Adding to the extensive and mostly excellent list of series Yuri fans were watching this year was a pretty amazing look at the obstacle course of demands young, up-coming voice actors are asked to navigate. Management, rivals, the demands (often incoherent and or dangerous) of fans, and their own lives all pile up here in a tumultuous tale of what it takes to be a star as a Japanese voice actor.
The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio, streaming on Crunchyroll, follows two young women who are rivals in the job market, classmates in their real lives, completely opposite types as humans and destined to be great together. It’s a classic case of people who cannot stand each other being amazing as partners. Satou Yumiko (professional name Utatane Yasumi) and Watanabe Chika (professional name Yugure Yuhi) are working together on a online “radio” show in which they play cute high school students, chatting about daily things. Their ratings are not great, but they are trying their best.
The series is honest (in some cases brutally so) about the life of an actor, always running after new roles, and rarely afforded stability. As the series progresses scandals, both real and manufactured, cause the pair to reassess how they are doing things…and why…and for whom. The series does not shy away from fan-driven hysteria and over-posessiveness or, like Jellyfish Can’t Swim In The Night, a rival sabotaging a career. I find it interesting that two different series used that same plot complication in the same season. I don’t pay attention to idol news, but this seems like it must have been related to something in real life.
These scenes come with an emotional cost for the characters, but they are both dedicated to their jobs and try to find ways to succeed. Maybe a little too much of everything that might happen happens, but that’s to be expected in a fiction.
That said, I once again find myself beating a drum that is well-worn this season. Because in the second half of the series, it is not the actors, their rivals, fans or their own limitations that need to be overcome…it is once again the adults around them who fail them. Let me tell you, I yelled at the screen quite a bit.
Watanabe’s mother’s “bet” that she forces on her daughter was just stupid and pointless, but watching Satou excoriating herself for not performing up to a standard which is never stated absolutely enraged me. I literally shouted “You’re the DIRECTOR, direct!” out loud. More than once.
Of course I understood that I was supposed to be watching Satou grow and mature, but from my point of view all I saw was a teenager desperately in need of a single adult to *teach* them what they needed to know. And it really pissed me off that until the verryyyyyyyyyyy end, no one did and none of the adults stepped up to be that person. No. Fuck that. If your teen doesn’t know how to change a tire – teach them. They won’t learn it by osmosis when you don’t do it, either. And don’t work with directors who say things like “We gave you the role because we felt you would give us 120%” without ever telling you what that means.
The opening and ending themes were very good, surprisingly. The animation occasionally reminded me of early-career drawing in which three-quarter faces are oddly flattened. I’m not sure if that was meant to echo the manga or animation was being done on the cheap as it seems to always be now.
Overall, I genuinely enjoyed The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio, and the relationships – and, yes, intimacy, both personal and professional that we see between not only the young women who are voice actors, but also different kinds of affection from their managers and mothers. I liked the not-friendships, professional relationships and mentor/protege relationships that are presented to us between peers. I liked that both Watanabe and Satou managed to find their own solutions to other people’s problems. I loved that their true fans protected them from the shitty people who call themselves “fans,” and I liked that they worked out their own relationship between them.
Ratings:
Art – 6
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Service – Meh, but the late use of “Yuribait” was quite good. ^+^
Yuri – 2, in Mekuru’s obsessive admiration of Otome
Overall – 8
As an insight to the life of a voice actor…I think it’s pretty good, too. Of course not every actor has to deal with all of these situations, but anyone following English voice actor news in the last few years will see that this can be a really fraught career.
