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Last episode, we had quite a bit of backstory focusing on Mahoro that actually got to me pretty good. She’s a nice character.

My Thoughts

We begin with Honoka doing her acting, and I can already guess what today’s VA lesson will be. It seems she doesn’t know how to alter her normal voice lines at all to really show any change in mood. Something I do imagine is pretty hard, but that’s part of the j0b. It only makes things harder because Honoka’s character has a ton of lines next episode, so nerves are a thing.

Speaking of nerves, remember the weird VRRPG thing with the Masapi? Yeah, apparently, his plan was to post the girls’ interactions online as an anime called Boken Survivors. You know, a 3D anime about doing nothing basically instead of fighting a demon lord. I really do appreciate the meta here of watching what we watched last time in an anime now turned into an official anime within the existing anime. It’s neat.

But at least everyone is successful, even if some are taking it a bit better than others. I have to agree with some other viewers. I’m very curious what Haruna’s arc will amount to because I honestly would have expected something similar to Honoka’s right now. Someone who doesn’t get many lines, suddenly getting a whole script of them. Maybe they’ll just forget about her, which would be ironic since she was the main main character of the series at first.

Now, if you were thinking the series needed to do a title drop and also reveal a bootleg version of Wonder Woman, well, boy, do I have just the character for you. So Honoka was inspired at a young age by a character called Thunder Woman. Exactly what you would expect. The problem is that Honoka seems to think Thunder Woman is perfect and doesn’t realize that perfection is just an illusion that nobody will ever obtain, so that’s one of the reasons she’s having a hold-up voicing Ayame.

She thinks Ayame is also perfect and doesn’t know how to voice her in a way that doesn’t reflect that, which again opens up an interesting discussion about how important it is that your VAs are mature people that really understand the mental states of the characters they’re voicing, and if anything this showcases how immature Honoka can be, not that that’s always a bad thing.

Mental and emotional maturity are two different things, and I’ve always been a believer that emotional is much more important. Honoka is having a bit of a problem with both here, though, but she manages to figure it out with the power of Thunder Woman. As Cue has taught us, strength comes from the strangest of places, be that rip-off characters or milkshakes. 

I honestly need to make a chart to try and keep all this lore straight. We have to be getting to the point where we’ve had at least one episode dedicated to everyone and a few on the groups. We still have seven episodes left, so there is time to fit everyone in. What I imagine they’ll do is give Haruna the last two or three, probably, since she has been royally shafted.

These Cue reviews always end up being all over the place, especially in this shorter format, but I kind of like it. It lets me talk about the mental states of characters and get all philosophical, which are my favorite types of conversations to have. I love to question our existence in a healthy way! Anyway, on that note, I’ll leave it until the next one. See you then for more of this unexpectedly good series.

Thank you very much for reading

Remember, nobody’s perfect, and if anyone tells you differently, they’re definitely lying.