This is a shame because the opening scene of our heroine Haruna doing a voiceover for a Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water-esque anime is rather fantastic. While the 80s-inspired visuals are fun in their own right, it really is the voice acting that kills it—though not in the way you'd expect. What makes the voice acting in this scene so great is the fact that, well, it's not actually very good. Haruna's voice doesn't match the character design and she doesn't have the emotional range and expression required for a leading role—which is exactly what you'd expect from a rookie voice actor still finding her footing. It takes an incredible amount of skill to give a performance that is noticeably lacking—even to the average anime fan's ear—yet is not so bad that we think she is hopeless.
Depressingly, it's almost all downhill from there. With its staggeringly large cast of sixteen rookies plus their managers and trainers, this feels like an idol anime more than anything else. Each girl in the cast is tailored to represent a different trope. We have the edgy girl, the dunce, the fashionista, the tomboy, the bookworm, and all manners of stereotypes in between, rather than anything resembling a real person you might actually find in the voice acting profession.
Between having to have Hamlet explained to me and many of the girls' inability to do their job on even the most basic level, I found very little to enjoy in the back half of the episode. The exception to this, however, is getting to see the Hamlet and Ophelia scene twice. With different actors and different visuals based on those actors' performances, it really drives home the point that a difference in voice can completely alter both your perception of a character and of the entire scene itself.
