In addition to Land of Leadale this season, I’m also doing episode reviews of Cue. I mentioned this before on my Twitter, but I really don’t know how this series will work for episode reviews. I just pick series that sound interesting, and I try to do one slower-paced one and one faster-pace. Cue is my slow one.

 

It’s probably going to be some normal slice of life antics, but it’s about voice acting, which is a really cool thing to me. I’m also in the process of trying to make my voice sound cleaner for YouTube videos, so maybe I’ll learn a few tips. Let’s see.

 

First Impressions

 

We start with some guy and girl on a futuristic jet ski in the ocean running from these little death drone things. Apparently, under the water is some gate to another world. This is all fake, though, and it’s actually one of our main characters, Mutsuishi, doing voice work for the main character.

 

This is a pretty cool way to start this kind of series, honestly, and the anime they’re voice acting in reminds me of something Studio Ghibli would make, so I’m happy about that. Mutsuishi, who I’ll be referring to as Haruna to save time, runs away after screwing up her line, but not because she got embarrassed; she just had someplace to go.

 

That place was apparently AiRBLUE, a voice acting agency that signed her and apparently her first step to accomplishing her dream. How the whole being in an anime thing wasn’t her first step, I don’t know. She must have plans more complex than mine.

 

AiRBLUE is really new, and they only hire voice actors with no experience or achievements whatsoever, you know, no achievements like being in an anime. I question whether that was like a look into the future, but it makes no sense if it was. Also, they should really hire a man or two for some vocal range.

 

Regardless, the other VAs start pouring into the building, so rather than name them all, I’ll tell you their traits. You have, possibly mature girl, chunibyou girl, maid girl(?) loud childhood friend girl, fashion girl, definitely mature best girl, possible tsundere, I don’t know what she is, smart, cold glasses girl, foreign girl, shy girl, and two more unidentifiable ones. Also ponytail big sister girl. There are 15, which is a lot to throw on me.

 

Next, everyone gets right into things and needs to act out some Hamlet, despite half of them never reading it and Haruna never hearing of Shakespeare, I guess. Admittedly, I don’t know how famous those works are in Japan, but I figured that was an all around the world type thing.

 

So their lesson coach, who I forgot her name, has them act out the apparent most famous scene. I also never saw Hamlet in any way, which is why it’s ironic I was making fun of them for it.

 

Everyone says how they can see the castle and the characters just from their acting, but I don’t know how dialogue could bring visuals into the mix, but I’m crazy. Either way, the only thing Teach can critique about the redhead girl who was a child actress is that her performance was too by the book, which is honestly a stupid critique. “You did too well.” And ponytail big sister is Maika. I can tell she’ll be one of the main ones, so that’s probably important.

 

Haruna and Maika put their own spin on it, which is a good thing in voice acting, I guess, and get praised. They even get some from Masaki, the CEO. Everyone’s far nicer than any management I’ve seen; we’ll just say that.

 

Lastly, they drop it on them that they’ll be doing an audition for an anime today too, despite their limited practice and lack of experience. Ok, maybe the management isn’t great.

 

My Thoughts

Not bad. Really not bad. A few good things here and there and a few meh things. Firstly, I really don’t get what the whole intro was with Haruna. It clearly happened before she went to the agency because she rushed out to it, but she says she has no experience, despite being in what looked like a professional setting. It made no sense. I might be missing something

 

My favorite part is easily the actual voice acting bits. I think it’s really cool how the scene changes and they begin to act out the role not only vocally, but also visually. It’s a really neat way to make something as uninteresting to watch as speaking actually pretty cool. That and how they keep popping back to the real world is neat. I approve of that.

 

I do find it funny, though, since I think their acting in the actual acting is worse than them just talking, which is also done by a voice actress. It’s a very meta series the more I really think about it.

 

It’s also much more about voice acting so far than I thought. I was thinking it might just turn into a cute girls doing cute things type of series, but it does seem like voice acting is a big focus which is really nice.

 

There are far too many characters for me to say I like any of them, even the main girls. I also doubt we’ll learn too much about most of them besides the main four we’ll get, but I could be wrong. This story actually does have potential if they do it a certain way, maybe learning about why each girl wanted to be a VA as time goes on with arcs dedicated to them. Regardless, there’s a lot here for what is essentially going to be slice of life.

 

I’m also seeing the mobile game elements come at a lot with all of these girls of various types. I didn’t mention that yet, but this is an adaptation of a VA training app that’s likely a gacha game.

 

At the very least, it seems like Cue will be more interesting to do episode reviews for than I originally thought, which is great because the premise is really cool. More series focusing on stuff like this.

 

And that’s a good thing because this series will apparently have 24 episodes. I didn’t know that, and I may not have picked this if I did. I don’t back down from a challenge, though, so let’s go. We’re in it for the long haul, and that means next season, you’ll probably have three episode review series, so look forward to that.

 

Thank you very much for reading

 

I have learned nothing about voice acting, I must say.