Sore ga Seiyuu!

In short : A slice of life occuring in the world of seiyuu. To distinct from a show about voice acting. Read farther to understand.


Initial expectations :

A friend suggested this anime to me. Having seen a few episodes, she assumed it was informative about the voice acting job in Japan and as I was curious, I decided to watch it.

In a way, it is indeed informative, but in a very superficial way. Each new pieces of information are brushed over without taking time to actually elaborate and overall, it almost disappears after the first few episodes, only appearing from time to time. Which is ... fine if your aim and expectation is the slice of life genre, but really lacking if your aim and expectation is actually to show you what the seiyuu job is really like.

Secondly, the show quickly focuses on the seiyuu-idol aspect of the job - in the same superficial manner - drifting even farther from my initial expectation.

In short, I find it important that people are aware of what they are getting into, so they don't hold the wrong expectations.


Story & Characters

If you are familiar with slice of life, you might have already noticed that most of them are light-hearted and struggle-light. Aside from the context, Sora ga Seiyuu is as classical and average as one can be. Which isn't a complain, actually, when I'm confronted to a genre I am aware of its average level, strong/weak points.

Same can be said about the characters, you know their stereotypes just by looking at them. Their development is equally superficial (aka doing their job and nothing more).

But then, those who already watched the show could come and say !!!SPOILERS!!! but look ! one of the heroine lost her job, has no gas or electricity anymore ! it's horrible ! and yes....in real life it is an awful situation, but it isn't portrayed as a big deal, not only do you have no idea if she ever gets gas and electricity back, or if she has new income (off-screen, you tell me and, yeah, it might be true, but not showing the resolution of a struggle or issue isn't really recommended if you want to put value into a resolution/struggle), but said heroine didn't seem to have such a different lifestyle ; basically, "whining" was the main difference. !!!END SPOILERS!!!

But there again, it doesn't bother me too much. A lot of slice of life want to be keep you in a good mood, to be the "every day life dream" with "issues not tarnishing the dream too much after all". So be it story or character I never expect it to fly high because it isn't their primal aim (let's praise the "slice of life" animes going against that trend though) The only aspect that does bother me is the risk for part of the audience to actually buy that "dreamy" version of voice acting. Voice acting is a hard and tough job where nice speeches and solving an issue in less than five minutes hardly occur (!!!SPOILERS!!! I don't know how to do different sounds... -break, talk with friends- Yeah, I'm closing my eyes and now I can figure how to do it right ! issue solved ladies and gentleman ! I wish life was that easy XD !!!END SPOILERS!!!), it takes you a LOT of dedication and constant "homework".


Art :

If there’s another thing worth mentioning, it’s the art. Just from the image on this page you can see the simplicity of the drawings. I’m not exactly against it, but the high inequality of the design – slow budget or not – bothers me. On one side, you have overly cute girls and women looking far younger (+ very few males), simple, but not sketchy, and on the other side you have the sketchy designs and the more realistic one. Those three types of design kind of tend to clash against each other. So I consider it a bad point.

The background is also rather simplistic as well ; the animation varies from bad to average (even if it has a slight improvement for the last key scene).

As a last add, if I had something to say about the opening, it’d be that it reflects the cheesiness of the show really well, but I skipped it past two episodes (I rarely watch them more than twice).


Recommendation & Enjoyment :

Overall, I’m not particularly fond of it, but it was somewhat distracting. So I’d say it was able to entertain me. I assume I could add that I enjoyed the pink haired girl the most and was expecting Hiroshi throughout the entire show (only shows up two times) just because I knew he’d be there and not because I’m particularly fond of him. You can consider this paragraph useless, but well.

All in all, if you enjoy the average slice of life you can go for it if you want. If you’re curious about some aspects of the voice acting but not enough to actually put your head into it (aka a show about voice acting) you can always check this out, as long as you keep in mind it is an idealistic portrait ; at least the first episodes will satisfy you on that level. Lastly, if you enjoy idols, you might find some interests in this show, even if it isn’t the main focus either.

This is a decent little show that covers the range of jobs a seiyu may end up doing. The characters are fine. The situations are moderately interesting. The focus is mainly on the scope of banal entry-level tasks that a seiyu is likely to do, so don't expect to see anyone doing in-depth research or full-on method acting for a major role. The show swings back and forth between affecting a light tone and then hitting you with the anxiety-inducing nature of a job where you can fade away into obsolescence at any time.

The main place where the series stumbles is ... in how much time it spends on the three main seiyu forming an idol group. About half the series focuses on this plotline, and while I realise this can be a significant part of a seiyu's job, it doesn't do anything to stand out in the overcrowded pop idol genre. It would have been better sticking to its niche and giving more insight into the voice acting side of the job. For that reason, if you only want to watch one anime about seiyu, I'd recommend Girlish Number instead. But if you want to watch two, this one was pretty entertaining.