Sore ga Seiyuu! – 13 (Fin)

Still basking in the awe and enormity of the biggest event of her young career (which is even more enormous in her dreams), Futaba is feeling a bit listless and aimless, which isn’t a good place to be what with her assessment at Aozora looming. Despite her secondary circle of friends (who are either still trying to become seiyus or moving on to other things) believing she’s “super-elite”, Futaba can’t hide her relatively quiet and undistinguished past two years. Sure she’s worked with plenty of legends, but if she doesn’t want to get fired (and go through with her promise to give up on a seiyu’s life if she is), she needs to think more about her future; find a focus; anything to tell the assessment panel.

She sees a glimmer of that future when she imitates a passing boy, which is doubly significant because A.) she’s so good at voicing boys she gave Ichigo and Rin a start, and B.) the boy was talking about how not to get lost: Remember something big that doesn’t move. As a city-dweller who’s bad with directions, I myself lived by this advice…at least until I got a smartphone with Google Maps (and devised a mnemonic device for memorizing street names).

But I digress: When Futaba first shows up to the slaughterhouse office for her assessment, the atmosphere is suffused with dread and despair, as everyone who exits that room comes out looking miserable. When she takes her seat before a rather intimidating row of assessors, barking questions one after the other, she very nearly loses her nerve, but still manages to get out where she sees herself in the future.

She wants to be a seiyu for a long time. It’s possibly an even more ambitious goal than being a main character or famous heroine, due to the dropoff of seiyu work for most people after 30. But she tells the panel it’s a goal she aspires to all the same, and one she counts on making a reality.

This week also features Ichigo (her foot now healed a month after the concert) auditioning for and winning the voice role of a local strawberry mascot, and Rin taking and passing her entrance exams. But the spotlight this week, as it was in SgS’s first episode, is Futaba, who despite having never been able to land a main character role, is the main character here. And it’s very apropos for us to see every excruciating minute of her struggles this week, while the others have a relatively easy time off-camera. This is how it’s always been.

But it’s also a welcome development that Ichigo and Rin are right there when Futaba gets The Call—one that starts out ominously but turns out to be a great relief: she’s being given another year to prove herself—and the three are able to celebrate their hard-one individual victories as a unit. Along with Ichigo and Rin, Futaba looks poised to continue working hard in that unit, which will hopefully get her more attention and more roles; especially if she pitches herself as a boy-voice specialist. And the time ahead of her will be more distinguished than the time behind her. Because the Seiyu’s Life is the only life for her!

Like Futaba in the seiyu world, Sore ga Seiyuu! may not be the flashiest or the most watched or lauded, but also like Futaba, it was more often than not extremely fun and rewarding watch full of a unique energy and modesty as it brought insight to the world of a quirky profession while making observations relatable in any profession.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 12

Ichigo’s foot is hurt, and though she tries to hide it, both Futaba and Rin know it’s hurt. The success of the concert is in jeopardy, but both of them care more about her health. Ichigo, not wanting to let everyone down, assures her she can do it, and makes the others promise not to tell Kaibara. Her foot, her terms, it would seem.

However, after watching Hocchan on TV and bumping into her at the studio (not recognizing her at first because of her disheveled off-stage appearance), Futaba gets yet another invaluable piece of advice, this time about units: everything is shared amongst everyone, be it happiness, hardship, or pain. That means the foot isn’t just Ichigo’s problem and Ichigo’s call, it’s the unit’s. Rin agrees with Futaba, and Ichigo tells Kaibara, who naturally freaks out.

However, the Earphones haven’t gotten this far without overcoming hardship (or lack of natural dancing talent, in Futaba’s case.) So Ichigo gets taped up, and both Rin and Futaba will pick up her slack in the dancing department, rearranging choreography to lessen the strain on Ichigo’s foot, doing a slow song while seated, etc. Konno even finds a clever way to conceal Ichigo’s swollen foot: fuzzy leg warmers!…Which at least to me call to mind the soft padding of earphones.

In order to balance out the proportions of their look (with their $5000 outfits…geez Kaibara!), they also go out wearing bunny ears, and while the first tense few moments after they take the stage they worry they’ll be laughed right back off of it, but the full house of nearly 500 (480 to be exact) end up digging the cuteness.

The trio goes out with everything they have, powered by Futaba’s pre-concert motivational speech that was the culmination of everything she’s learned from working with pros like Hocchan, and while Ichigo stumbles, she doesn’t fall, because Futaba and Rin take hold of her and keep her upright. The unit even gets a call for an encore.

It’s an unforgettable night for the Earphones; far more of a success than any of the girls could have hoped for, especially considering the setback with Ichigo’s foot. But they pulled it off with aplomb, and it was immensely rewarding to watch them do so.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 11

The “most helpful” short review of SgS on MAL describes the show to a T, portraying working life reality without resorting to tropes, with adorable characters with regular human flaws and worries, and situations relatable to viewers of all professions despite the unique seiyu milieu. An apt description of a show that’s remained on my Summer watchlist due to its uniqueness, honesty, and heart.

This week, Futaba neither wants to be left behind nor hold her unit-mates back, so when she gets a “program reg”, a semi-steady bit role in a new anime, she tries her hardest…and ends up trying a little too hard for her precious voice. She’s not the only one who tried to hard, and she isn’t the last in this episode about a very important part of a Seiyu’s job and life: self care.

Shiraishi Ryoko (whom I know best as the lovely Himeko in SKET Dance) gives Hocchan a run for her money as the best cameo on the show to date, because the episode positions her both as another seasoned veteran for Futaba to look up to (and Futaba is struck by her beauty, vocal versatility, and preparation) and as a voice of earnest caution against working to hard at the cost of one’s health.

All jazzed up about her boisterous young boy voice role, Futaba strains her voice, and all the seiyus around her suggest various remedies. Shiraishi gives her honey herb cough drops, but to no avail; the next day Futaba comes down with a cold. Thanks to her manager’s wrangling, she’s still able to record her lines, but must do so separately, losing precious hours amongst her peers in the studio.

She comes back, none the worse for wear, and Shiraishi is there to offer more support, and life advice I presume comes straight from the real Shiraishi’s life. She thinks she was about Futaba’s age when she hurt her throat, but it wasn’t a cold, it was vocal cord nodules, the result of being so excited and busy with her voice work she never gave her throat a chance to rest and heal. As a result, she needed surgery, which no other seiyu she knew had ever undergone.

She was thus understandably worried about the operation, but she had no choice: for Shirashi, then and now, being a seiyu was her life. There was nothing else she wanted to do, and her talent and popularity proved it was the right path. She might’ve over-scared Futaba a bit, but the lesson remains: don’t get too caught up and push too hard too fast. Futaba also wants to life a seiyu’s life, so she has to take care of her voice. That means going at her own pace, even if that pace is slower than Ichigo’s and Rin’s.

The episode’s second half chronicles Earphones’ preparation for their first real concert, a two-hour affair at a 500-seat venue. Only problem is, after one week they’ve only sold twelve tickets, and they only have three songs to their name. So in addition to stepping up their marketing and promotion for the concert in a big way, the unit also has to learn a bunch of cover songs to fill the time.

Ichigo commits to writing up the choreography for those songs, and becomes an idol possessed of a fire that makes Futaba and Rin tremble. After days of hard dancing, Ichigo and Futaba are a lot sorer than Rin, owing to being older…yet still young, they protest!

They make a promotional push by pounding the pavement and distributing flyers at the popular Anitumn Festival (well, outside the festival, anyway) and before long, their venue is around halfway sold out, a great improvement from twelve takers. With Futaba’s newfound devotion to going at her own pace, she remains positive while working to master Ichigo’s dance moves.

Everything is coming together, and the group is in the highest of spirits, which bodes well for the success of the concert, as they’ll be wearing their hearts on their sleeve up on that stage before however many hundreds of people attend. But then Ichigo injures her ankle tripping on a bottle of water. Oh mannn….

Just like that, Earphone’s concert is in serious jeopardy, demonstrating that whatever your profession, even if you do take care of yourself, shit still happens; shit you can’t predict or prepare for. Here’s hoping it’s not a bad sprain, and if it is, the unit doesn’t let the setback douse their spirits.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 10

As the OP states, even though Kohana Rin is only fifteen, she’s been working for ten years. As such, she’s by definition not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill fifteen-year-old junior high schooler. She’s a special case, which is why her counselor counsels her to seek education at a high school better suited for special cases such as hers, in which she can take acting classes and her work-related absences can be worked around.

The whole reason Rin’s been working so long (in addition to being talented) is that she used to be so painfully shy, so her parents put her in a theater trope. Since then, she’s simply gone with the flow, but it isn’t until now, when she’s now faced with going to a different school than her oldest and best friend, the heart-eyed Sayo, that she starts to doubt whether she even should be a seiyu.

The episode makes it a point to show that unlike Futaba and Ichigo, her present situation didn’t come about as a result of a choice she consciously made; her parents made it for her in hopes it would help her social skills. Futaba and Ichigo don’t lets their doubts get the best of them because they know they’re on the path they want to be on. But Rin isn’t so sure anymore.

Things become a little clearer when, suddenly and coincidentally, her manager hands her a script for an anime film where she’ll be playing the little sister of the lead, voiced by Kamiya Hiroshi (making his second appearance on SgS). The director specifically chose Rin because he wanted a real 15-year-old actor.

With few actors her age out there with as much experience, she seems the perfect choice, but Rin’s recent realization she hasn’t led a typical 15-year-old’s life makes her uncertain. The director cuts several times because she’s either sounding too responsible or too young. But that’s to be expected, considering Rin is more responsible and composed than most kids her age.

Even Kamiya tells her she impresses him; when he was fifteen, all he did was goof off, and even though he’s regarded as one of the industry’s top voices, his own opinion of himself is of someone constantly unsure if he’s even cut out to be a seiyu. He can be negative and overthink things. He never thinks he’s good enough, so he’s always polishing.

Learning this insight from such a towering voice works wonders for Rin, now that she knows she’s not the only one who feels the way she does. And however her career started, she is a seiyu, and she wants to become a great one. For that, she decides she’ll change schools for high school.

When she breaks the news to Sayo, Sayo takes it as you’d expect. She can’t hide her sadness or tears, but nor does she think it’s the end of their eternal relationship; not by a long shot. In fact, Sayo’s tears are both of sadness they won’t see as much of each other, but also joy and pride that her once-profoundly shy friend has grown so strong, and can now stand on her own two feet.

Of course, Rin still needs Sayo’s help with one thing, and will continue to year after year, no matter what: their annual end-of summer giant parfait.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 09

After eight episodes focusing on the seiyu, mostly Futaba, this episode switches things up a bit and re-tells many of the past events, along with a couple future ones, from the perspective of Futaba’s petite but tireless manager Konno Aoi.

As the intermediary between numerous seiyu and numerous production companies, her day is never not busy, and it’s full of small victories and failures, either made better or worse by how she reacts to them and how she delivers the news to her charges.

From a flashback in the cold open we see what brought Konno into this kind of work: while taking the stage or the spotlight isn’t for her, facilitating the rise of others is not only something she’s good at, but something she enjoys, especially when she gets a big hug from the recipient as a reward.

Just as Futaba makes up for her relative deficiency of otherworldly talent of the Kamiyas and Hories by working hard and trying to stay positive, Konno works no less hard to get Futaba two jobs in one day, further building up her experience, motivation, and confidence as she gets better with time.

Plus, their increasingly dramatic run through the city to make a recording appointment (instead of simply calling to say they got held up in traffic) made for an unexpectedly amusingly action sequence.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 08

This week Futa-Futa, Ichigo and Rin-Rin are reunited for an in-store event marking the release of their first CD single, “Into Your Ears.” There, they learn of the stress and anticipation prior to the event starting, along with the understanding that the designated performance room will not be packed, judging from the wider spacing of the seats and the fact a couple of employees will be in the crowd (I count 31 total people above).

But despite all that, the girls do their best for their small but passionate mini-legion of fans who did turn out to watch their first performance, and while the song doesn’t start exactly when they think it will, they don’t make any mistakes in the actual performance, which is good. Far from a fiasco, everything goes pretty smoothly.

It becomes clear to Futaba that Rin and Ichigo are more popular than she, but is heartened by an encounter with one particular fan of hers who not only knows her C.V. and traveled from Saga to see her, but bought the same Korori doll she has. I’m also glad the show didn’t go too dark or cynical with regard to the intensity of the fans; they all behaved themselves…except, perhaps, Rin’s hyper classmate/”first fan” Sayo!

Earphones as a group also learns that they have to be realistic about the speed of their ascent into J-pop relevance, and have to be satisfied with a few CD sales rather than selling out, just as they have to be satisfied with a third- to half-full hall. Everything takes time, patience, resilience, and work work work.

After the event, Futaba ends up being called into Gonzo’s TV studios to do a narration for a show, her first such job. She’s understandably nervous about this too, especially when she learns the guy doing the job with her is the famous TV voice Machi Yuji (also the voice of Ultraman Tiga, and Tsukino Usagi’s dad). Machi-san is a Pro with a capital P, having amassed enough skill and experience to nail a script that’s literally just been handed to him, even offering the producers corrections down to the frame.

Watching Machi work and make it look so easy is obviously quite intimidating to Futaba, to the point she totally blows her dry run. But when Machi-san tells her he used to be in her position—no one starts out perfect, or even good—she’s stops worrying about how bad she was and starts working to be as good as she can be.

Her second try is much better, and Futaba’s seiyu Takahashi Rie does a fine job clearly differentiating between bad and better to even the untrained ear. She gets through the job, and impresses enough that Machi mentions finishing a story he started next time they meet, suggesting she’ll get more work there.

If she does, each time she goes, she’ll learn more and more, and get better and better. But she won’t ever be able to stop working any less hard than she is now. Constant improvement requires constant struggle, especially for people like Futaba.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 07

More jobs have come for Futaba, Ichigo and Rin, to the point that they’re busy enough to end up in the same studio on the same day, not for their Earphones work but for three separate gigs: Futaba is dubbing a zombie movie with veteran Koyama Rikiya (and the rude guy who said she stunk way back when), Ichigo is reading for an audiobook, and Rin is doing voice work for a video game.

Futaba is scared of the film’s horror theme, especially the fact one of her roles is a zombie, but eventually finds her footing, inspired by the always professional (and veggie juice-drinking) Koyama. Ichigo must adjust her voice to something less urgent than anime yet emphatic enough to get the point across. Rin has the strangest and most abstract job, simply firing off all her lines with no one else around, and even making noises for when her character receives small, medium, and large punches.

While all three were nervous going into their respective jobs, by the end they’re all happy and confident in their performances. And while it’s raining when it’s time to leave the studio, Futaba and Ichigo remembered to bring umbrellas, proving they’ve grown since the day they had to share Rin’s due to poor preparation. That preparation and growth is also apparent, as both the rude guy and Koyama say Futaba did well, raising her spirits even more as they head to the wrap party.

So ends another funny, informative, and charming episode about the day in the life of new but increasingly successful seiyus.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 06

Earphones are about to go through a very busy gauntlet of dancing lessons, recording, music video filming, events, and promotion for their first single, “Into Your Ears.” But before that, Futaba recalls the her of last year, who recorded a Drama CD with Kugimiya Rie (the show is on a mini Toradora! tear).

When she passes a video store and sees a display for an anime adaptation of the CD, she gets excited about having to budget her time even more, which feels pretty premature; it’s practically assured at this point she’s going to end up disappointed.

Sure enough, she doesn’t hear from the producers of the CD when she should, and it’s Rin who inadvertently breaks the news to her in the middle of one of their radio shows: she, not Futaba, will be voicing Kugimiya’s little sister in the anime version.

Futaba is able to keep it together long enough to finish the show, but after that, she just needs to get away from Rin, and Ichigo, and everything. The show really lets us feel the sting of rejection, garnished with the extra shock of her friend and unit partner being the one usurping her.

It falls to her senpai Shiodome to talk her out of her funk, and I’m pleased to report Shiodome, while kind, isn’t overly or conspicuously kind, and it seems from her body language she’d prefer not to be so hands-on with her juniors, lest they not learn the lessons they need to learn. But in this case, Futaba had her idea of being a seiyu being a dream burst.

Shiodome clarifies that it’s the audience that sees and hears the dream, not the seiyu. The seiyu make the dream possible through their commitment and professionalism, performing with everything they’ve got no matter what’s going on with their personal lives. And all seiyu, even TsundeRie and Hocchan, have felt the sting she’s feeling.

Futaba listens to her drama CD again and learns that the her of a year ago actually sucked, but realizes the fact she can tell is proof she’s grown, and demands more of herself. Expressing to Rin her jealousy and frustration with not getting the part, but also her excitment by what Rin will bring to the part, help clear the air.

For now, Futaba must focus on Earphones, singing and dancing her heart out. If she does well, she’ll get noticed, and other jobs will come.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 05

After a few eps centered on Futaba, this week focuses on Ichigo, perhaps the most abrasive of the three members of Headphones due to her need to live her Strawberry Princess persona at all times. Even alone, she refers to her room as her kingdom, even though she was fired from her part-time job and both the electricity and gas have been switched off.

It’s certainly not all strawberries and cream for Ichigo, but she gets a call from her agency notifying her she won a role in the sequel to a popular video game. Sure, it’s the role of an artificial bug who sits on the main character’s shoulder and mostly just says “Poro”, but it’s a part, damnit! People whose utilities have been switched off can’t be picky!

After collecting her three boxes of script for the game, she shows up at the Shibuya Public Hall for a pre-launch event hosted by the game company and featuring the cast, including the lead, who is none other than Horie Yui.

Full disclosure: I’ve only experienced a tiny fraction of the 350+ productions Hocchan has performed in since 1997, but I’ve been in love ever since her wonderful role as Minori Kushieda in Toradora!.She was also pretty fantastic in Golden Time. I could go on, but suffice it to say she’s a giant in the industry.

So it’s great to see Hocchan in anime form show up not just as a cameo, but a persistent figure throughout Ichigo’s very first event of this kind. What’s also great is how casual, down to earth, and approachable Ichigo discovers her hero to be, what with her mussed hair, comfortable wardrobe, and smushed melon-pan.

Ichigo had a nightmare about performing before a totally silent crowd before the event where over 2,000 people will turn out, so she needs all the support she can get from more experienced talent. You don’t get much more experienced and professional than Hocchan. Ichigo’s reaction to Hocchan’s transformation from frumpy-ish housecat to stunning idol is pretty priceless. It’s one thing to see a celebrity in magazines or on TV, but in person it’s as if they become more real.

The event unfolds as a sequence of stills, which is a bit lazy, but the episode is strapped for time at this point. In fact, the montage pretty effectively illustrates just how fast it all flies by for Ichigo, and how it’s all over before she even gets a good grasp of what she’s doing. But she shouldn’t have expected any more from herself; this was her first time, and she’ll get better at them with time.

Furthermore, watching Horie Yui fire up the crowd with a mini-concert (she is good at the theme song singing), and watching Hocchan’s professionalism and magnetic personality on display in general, inspires Ichigo to keep doing her best.

When her dad shot her a text asking how she was, Ichigo was about to tell him she’s scared and doesn’t know what to do, but decided not to send it. It was a brave gesture, showing that she trusts in her ability to get those lights and hot water back on very soon.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 04

SgS keeps pace with Dandelion this week, as we come to love the characters in both shows the more time we spend with them. It has occured to me that Sore is very much a love letter to the seiyu industry and the people in it, almost playing like a documentary of these girls’ lives, yet avoids being over-indulgent or extra-congratulatory.

With the highs come the lows, and the lows suck when you’re in them, regardless of vocation. That’s what this episode captures best: Futaba at first believing she’s all alone in her doubt and despair, when in fact, everyone goes those emotions. That knowledge brings comfort and motivation to strive harder.

With Bodhisattvon wraping and all three girls failing to pass auditions for the next show (doubly upsetting since we saw Futaba part with most of her petty cash to buy the manga), they’re feeling uneasy about the future. Futaba in particular is sure she’ll get more work before the Bodhi recording and radio show both wrap, but she’s incorrect on both counts.

All it takes to clear Futaba’s clouds of despair and worry is to bump into a legend like Ginga Banjou, who has died many more times than she on screen. Because of that, he can lend her valuable words of supportive advice that apply not only to dealing with the deaths of one’s characters, but in dealing with the serial rejection all seiyus (and indeed, artists) must endure. Futaba is not alone.

When their radio show ends, it looks like Futaba is about to stare down the long, dusty road of non-employment in her chosen field (though she still has the part-time job), but their boss springs another surprise on them: not only has their radio show been extended, but he’s putting them in a unit, to record the theme song to the show and perhaps eventually become a full-on idol group.

This is a lot for Futaba and even Rin to take in, though it’s exactly what Ichigo has been dreaming of. I like how they all react by paying more attention to themselves, whether it’s Futaba being broken out of her daydream by her jiggly arm, Rin training herself to wear miniskirts, or Ichigo’s overdone yet somehow appropriate ringlets.

Really, I should have seen this development coming: Futaba, Rin and Ichigo already had the built-in look of characters who wouldn’t look out of place in a sci-fi magical girl or music anime. Now, they could be on the road to just those kinds of roles, if it all pans out. Everyone’s nervous, like they were when the radio show first started. But with time, they got better at that, and they’ll eventually get better at all this unit stuff, too.

ED request: The theme to Sailor Moon Crystal.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 03

Before they begin their own web radio show, they go on Futaba’s senpai Shidome’s bigger radio show to promote it. Flanked by the venerable Tamura Yukari, the trio are literally petrified in front of the mics, as any newbies would be under the circumstances. Despite this, Tamura-san thinks they’re funny, and wishes them good luck.

When the day of their first recording arrives, the three gather at a much smaller studio with a much smaller staff of one, and a script of only a few pages, with the particularly scary “free talk” mixed in. There’s no rehearsals or practices; they’re thrust right into the studio and onto a live show where every moment of hesitation is a moment of dead air.

The pressure under the girls is palpable, and things start out pretty rough, but while they show is “all over the place”, they do get into a nice rhythm towards the end, and their boss says they have potential. All they need to do is gather the confidence to converse the way they normally do in front of the mics, and they’ll be golden.

By the same measure, when the three girls watch (and listen) to the anime they had roles in, they’re all a little disappointed in themselves, but that just inspires them to keep working harder to become great. It doesn’t happen overnight.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 02

I was going to try to choose between Seiyu’s Life! and Dandelion in order to pare down my workload as we all must do around this time in the season, but after two episodes, I’m no closer to making that choice; both have their charms.

The second outing of SGS shows us more of Futaba’s not-so-glamorous life as a struggling seiyu: part-time work at Lawson (Ichigo works at an even more clinical box lunch processing plant), walking into the office to find a tiny slip of a script next to a tower of scripts for Kamiya Hiroshi (that’s right, The Kamiya Hiroshi, in the flesh!) with a backdrop of rookie seiyus with no work at all simply standing there hoping they’ll be remembered, a sign that things could be worse.

But things get a little better for Futaba when she gets an audition for a new adaptation of a manga with “Titan” in the name. Even better, the two friends she made at her recording session, Rin and Ichigo, are also in the audition, and they’re not competing for the same role.

Things look bright for Futaba, but once she enters that oddly-empty and silent studio, I think she tenses up a bit. She’s able to visualize the character she’s voicing (as herself!) and all her personality traits and moods, but it comes off as a bit mechanical and even forced. At the same time, I think she puts too much stock in the producers’ seemingly apathetic reaction to her performance; it could just be they’re yawning because it’s a long day…right?

Ichigo’s sexy voice gets laughs, and she’s asked to voice a different character, after which the producers react by staring at their phones, so not promising. As for Rin, she does just fine. After the stressful audition, the three go to a cafe for coffee and cake and just shoot the breeze; Futaba even comes up with the nickname “Evil Ichigo.”

The next day it’s back to work on the Evangelion clone, where Futaba learns Pipo blows up and doesn’t come back. This setback, just when she’s told the others that if she’s still not showing promise in a year, she’ll share poor Pipo’s fate and be culled by her company (it’s a cutthroat industry, eh?).

But outside the studio, a suspicious looking mustachioed man confronts the trio of girls. He’s been watching them interact, you see, and apparently sees something in them, because he wants them to do a web radio show…which explains what the ED is all about!

Like last week, as the credits roll, the girls switch between singing the ending theme, doing commentary on the episode that just aired, and singing a request (this week, appropriately due to the Kamiya Hiroshi cameo, it’s a song from Zetsubou-sensei.) It’s a great ED format, but it also previews what should be an interesting and promising new opportunity for Futaba & Co.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 01 (First Impressions)

The Rundown: GONZO, a studio I haven’t seen or heard a lot from in a while, tells the tale of Ichinose Futaba, a newcomer seiyu braving the harrowing rapids of anime voice recording, as her plushie “advisor” Korori explains the procedures, intricacies, and foibles of such a life. In the process of recording for an Eva-style mecha series, Futaba meets the talented Kohana Rin and the energetic and equally new Moesaki Ichigo.

Pros: There are many, as this was a lot better than I expected. Futaba is a great protagonist to follow, as she’s determined to work hard at her craft but is clearly new to the industry and thus prone to errors, freeze-ups, and over-thinking. This is a show that gives you the gist of what’s going on, then lets you get lost at times along with Futaba, along with sweating all the little enlightening details about the business, from greeting everyone personally (which you’d think would overtax one’s voice), to where you sit and which mic you’ll walk to.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t bestow praise on, well, the seiyus, in particular Takanashi Rie, who actually had more roles to play than just Futaba and Korori. She and the other two seiyus are unfamiliar to me because like their characters, they’re all pretty new, but they handled themselves well in a fast-paced, dense, procedural first episode. The OP and ED (the latter of which featured a brief bit of the EVA theme) were also nicely done.

Cons: They are few. I think this show could have benefited from characters that look less like, well, anime characters, or who at least had ordinary hair color; all the skittles hair kinda detracts from the reality. I was particularly distracted by how much Futaba resembles Nagato Yuki, in build, hair color and style, and glasses. The constant cuts to Korori (Futaba’s plushie) explaining things were certainly informative, but disrupted the already fine rhythm of Futaba’s busy day.

Verdict: Like Dandelion, and Working!!!, SgS is a fun, lightweight slice-of-life that requires minimal psychological investment. In other words, it’s easy to watch. And I’ll confess, I once enrolled in a voice-acting class at my local learning tree, so it’s definitely a world I’ve considered entering (even if it’s likely quite different in America).

But seiyu-ing aside, the show does a great job putting us in the shoes of someone who has just entered a very specialized, exacting industry, and while she hasn’t quite found her footing, she’s not alone, and she eventually will.