Actors: Songs Connection

Is it possible to write about Actors without spoiling its core conceit? I don't think so, but I'll do my best.

There's a certain type of anime I love watching for the thrill of never being able to guess what happens next. Usually, these are soap opera-esque melodramas, but I'd put Actors in this category too. And Actors is very different.

Disregard any summaries you may find about this show; they're all wrong. By all appearances, Actors is a slice-of-life about boys who like to sing, but even early on, there are signs that something weird is going on. The town is encompassed by a towering white ... wall that no one questions. People occasionally spot mysterious white ghosts hanging around. There are an increasingly number of suspicious stray cats. Sometimes, a guy opens a door in an underground secret lab and finds himself immediately back on the beach.

Skip this next paragraph if you don't want me to spoil episode 5:

A couple of kids find out about an MMO that takes place in an exact replica of their school, and every student is included as an NPC. Paying members have a customizable cat avatar to navigate the MMO in, while free players only get a formless white shadow that is unable to interact with the world and can only communicate with other players. But as you might have guessed, this MMO and the school are in fact one and the same. Actors is about an MMO, but entirely from the perspective of the NPCs. Over time, a few of these NPCs learn their world is not all that it appears to be. (Some of them are just dumb though.)

Actors is overall pretty uneven. Its animation often looks cheap and uninspired. The acting is not especially noteworthy. The episodes that focus on the boys just hanging out can run dull easily. But its core premise is perhaps one of the most unique I've seen in anime recently, and there's enough runtime spent on it to keep me engaged and engrossed all the way to the end.

It's really tough to talk about this show without a bunch of spoilers so I have to keep this short. This show is something that you need to be into music for in order to really connect with. The character development was just not there for most of the cast outside of music.

At first, the show was an absolute mess but when it started getting its shit together it was really good. By an absolute mess I mean the show was just not following any real storyline. In the end, it picked one up but it really was nonexistent for half the show.

I highly ... recommend this show to those who like music but those who don't should look elsewhere

Huh, I didn't expect to review this any time soon. So...Actors: Songs Connection is an anime that came out in October 2019, as part of a large multimedia project based on a series of CDs where popular male voice actors do covers of Vocaloid songs. Yeah, unfortunately, information on this CD collaboration thing is very scarce because that sort of thing isn't well known in places outside of Japan. The only reason I even know about this anime is because a podcast I follow did an episode on it reviewing the show's English dub. Having watched the entirety of said episode, I decided to give ... this show a try, at least to see what it's about. Let me just say that it's...an interesting beast, but not for the reasons you may think.

So on the surface level, the premise is pretty rote: A young boy, Saku Otonomiya, has just returned to his old hometown after several years, and he's not in a good place. His parents are dead, and his older sister Nozomi is in the hospital due to having an unnamed soap opera disease that's obviously there just to wring sympathy from the viewers. He transfers to Tensho High School and reunites with a childhood friend of his, Hinata, who is a member of the school's singing club. Hinata wants Saku to join the singing club, but due to his sister's illness, his job, and needing to pay living expenses, he declines. The singing club does want to sing a particular Vocaloid song he found online for the upcoming singing competition, but the song's creator, Sosuke Kagura, won't let them sing it because he doesn't feel as though the members of the singing club have enough range to be able to cover the song. Sosuke does, however, come across Saku singing the song he made and is so in awe of his talent that he approaches Saku to form a band with him alongside his other friend, Uta. The three of them spend their days together singing their hearts out and having fun.

...Or so it actually seems. The truth is, there's actually a huge twist that occurs in episode 5 that completely changes the entire genre of the show, but I won't spoil it. However, I will allude to it in my review and keep details under spoilers, because I actually do have a lot to say on said twist and how it affects the story and narrative. First off, the animation is decent. Nothing special, and the character designs are woefully overly colorful and generic, not different from other male idol anime with similar aesthetics, with one character looking like he walked out of a Yu-Gi-Oh rip-off (Hi, Mike! He's the red haired dude). On the other hand, the actual animation work is smooth and the backgrounds are nice. Near the end of the anime, there's a bit of action that isn't very well choreographed, with a lot of shortcuts and speed lines to make it look like the characters are moving when they actually aren't.

Being a music based anime, it obviously can't afford to have its music be bad. Well, the soundtrack itself is fine, but nothing to really write home about. Plus, many of the songs in the anime are covers of existing Vocaloid songs sung by the characters' seiyuus. Some of them are genuinely good, with many of them being well sung, but other songs are just generic boy band fare and technically unremarkable. I will say though, the opening song is a banger, as are Saku, Mike, and Mitsuki's image songs (Even though the context in which Mike's song is used is friggin confusing as hell!!). Those ones are the best, while the rest of them range from okay to plain generic. But that's not the end of it, and I mean this in a good way: FUNimation got the license to this show, and get this, they were actually given the go-ahead to dub ALL OF THE SONGS INTO ENGLISH! And they all sound really, really good! You can thank Sound Cadence Studios, the dubbing company, for that one. Seriously, watch Actors in English, because not only are all of the voices impeccably well cast, the dubbed songs actually sound amazing and not at all like the badly dubbed songs from the 90s and early 2000s! It also helps that Amanda Lee aka Amalee and her posse were involved with a lot of the music production on the dub. Seriously, I cannot shill this English dub enough. Please watch it!!

That being said, the characters are a mixed bag. Most of them just follow one archetype and border on being cliche as hell, but several of them do get some decent amounts of development, like the main trio of Saku, Sosuke, and Uta, along with one other character, Ryo. Everybody else just stays the same, and like Lapis Re:Lights, it does suffer from trying to throw in too many characters on occasion, many of which either serve no purpose other than to advance the development of other characters' or take away time the anime could have given to flesh out the more important characters, like Mike and Kai. The last episode in particular even throws in cameos of characters from the main franchise that we'll never see do anything in the show, but they're shoved on the screen anyway! Though unlike Lapis Re:Lights, which came out after it, Actors: Songs Connection does make a solid effort to build chemistry between the more important cast members rather than have them putz around doing nothing and have them move the plot forward without sacrificing their development. But even with that, the characters still fulfill generic bishounen archetypes, so they're still not the most three-dimensional characters out there. Also, I want to see more of Ushio!

For the first four episodes, the anime does seem like it's just going to be a cute, pleasant anime that shows off a bunch of pretty boys, but in episode 5, a huge twist is revealed. I won't spoil it, but it does change the entire genre of the show and force you to see it and the characters and world from an entirely different perspective. But in all honesty, I think the twist hurt the show more than helped it, because said twist only brings up a lot of questions that remain unanswered, and since the anime only has 12 episodes, it doesn't devote enough time to really exploring the ramifications of said twist. I wish I could talk more about the twist and why I feel it hurts the show, but MAL doesn't allow spoilers, understandably, so I won't.

But at its core, Actors: Songs Connection isn't necessarily a bad show. It just bit off way more than it could chew, and I certainly like it a lot better than crap like Lapis Re:Lights! That's for sure! If you want to watch a bunch of pretty boys sing and interact, along with listening to some really good songs, feel free to give this a shot. But if you want three-dimensional characters, a well developed setting, and a compelling story, give it a miss. It gets credit for trying, but it falls flat on its face where it matters most.

I was looking at reviews for this anime just for fun and I couldn't help but notice that a very important point was left out of a lot of them.
This anime is, at its core, a love letter to VOCALOID and the culture surrounding it. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fully understandable!
And I definitely think it would detract from how much someone enjoys this anime, but I do however think that this is not a bad anime. And I also do think there are things to enjoy even if you don't like VOCALOID.

Let me explain.

The anime follows a boy, Saku, who ... lives in a city surrounded by a big white wall. No, really. It's bizarre.
In this city, he lives a normal life - goes to high school, has a deathly sick sister; you know, the usual stuff. His sister's health is declining rapidly, so rapidly that he refuses to join a song trio with the deutergonists, Uta and Sosuke. In his desperation to save his sister, he remembers her telling him that the "white shadows" (beings that co-exist with them in the world) can grant wishes and, by some stroke of luck, him singing Uta/Sosuke's songs gathers a crowd of these white shadows.

As you can see, it's a pretty standard plot for your typical idol anime, but... white walls?? White shadows?? What???
Well... that's the charm of Actors! The story is absolutely bonkers. There is definitely no point in the story where you'll be able to predict what's gonna happen next, and I do think that's the beauty of it.
It's quirky on purpose, definitely a love letter to other surprisingly dark slice of life anime like Kemono Friends, so the story was entertaining to me.

As for the VOCALOID part of it...
Each episode has a cover song of a VOCALOID song sung by the characters. Why is that? Well, Actors is (was?) a CD cover series where-in famous Japanese voice actors sing VOCALOID songs. Although this exists in plenty by now, especially with the popularity of games like Project Sekai, back when Actors came out, it was pretty much the only thing of its genre.
First and foremost, the anime is a project made for the loyal fans who stuck by the CDs for 10 years (!!), just listening to song covers and hearding drama CDs.
If you're confused by characters, don't understand why they're sometimes shoehorned in/underdeveloped, et cetera, that is sadly just the reality of these anime adaptations made for fans. I didn't mind this as I've been a fan for a long time, but it is definitely a detract to most people coming blind in. Hopefully the anime sparked your interest in listening to the CDs as well!

Overall, I think this anime adds more than it detracts. Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely not. Far from it. But I think the insane premise, the music and the ability to turn off your brain and just enjoy it as an "cute boys doing cute things" anime makes it a net-positive overall.

I wonder where to begin this review. Shall I start with my usual about what I feel about this anime in terms of various departments or shall I make it a bit different this time.

Well considering the high drop rate & considerably low rating, I guess I should tackle those issues first. Frankly its a shame that people drop an anime just after watching one or two episodes. Well this anime is worth watching. This anime is not at all boring provided you are willing to leave your affection of classic school or music themes stories.

There is much more to the anime than most summaries ... or genre listing denote. I would love to talk about the same but don't want to spoil your fun. Most people watched the first few episodes and find it a bit wierd & cliche at the same time. They didn't wait for the story to unwrap. I am a big fan of music themed animes due to their cheerful environment & music. Definitely I was expecting to see the same storyline as most school club animes but that didn't stop me from opening my heart for the story to flow within me. Frankly, I find this anime to have a quite refreshing touch.

The art work was good too (though not as great as other animes released this year still no complaints from my side). As for sound effects (incl. voice overs), I find quite a few instances where I was somewhat disappointed. Dialogues of one particular character were missing even though one can see his lips syncing in first 2-3 episodes. This issue was noticed in dubbed version. I don't know how was the subbed one. I read some review here, where user complained about lack of expressions in voice overs but I didn't find that issue in dubbed version.

Character development was good too, not great but still manageable. I personally find it wierd, that the director opted showing a certain club so many times during the series (even in Opening Animation) that had a miniscule role in last episode. Direction in first 2-3 episodes could have been better and the mini-recap of previous episodes should have been avoided.

Well at last, I will again say this. I like this anime recommend others to give it a chance. I personally have seen quite a few bad animes thay deserve a high drop & hold rate, but this anime is definitely not the one.