Hinatazaka46: "Koeharu!" drama, episode three recap

 

 Air Dates: April 28th until June 30, 2021  Wednesday nights at 1:00 am on NTV

Subs are a joint project of Broken Subs and Team Hinata.... 22 minutes an episode

Main Cast: Top seven are all Hina members, first six are all first year students at the Kirameki Voice Actor's School. Bottom person is another member but we don't see her as she does some narration and often for Meiko's thoughts. All save for Amasaki live at the school's Doremi dorm. After two shows don't know the details of all of the characters so will be updating this as time goes on.

Mirei Saski as Meiko Hinowa.... Quite a shy nineteen year old who is such a fanatic about the "Namidairo Senki" weekly manga series. She's such a fan of the manga that she enrolled in the school when Meiko heard there would be an anime of it. It'll be a long shot for her to voice the role of Tya as Meiko is a bit inept at most things.

Akari Nibu as Mana Tendou.... Such an energetic student who is so talented at seemingly everything. She's become Meiko's best friend and it was revealed in the second show that Mana was a champion at Kendo until a tragic car accident.

Miho Watanabe as Amasaki Amane.... Went to high school with Meiko but Amasaki can't stand her and has bullied her for so long. Her father is quite wealthy, in high school she was the Queen of Snobs which has continued on to this school.

Miku Kanemura as Yukina Tsukikawa....

Hina Kawata as Tae Honda.... Simply idolizes Yukina.

Hinano Kamimura as Airi Kusuma.... In episode three has became a fashion model and but will continue with her voice actress studies. She's such a quiet female and because Meiko is like that too Airi really looks up to her.

Ayaka Takamoto as Chizue Harukaze.... Doremi Dorm mother and still in VA training but does get an occasional voice acting job.

Aya Hirano as Iwao.... The student's main teacher and what a peppy woman! In real life Aya is known for being a singer and also a very busy voice actress.

Koichi Yamadera as Odawara Genmai.... Headmaster of Kirameki Voice Actor's School and also the creator of the Genmai training program.

Naoto Takenaka as Kinkakuji Enjo.... Older popular manga artist, writer of the 'Namidairo Senki' series published in the Weekly Hop magazine.

Sarina Ushio as the narrator.

 Wrote these three recaps up a bit in advance and was waiting for the fourth show to be subbed before publishing them so there wouldn't be a long gap between recaps. In the meantime have just started on the Korean drama "Here's My Plan" which is a short series of eight half hour shows. Will be doing posts for that in early June and have viewed the first three shows. And what a unique drama this is which is about a nineteen year old girl who is a scam artist, her goals in life are to take revenge against her alcoholic mother and the father that abandoned her, what a plot!

 In each show the Hina members all get a good amount of screen time, may not always talk about their characters but there's plenty of screenshots of everyone. More so for Mirei who has the lead role in this series and to date has done a superb job. But each show will focus on a different member and their background, for this episode it's of the character Airi. She's played by Hinano who is often a barrel of laugh on their 'Aimasho' variety show. But in this drama Airi is extremely quiet and there's kind of an evil aura about her mainly because she rarely says a word. If that's the case her friends wondered why would she want to become a voice actress?

 It's slightly odd who Airi looks up to out of all of the students. Not Amasaki who is so good at vice acting but is such a snob, nor is Mana her hero and talked about why she has the respect of everyone in the last recap. Of all people who Airi wants to take after it's Meiko(!), she too is such a quiet young woman but is slowly changing her ways. Meiko has become semi popular at the Kirameki Voice Actor's School and some of that has to do with being Mana's best friend. But according to the girl's dorm mother Chizue it's because Meiko has come a long way in a short amount of time, other students are really respecting that. And of course #1 in that category was Airi, you can see her above in the top two screenshots. She had asked Meiko if she could sit next to her in class and have to say Airi's facial expressions were quite hilarious.

Two lessons for the students this show on their path to becoming voice actresses. The first was learning how to ad-lib which according to their teacher Iwao is very important for an actress. She chose two students to do an ad-lib live in front of the class, the setting was a space ship heading towards Earth. Two gals were chosen who are above, on the right is the snobby school Queen Amasaki who is quite talented at voice acting and did a superb job creating a story up on the spot. Not so for the other student who was Airi, she had about five chances to create an interesting ad-libbed story but failed miserably each time. Airi was put on the spot and bet many of the other students would have flopped too. But there is one huge positive about Airi which she admitted in class and that was she was too cute! That kind of shocked the class but even more shocking incidents will occur.

 After that flop of a class Airi has vowed to have Meiko become her Master(!) and emulate everything about the way Meiko learns and conducts herself. It was more of a case of stalking as Airi would never leave Meiko's side which was soon driving her up the wall but she tried to keep her frustrations to herself. The Doremi dorm mother Chizue does the cooking for the girls but got some work on a foreign film where she voiced eight characters, the gals will have to fend for themselves. Airi, Mana and Meiko knew zippo about cooking so headed to a burger joint where they were approached by a woman named Shimizu, that's her card in the bottom screenshot. Airi was right about her cuteness as the woman wants to sign her up to be a model for her company. Naturally the trio were a bit leery about this but Blue Blue Production was the real deal and has many popular models work for them.

 Modeling is something Airi had thought about but for some reason wanted to become a voice actress though she was just way too quiet. But a model doesn't need to talk so seemingly overnight Airi was signed by the company and did some photo shoots, she even had a few pics in a magazine. That's made Airi a bit popular, even to the snob/bully Amasaki but Airi was wise and chose not to associate with her. But her new friends now wonder about Airi's future at the school, will she continue her training or become a full time model? That's a tough decision for a young woman and even her friends wondered what they would do in that situation. More on what Airi will be doing but next up was the second major lesson for this show which was Gaya, it's description is after the pics.

 Gaya, as described by their teacher Iwao is acting to make scenes more lively. For instance there may be a conversation between two major characters but in the background we see others talking or making noises but not loud enough to overshadow the conversation. According to Iwao it's a very important part of animes and will take a lot of training, there's also a lot of ad-libbing involved.

 However we didn't see the girls practice it all that much, have to remember it's only a 22 minute show. While the students were in the studio Meiko learned that Airi was now in the headmaster Genmai's office, thinking she may never see her friend again Meiko dashed there. Of course Meiko and the other girls figured Airi would be withdrawing from school but with there being seven shows left that wasn't the case! Genmai may be my fave character, he's such an oddball but will do anything to help his students out and usually they don't know the extent of his help.

 Airi had gone to the headmaster for some advice the past few days, on this occasion Airi told him she would be remaining at the voice actor's school. But she'll be a busy gal as Airi will also continue on with her modeling career and seems she could be a popular model. Her agent Shimizu has also been giving Airi some wise advice. So there was nothing for Meiko to worry about as her new friend will still be by her side though shouldn't Meiko now start calling Airi 'Master'? That wraps up this recap and plenty of screenshots to help you follow the story better, 53 of them for just a 22 minute show!!!! So far I'm really enjoying this drama and think if you're a Hina fan you would too. Next trio of posts for the series should be in about two weeks.