Air Dates: April 8th to June 10, 2018 on TV-Asahi for ten episodes, aired at 2:30 am Saturdays
The video at the top is the theme song which was song by the two Haruka's
The main cast....
Haruka Fukuhara as Makoto Kikuchi.... Parents run a green grocery where she was scouted by Oshima and has struggled greatly at the beginning to be a voice actress(Seiyu).
Yurika Nakamura as Asami Kuriyama.... The best of the five females who are trying to become voice actresses, disliked Makoto at first for her lack of dedication.
Mariya Nagao as Ren Ineba.... Massive Otaku fan, especially for the 'Precure' series. In a surprise move quit being a Seiyu in this episode.
Jun Amaki as Konatsu Morimoto.... From Kansai and too often speaks in that dialect.
Aoi Yoshikura as Ryoko Ochiai.... Former child actress making a comeback as a voice actress.
The others, it's a very small cast so far and will add to the list if needed.
Haruka Tomatsu as herself.... Ex-voice actress who now hosts a popular radio show.
Shingo Tsurumi as Yuichiro Oshima... Head of Ihara Productions where the girls work.
Masaki Nakao as Katsutoshi Shoda.... Oshima's assistant.
On to the second batch of five recaps, would help reading the first but it's not essential that you do. For the most part all of the episodes are stand alone ones so there's no cliffhangers that ends a show and begins the next one until the ninth episode. Have viewed up to that ninth episode, will do the recaps for shows six through nine before I watch the final episode and like the first batch there will be five recaps in a row so let's get to the second of five.
Something very unexpected took place in this show which shocked me quite a bit and may do the same to others who have been reading these recaps but hasn't viewed the series. Starting with the fourth show one of the four housemates who live with Makoto has had a turn in the spotlight. Three have had that honor and while Asami's role has gotten bigger she hasn't been the main person in an episode, thought it would happen in this one but that wasn't the case.
Instead the focus was once again on Ren and in the fourth episode the story revolved around her. Ren does have one of the best voices of the five friends struggling to be a Seiyu. In that fourth episode Ren had a major problem doing a role because she has such a difficult time doing the kind of voice that's required. The top two screenshots are of her and Makoto doing a project together, while Makoto did a superb job the opposite was true of Ren and the producer was getting very frustrated with her.
Ren has become extremely down and to herself is wondering if she really has what it takes to be a Seiyu. Eating dinner that night didn't help her confidence as Ren listened to the other four girls saying how well their projects are working out, finally all of them are getting consistent work as a Seiyu. But Ren isn't the type who gives up easily, she really studied the script hard and made many notes on how the character is supposed to act and speak. She had a whole wall devoted to her notes and Makoto was right there helping her.
Asami's turn in the spotlight begins in episode eight and she may have more screen time than anyone else in the next two shows. Her popularity is really increasing, she's even appeared in a voice acting magazine and at times has too much work to do. With the way Ren is feeling having such a successful housemate doesn't help but there's really nothing Ren can say to anyone as it'd sound like sour grapes.
But Ren did eventually have a minor blowup and it was towards Makoto who had been her biggest supporter. Makoto has such a cheery demeanor and when times were tough for her she never gave up as she failed her first 49 auditions. Ren just couldn't take Makoto's cheerfulness and said a few harsh comments to Makoto who was stunned as nobody had ever leveled into her like that. Ren knew she should have kept her mouth shut but the pressure of failing so bad at her current project has really changed her.
All that practice and note taking didn't help Ren out at all. At her following recording session the producer once again told Ren she was saying all of the lines wrong, she was so confused as she knew that's how the character was supposed to be. Perhaps that producer had it in for Ren who came close to telling him off but kept her lips sealed and gave it one more attempt which was another failure.
That recording session went from bad to worse for Ren and it ended up being her final one. Ren's problem is that she can't alter her voice as well as other actresses, no matter how hard she's tried she just can't do it and being a one dimensional voice actress won't cut it. Ren kept her failure to herself that night but had some things she needed to tell her friends the following morning. She's admitted all of her failures to the group and how she's just not as talented as they are. At the time Ren didn't reveal she was quitting her dream of being a voice actress which they discovered the next morning.
Above is the note Ren had left her friends as she briefly told them she was quitting the business and had left many books of her massive manga collection. When the four discovered the note they tore out of their apartment to find Ren which they eventually did. Of course they tried to talk her into returning with them, aren't they such a close team these days? Maybe not that close as Ren usually kept things to herself, nothing her four friends said could change Ren's mind about staying as she slowly drifted off down the road.
Final scene was of the group attending a Haruka concert, in real like Tomatsu is also a successful singer and I have two of her albums which are quite good. Makoto and her friends had such a fun time but when Makoto looked at where Ren should have been sitting the tears started to fill up her eyes. Plus the lyrics weren't helping as the song we heard was of a friend who departed under sad circumstances, with that this episode came to it's conclusion.
Had absolutely zero inkling that one of the characters would be written out, what a shame it is that it was Mariya. She's a big fave of mine and so many others here, have seen so many gravure pics of her so it was nice to see her in a setting like this and thought she did a solid job in this drama. Mariya isn't in the next two shows but wouldn't be shocked if she made a cameo in the final episode which I won't watch until the ninth recap is written up, three more of them after this post.
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