. He’s outside a pachinko parlor on his fifth or sixth beer (Sapporo, natch) so he’s…got some issues, but you can tell he loves his daughter and just wants her to be happy— just as sure as Minare can smell the alcohol through the phone!

Meanwhile, Casa Nakahara is hardly the sordid lovenest Minare might imagine in her more jealous moments. Yes, Makie is living there, but so is Nakahara’s sister Meiko (Minare, Makie, Meiko…dude knows some M’s!), who walked out on her husband with their baby for going to a hostess club. Far from being treated as a burden, Nakahara is appreciative of Meiko for being to get Makie to talk more in the wee hours of the night as the two women lie in adjacent futons.

Makie confides in her that after her parents died in the mountains, her brother grew obsessively protective and locked her up like Kaspar Hauser…which explains her manner. Meiko tells her she shouldn’t feel ashamed for using the car accident as an opportunity to reclaim her agency freedom, which she has every right to have.

After a thoroughly confusing little sequence involving Minare’s dad talking about a dream of “decades ago” and a “brutal accident”, we suddenly cut to Minare talking to her mom this time. Unlike her dad, her mom is a littler sterner, insisting she seek out “a life people can respect”, not just one in which she’s happy, and not to listen to a “loser” like her dad. And her little “It makes me sad…oh, very sad” line about Minare telling her dad about her radio job first—*Chef’s Kiss*

Still, her dad still managed to buy her daughter a slick Sky Sensor 5900 radio as a cute “good-luck-in-your-radio-pursuits” gift. Makie’s family may have bitten the tragedy bug, but it’s refreshing that our protagonist Minare not only has both parents still living, but on talking terms with her (if not one another). Like Makie, her parents feel like longingly-rendered real human beings.

Her dad was also responsible for delivering four whole Aramaki salmon, which won’t fit in Minare’s little fridge. After Nakahara drops off his ideas for Minare on possible radio story ideas (hilariously, she reads them and immediately apologizes for even asking him!) she decides to hang the fish from the doorknobs of her neighbors, which Nakahara mentions could be construed as some kind of criminal mischief.

By the way, another absolute doozy of an exchange: Minare describes her dad to Nakahara, and all Nakahara can see is Minare. Drunk half the time? Check. Either in dirty joke-telling mode, venting mode, or preaching mode? Check. Goes off on random tangents? Check. Makes no sense at all? Check. Can’t have a proper conversation? Check!

Granted, these are exaggerations of who Minare really is, but sometimes the rougher edges stick out more…especially from the perspective of someone like Nakahara, pursuing her with little to show for it. Another main takeaway from the fish-hanging scene is that Oki Shinji, who accepts one of the fish without hesitation, looks very out of sorts, and Nakahara notices the stench of rotting protein emanating from Shinji’s apartment.

The strangeness continues at the studio, where Mizuho shows Minare a creepily-scrawled fax about a dead girlfriend who hasn’t forgiven the writer…who happens to be Oki Shinji! Minare wants to shift gears to something more fluffy and less occult, but Matou is eager for her to learn the full ropes, which means she and Mizuho are going on a field recording adventure!

After reiterating her commitment to always protect her (something Mizuho doesn’t remember her saying before), Minare drives them to their destination: her former apartment building (note that Mizuho calls Minare’s car a “mini” but it’s not a MINI Cooper, but rather a Daihatsu Mina Giro Minilite. IMO the Giro’s cooler than any Cooper!) They also dress for the occasion, like an onmyouji and a shrine maiden.

Shinji welcomes them in without so much as a flinch from Minare’s stellar long-range joke about the same woman showing up drunk to his door also showing up to appease a spirit since “rituals, sake, and women” have been inexorably intertwined throughout history. Still, Shinji has good reason to be the way he is, because something very very strange and gross is happening inside his apartment.

Reddish-black liquid starts to ooze from the ceilings and drops on what couldn’t have been a cheap costume rental. Then again, it’s likely the station will cover the dry cleaning, just as Matou promises to bail out Minare should things take a turn. After all striking out into the untamed wilds diagonally below her old place means she’s no longer an amateur, but a professional, like Mizuho…risking their very lives for entertainment.

Wave, Listen to Me! – 05 – The Irregular at MRS High

Minare arrives at the station with a birthday cake for Mizuho only to find that Matou has already presented her with a cake. Mizuho smooths things over by telling Minare she’s never been happier to celebrate it twice on the same day, and the preparations for Minare’s first broadcast as a pro begin.

Matou has devised a “broadcast gaffe” that will break into and out of the normal late night music a la War of the Worlds. He makes sure Minare understands that the ceiling for success is as high as the stakes are low. There isn’t a sponsor, which means they have a little more leeway to go wild.

Minare takes the barebones, improv-filled script and runs with it. It involves the moment she just killed Mitsuo by stabbing, making good on the threat from her last broadcast. By amazing coincidence, a different woman has bound and gagged Mitsuo and is about to stab him when Minare’s program suddenly interrupts the music.

Had the mundane music continued, she may well have murdered Mitsuo for real. But are these events actually happening? I would say yes, since it isn’t Minare in the role of the murderer, and the woman hasn’t carried out the murder yet. They’re out of sync in a way that’s very advantageous for Mitsuo, who lives to break another heart.

The buildup and countdown to the broadcast gave me goosebumps, in the same manner as the tension and anticipation that immediately preceded a performance in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, or Hibike! Euphonium. Those are all five-star anime, and I don’t mention them or compare the emotions felt during Minare’s monologue lightly.

As with her previous shows, Sugiyama Riho absolutely knocks it out of the park, taking scarce narrative crumbs and creating a chocolate mocha mille-fille. Minare flubs yet a single word yet comes off as unhinged, vulnerable, empty, grateful, and above all raw and human. She may not know it, but her passion and talent saved Mitsuo’s life.

More importantly, while Minare walked in an emotional mess due to witnessing Nakahara inviting another woman home, she walks out of the station at the crack of dawn feeling like a billion yen. Matou is genuinely impressed, and Mizuho is proud of her.

That night, due to the talk of Martians and UFOs (an homage to War) she dreams of having to save Mitsuo via a nutriet-absorbing facehugger that turns out to be one of Mizuho’s turtles sitting on her face…and shitting in her mouth!

That morning, Minare and Mizuho discover a lively online discussion, which is exactly what Matou both hoped and worked towards, discretely  posting the audio online as if he were an independent listener. As he suspected, Minare’s the kind of voice that creates buzz, and he’s eager to have her create more.

As for Minare, it’s back to working at the curry restaurant a mere five hours after she left the recording booth. And yet a group of men have already come to the restaurant as one of them recognized her voice. Minare loves the attention, and in the break room she declares to Nakahara that from now on she’ll be pursuing her radio career full-on.

She knows that what she felt in that booth and afterwards isn’t something she can get from that white waiter’s tunic—or from a man for that matter!

Wave, Listen to Me! – 04 – The Pleasure of Despair

The first day of Minare’s life gets off to a rough start as in the space of what feels like just a second or two, she oversleeps three hours. It’s a very relatable experience, and why I find myself so invested in Minare as a person. Like any other person, she’s often forced to react to things—good or bad—that come at her quite suddenly.

Far faster than the turtles she agrees to feed. One of those things is the breakfast Mizuho prepared for Minare. It’s so considerate and tasty she jokes that she’d marry Mizuho in a heartbeat and make love to her every night…until she finds the way-too-detailed feeding instructions! Suddenly things aren’t as simple as the seemed.

She sets out on a job-hunting excursion in slim hopes of gaining both an employer and sponsor. When Katou informs her of the massive cost of sponsorship, she basically gives up. But by having Nakahara join her, she finds life suddenly tossing her back into her own job, as Takahara and her replacement were injured in a car accident.

While it’s a dream come true for Nakahara—he always dreamed of running a restaurant as husband and wife—Minare is more ambiguous, and with good reason. Leaving Voyager felt like a step forward; returning there erases that step. And she’s still not sure about Nakahara as a partner; she asks him to wait until she’s 30…which is four years. Nakahara might be the kind of guy to wait that long, but does she really want a man who’ll do that?

Then the fourth woman in the pencil-sketched ED is introduced: Tachibana Makie (Noto Mamiko), the sister of the man who caused the accident involving Takarada. She comes offering her services for free, filling a much-needed labor gap.

She starts out washing dishes, then waits tables, works in the kitchen, and develops a new menu item. She even updates the blog, and gets rave online reviews for her gentle, quiet manner. And yet she seems to make Minare uneasy and suspicious—why would someone go this far on behalf of their brother?

There may be no need to be dubious of Makie’s motives, but because Minare feels something’s off, so do I. In the meantime, Minare comes home from the restaurant to share a meal and booze with Mizuho (whom we see refusing Koumoto’s advances right after regaling him of how she met Mr. Kureko. I also love how Mizuho is voiced by Iwami Manaka—Honda Tooru herself!

While Mizuho is glad Minare is working and making money again (far from a guarantee in these trying times!) she doesn’t want Minare to forget about radio. Whether Mizuho is on orders from someone at the station to encourage Minare or not, she seems to genuinely believe in her talents and doesn’t want her to feel overwhelmed or that Matou is overestimating her.

Life keeps coming at Minare fast on the night of Mizuho’s birthday. Minare gives a curt goodbye to Nakahara and Makie after closing, but doubles back to grab the cake from the kitchen fridge. That’s when he finds Nakahara confronting Makie about staying in the staff room…then offering to let her stay at his place, just as he did with Minare.

Clearly something is going on with Makie that makes her hesitant to go back to her home (if she even has a home). And when you put a man who loves hard-luck cases and a woman in an apparently uncertain emotional place, shenanigans are more than possible. Minare has taken Nakahara for granted as a will-they-won’t-they certainty, but Makie threatens that status quo.

Fortunately (or not), life isn’t done coming at her that night, as she gets a call from Matou urging her to report to the studio immediately to rehearse for a 20-minute slot that will air at 3:30 AM. It’s Go Time. No doubt her experiences with Nakahara Makie, and all the stuff that keeps coming at her will inspire her material. And no doubt it will be eminently watchable.

Wave, Listen to Me! – 03 – Graveyard Slot

Takarada fires Minare right after the festival, and no amount of ranting or begging can change his mind. After going out for commiseratory drinks with Takarada, he casually suggests she move in with him. After a quick simulation of their time together, she concludes he’d end up stabbed to death (though not by her!).

After tricking him into saying he loves sleeping naked (she doesn’t), she decilnes, assinging him the nickname Zenra (the fancy way to write “naked”). That said, she’ll him in mind should she fall into truly dire straits. Takarada feels used…but he wants to be used if it’s by someone like her.

Minare returns home…or at least she thinks it’s home, but there are immediately two troubling signs: her shoes aren’t lined up neatly in the genkan, and there are other pairs of shoes. The creepy man who ended last week’s episode and cold opened this one lifts her off the ground, and she goes into Self-Defense Mode and calls the cops.

Turns out she’s the one committing a crime, as she’s not in her apartment, but her neighbor Mr. Oki’s. He’s been the one returning her blackout drunk self to her own bed and lining up her shoes. If he simply kicks her out of his place, she shows back up, or otherwise bangs on his door and sobs.

The revelation of not being an end-of-the-night neat and organized drunk hits Minare like a ton of bricks; indeed Oki likens her dramatic epiphany to that of Neo when he’s unplugged from the Matrix.

The sheer difference in scale between Minare’s plight and Neo’s, as well as the care with which the reference is visually presented, makes for a ludicrous moment that had be howling with laughter. There are other overt pop culture references, but this was one I got without the need for research.

With only about $2500 in savings and $2600 in incoming expenses, Minare finds herself at a crossroads. She can either go back to school, or see where this radio host thing takes her. It’s not a tough choice…especially when Matou agrees to let her crash at the radio station’s storage facility. She arrives with a full rucksack strapped to her back, as if she’s about to climb a mountain…and in a way, she is!

As one would expect of a more mature form of media, the path to success is a slow and gradual climb, if the climb happens at all. Katou doesn’t want Minare to be under any illusions of instant celebrity, but maintains that she Has What It Takes, just like his idol Sissel Komei, who be believes Minare resembles in both appearance and style.

As it turns out, Minare isn’t allowed to crash in storage; for one thing, there’s no heat there. For another, assistant director Nanba Mizuho is happy to let Minare crash on her floor for a while, and is actually excited to drink cheap Chablis hang out with her one-on-one.

At first Minare pretends to be drunk as a kind of social defense mechanism, but Mizuho sees through the ploy, and admits she was never much of a social butterfly. That said, even though she’s never even had a boyfriend, she felt deeply connected to Minare’s fiery words when she came in for her first live session.

Sometimes before I go to sleep I listen to the Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4. Especially on a cold or stormy night, there’s something comforting and relaxing about hearing a prim and proper voice flawlessly deliver the conditions around the British Isles, as well as thinking about all those ships at sea, out there, somewhere, in the middle of the night.

I’m far from the only person who thinks this way about it. The BBC once tried to get rid of the Shipping Forecast, and its loyal (and predominantly land-based) audience practically rioted until the Beeb caved and brought it back. Like the big fax machines at the station, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

As Mizuho switches on the radio at 3:30 to hear the beginning of Sound High Tide before nodding off, Minare stays awake, and starts to speak as if she were on the air, with the sounds merely a backdrop. If all goes well, her yet-to-be-produced new show will replace Sound High Tide in that 3:30 slot.

Will her very different, non-ambient, provocative style catch fire in that dark depths of the early morn, and sway the small but likely passionate legion of High Tide listeners? Only time will tell…

Wave, Listen to Me! – 02 – Elephant = Car

After being duped into not one but two separate radio broadcasts, Minare considers legal counsel, until Matou produces her business card with a drunkenly-scrawled note declaring that she wouldn’t complain no matter how many people he shared their conversation with. Even if it’s not a binding document, with the hole Minare has dug with her boss Takarada, she may not be able to turn down a new job at the radio.

Takarada can’t really afford to drop an experienced waiter like Minare on the eve of the summer festival, so he claims her life for that duration. Her co-worker Nakahara, who has a thing for her, would rather she stay put and fulfill the things she promised to do for him…probably while drunk, because she doesn’t remember any of those things. In any case, while updating the restaurant blog, Minare learns that much of the customers are so attuned to her voice that they immediately recognized it on the radio.

Radio host Chisato Madoka casually asks Matou if he’s looking to replace her, but that’s not his intent with Minare at all. Mostly, he wants to bring up a voice talent from the ground up, and there’s never been an amateur who is so clear and presice with her words while delivering a tone that’s harsh and overbearing yet somehow also not unpleasant—pretty much the opposite of Chisato’s. So he and other members of the crew visit Minare at her workplace to offer her a more permanent job.

Some time passes, but eventually Minare is picked up in a car by the fit mixer Koumoto, whom Minare immediately considers asking out before reconsidering due to her uncertain economic future. Matou has her sit in to deliver a 5-minute promotion for the festival. Minare warns him she might not paint it in the best light since she’s not a fan of Urasando, but does a fine job anyway, and like before, doesn’t mess up once.

You can hear Minare on the radio while she tends the food stall, and a discussion with Nakahara emerges about the nature of the food they’re selling at the stall under the name “Gagarin.” Turns out it’s the predecessor restaurant to “Voyager” run by Takarada’s culinary master, and they’re selling what’s left of Gagarin’s food at festivals to phase it out.

Honestly I wasn’t so sure what the point of all that talk was about the two restaurants, except as an opportunity for Minare to introduce a more dramatic scenario than the mundane truth…only for it to be the truth? As for Minare’s weird neighbor who remembers a date and starts seeing blood? What’s up with that?! Could that be fodder for a future Minare broadcast? Finally, her ex Mitsuo heard her, and seemed amused. That can’t be good!

Wave, Listen to Me! – 01 (First Impressions) – She’s Got Something to Say

Wave, Listen to Me! is a lot of fun. That is to say, it’s fun, and it’s also…a lot. The opening minutes is a surreal scenario in which late-night radio talk show host Koda Minare finds herself in the woods, face-to-face with a big brown bear. She tackles fluffy write-in comments from listeners that are well beneath the urgency of her present life-threatening situation.

But it’s all an illusion; we’re seeing what a radio listener would imagine, and we see it vividly because Minare is such a good audio performer. Her producers and assistants are along for the ride as she starts riffing off-script, drawing from her own extensive emotional baggage. It’s not just what you say on the radio waves that matters, but how you say it.

You can see why a radio programming director like Katou Kanetsugu would switch on his phone’s voice recorder upon encountering Koda Minare in the midst of the fifth—and worst—day of Getting Over a Tragedy; in this case her boyfriend breaking up with her. Minare is just her own unvarnished self, but Katou can sense the innate talent within her, and can’t let it go to waste.

Minare goes home, blacks out (though not before perfectly arranging her shoes in the genkan) wakes up, puts herself back together, and has a good therapeutic cry watching Ghost Ship (though her friend recommended Ghost). Then, while working at the soup curry restaurant Voyager, she suddenly hears herself drunkenly ranting on the radio during a “lonely hearts” show called September Blue Moon.

Minare drops what she’s doing (risking firing by her uptight boss), hops into her adorable little Daihatsu Mira Gino, races to the station, marches into the studio, and demands that they shut off her ranting immediately. Matou tells her three seconds of radio silence is a gaffe, and eight gets him canned, so if she wants it shut off, she’ll have to provide new material.

Surely knocked off balance, both by her recent relationship woes ( and associated bender) and the fact there’s always going to be something dreamlike, surreal, and disorienting about hearing yourself on the radio, to say nothing of being thrust into the recording booth, having a mic shoved in your face, and being asked to start talking when you get the signal.

When that signal comes in the form of a tap on the back, Minare comes out of the gate blazing, backtracking on her drunken stereotyping and hoping for the opportunity to judge a future partner by his unique individuality and not toss in a box based on his region of origin.

She closes by vowing to kill her ex Mitsuo even if she has to chase him to the end of the earth. Matou’s gamble pays off: Minare has “it”. She was born for this. It’s cathartic and thrilling to behold…and reminded me of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel of all things!

What’s so satisfying about Matou finding her and giving her the opportunity to talk on the radio is how much it fits her personality. While she has her own private life (and inner monologue that only we hear), whenever she’s around others she’s going to talk, talk and talk some more, especially when she’s on the sauce. It’s high time she made money doing this, right?!

This all works thanks to crackling, realistic dialogue and a brash, bravura performance by Sugiyama Riho, whose robust, confrontational, delinquent-ish voice reminds me of prime Sawashiro Miyuki and Shiraishi Ryouko. It will be interesting to see what other scenarios like the bear attack the producers come up with, as well as to see if and how Minare balances restaurant work, broadcasting, and finding a new partner…or just finding her ex and killing him!