Tensho School is located in the 7th Ward of Thrive Central, where emphasis is put on extracurricular activities and all clubs participate in an annual fall singing contest. Having to delay the start of his school year due to his older sister's hospitalization, transfer student Saku Otonomiya finds himself struggling to adapt to his hectic new life. Balancing his part-time job and caring for his sister, he finds it difficult to make time to join a school club.
In preparation for the upcoming singing contest, the school's singing club wishes to use Sousuke Kagura's song "Cloudy Days," but Kagura is reluctant to grant his permission. The song requires someone with a three-octave range to sing it and he believes that only a VOCALOID can meet the standards. He allows for the club to use his song on the condition that they can find someone who possesses that vocal range to properly sing it.
While racking his brain over the composition of his next song, Kagura stumbles upon Otonomiya singing "Cloudy Days" perfectly. He invites Otonomiya to form a unit with him for the competition. At the same time, the singing club tries to goad him into joining so they can use Kagura's song. As the contest inches closer, Otonomiya must overcome his uncertainty and decide who to team up with.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
AoiHonou
I considered dropping this because majority of the episodes are painfully boring to the point that I started practicing pixel art while occasionally glancing back to the screen to read subtitles. The idea is okay and was wrapped up nicely in the end, but the build-up needs a LOT of work. Could've been an 8/10 anime if they wrote it better. The worst part for me, personally, are the character introductions. They're all over the place, and if I didn't finish this I wouldn't have even known why they were introduced. My initial rating was a 4, but bumped it up to 5 for the ending.
Jaikeis
Is it possible to write about Actors without spoiling its core conceit? I don't think so, but I'll do my best. There's a certain type of anime I love watching for the thrill of never being able to guess what happens next. Usually, these are soap opera-esque melodramas, but I'd put Actors in this category too. And Actors is very different. Disregard any summaries you may find about this show; they're all wrong. By all appearances, Actors is a slice-of-life about boys who like to sing, but even early on, there are signs that something weird is going on. The town is encompassed by a towering whitewall that no one questions. People occasionally spot mysterious white ghosts hanging around. There are an increasingly number of suspicious stray cats. Sometimes, a guy opens a door in an underground secret lab and finds himself immediately back on the beach.
Skip this next paragraph if you don't want me to spoil episode 5:
A couple of kids find out about an MMO that takes place in an exact replica of their school, and every student is included as an NPC. Paying members have a customizable cat avatar to navigate the MMO in, while free players only get a formless white shadow that is unable to interact with the world and can only communicate with other players. But as you might have guessed, this MMO and the school are in fact one and the same. Actors is about an MMO, but entirely from the perspective of the NPCs. Over time, a few of these NPCs learn their world is not all that it appears to be. (Some of them are just dumb though.)
Actors is overall pretty uneven. Its animation often looks cheap and uninspired. The acting is not especially noteworthy. The episodes that focus on the boys just hanging out can run dull easily. But its core premise is perhaps one of the most unique I've seen in anime recently, and there's enough runtime spent on it to keep me engaged and engrossed all the way to the end.
KANLen09
Vocaloid music, the anime. To think that we'd get a show entirely to promote music company EXIT TUNES based on their 2014 collaborative CD project of famous Vocaloid song covers, it's no wonder the market for Vocaloid music is pretty much still big in Japan, while in the Western world, unless you're a fan of said music, this show's pretty much right up your alley, and if otherwise, not really a whole lot to say about it. The hamfisted story plot about characters branded as ACTORS (yes it's stylized that way) housed in a private school that's government controlled for reasons I cannot fathom. Give ortake, when you first read the synopsis, it makes some sense, but the underlying issue is that there is more than meets the eye. Due to that same "government control", it's like censorship and limiting what the numerous ACTORS (or more specifically, players) are able to distinguish and influence towards the "outside world", with what can be described as the "music makes the world go round" ad infinitium to reach far and beyond. Unfortunately, as with the whole "club activities" thing to give power back to the ACTORS a.k.a the students of Tensho School, this could be suggested as the conspiracy between democracy and autocracy to draw the line where all students are chained with the same treatment. And of course, people being people, democracy is the way to go, so trying to uphold some law is the name of the musical game here and saving their rice bowls of livelihood and combined interest to sing like it's never-ending.
That's where the Vocaloid music comes in as inserted music, and re-emphasizing my front point, the songs are great on its own, but the idea of inserting these music for noticeable people watching this show (which is a niche in itself) becomes ad nauseam very quickly. Even though I'm not a Vocaloid fan, and with the ACTORS franchise being quite diverse since its inception, it's diversity is sorta like the pros and cons, with the benefit being the songs themselves while the downfall is pretty much any adaptation that takes advantage to include these tracks in get sidetracked.
Animation wise, never heard of Drive as a production studio (the studio mainly does music production), but there is a fair bit of mixed quality with this one with some good art and animation, albeit they don't stand out against the competition.
I'll leave this show with the quote from Martin Luther: "As long as we live, there is never enough singing." Because its substance is just that while everything else is secondary at best. Should I recommend this show to anyone? Even with the Vocaloid music, just head elsewhere to get that fix as the anime "cash-cow" adaptation is a total waste of resources.
Firechick12012
Huh, I didn't expect to review this any time soon. So...Actors: Songs Connection is an anime that came out in October 2019, as part of a large multimedia project based on a series of CDs where popular male voice actors do covers of Vocaloid songs. Yeah, unfortunately, information on this CD collaboration thing is very scarce because that sort of thing isn't well known in places outside of Japan. The only reason I even know about this anime is because a podcast I follow did an episode on it reviewing the show's English dub. Having watched the entirety of said episode, I decided to givethis show a try, at least to see what it's about. Let me just say that it's...an interesting beast, but not for the reasons you may think.
So on the surface level, the premise is pretty rote: A young boy, Saku Otonomiya, has just returned to his old hometown after several years, and he's not in a good place. His parents are dead, and his older sister Nozomi is in the hospital due to having an unnamed soap opera disease that's obviously there just to wring sympathy from the viewers. He transfers to Tensho High School and reunites with a childhood friend of his, Hinata, who is a member of the school's singing club. Hinata wants Saku to join the singing club, but due to his sister's illness, his job, and needing to pay living expenses, he declines. The singing club does want to sing a particular Vocaloid song he found online for the upcoming singing competition, but the song's creator, Sosuke Kagura, won't let them sing it because he doesn't feel as though the members of the singing club have enough range to be able to cover the song. Sosuke does, however, come across Saku singing the song he made and is so in awe of his talent that he approaches Saku to form a band with him alongside his other friend, Uta. The three of them spend their days together singing their hearts out and having fun.
...Or so it actually seems. The truth is, there's actually a huge twist that occurs in episode 5 that completely changes the entire genre of the show, but I won't spoil it. However, I will allude to it in my review and keep details under spoilers, because I actually do have a lot to say on said twist and how it affects the story and narrative. First off, the animation is decent. Nothing special, and the character designs are woefully overly colorful and generic, not different from other male idol anime with similar aesthetics, with one character looking like he walked out of a Yu-Gi-Oh rip-off (Hi, Mike! He's the red haired dude). On the other hand, the actual animation work is smooth and the backgrounds are nice. Near the end of the anime, there's a bit of action that isn't very well choreographed, with a lot of shortcuts and speed lines to make it look like the characters are moving when they actually aren't.
Being a music based anime, it obviously can't afford to have its music be bad. Well, the soundtrack itself is fine, but nothing to really write home about. Plus, many of the songs in the anime are covers of existing Vocaloid songs sung by the characters' seiyuus. Some of them are genuinely good, with many of them being well sung, but other songs are just generic boy band fare and technically unremarkable. I will say though, the opening song is a banger, as are Saku, Mike, and Mitsuki's image songs (Even though the context in which Mike's song is used is friggin confusing as hell!!). Those ones are the best, while the rest of them range from okay to plain generic. But that's not the end of it, and I mean this in a good way: FUNimation got the license to this show, and get this, they were actually given the go-ahead to dub ALL OF THE SONGS INTO ENGLISH! And they all sound really, really good! You can thank Sound Cadence Studios, the dubbing company, for that one. Seriously, watch Actors in English, because not only are all of the voices impeccably well cast, the dubbed songs actually sound amazing and not at all like the badly dubbed songs from the 90s and early 2000s! It also helps that Amanda Lee aka Amalee and her posse were involved with a lot of the music production on the dub. Seriously, I cannot shill this English dub enough. Please watch it!!
That being said, the characters are a mixed bag. Most of them just follow one archetype and border on being cliche as hell, but several of them do get some decent amounts of development, like the main trio of Saku, Sosuke, and Uta, along with one other character, Ryo. Everybody else just stays the same, and like Lapis Re:Lights, it does suffer from trying to throw in too many characters on occasion, many of which either serve no purpose other than to advance the development of other characters' or take away time the anime could have given to flesh out the more important characters, like Mike and Kai. The last episode in particular even throws in cameos of characters from the main franchise that we'll never see do anything in the show, but they're shoved on the screen anyway! Though unlike Lapis Re:Lights, which came out after it, Actors: Songs Connection does make a solid effort to build chemistry between the more important cast members rather than have them putz around doing nothing and have them move the plot forward without sacrificing their development. But even with that, the characters still fulfill generic bishounen archetypes, so they're still not the most three-dimensional characters out there. Also, I want to see more of Ushio!
For the first four episodes, the anime does seem like it's just going to be a cute, pleasant anime that shows off a bunch of pretty boys, but in episode 5, a huge twist is revealed. I won't spoil it, but it does change the entire genre of the show and force you to see it and the characters and world from an entirely different perspective. But in all honesty, I think the twist hurt the show more than helped it, because said twist only brings up a lot of questions that remain unanswered, and since the anime only has 12 episodes, it doesn't devote enough time to really exploring the ramifications of said twist. I wish I could talk more about the twist and why I feel it hurts the show, but MAL doesn't allow spoilers, understandably, so I won't.
But at its core, Actors: Songs Connection isn't necessarily a bad show. It just bit off way more than it could chew, and I certainly like it a lot better than crap like Lapis Re:Lights! That's for sure! If you want to watch a bunch of pretty boys sing and interact, along with listening to some really good songs, feel free to give this a shot. But if you want three-dimensional characters, a well developed setting, and a compelling story, give it a miss. It gets credit for trying, but it falls flat on its face where it matters most.
OneTrueEevee
It's really tough to talk about this show without a bunch of spoilers so I have to keep this short. This show is something that you need to be into music for in order to really connect with. The character development was just not there for most of the cast outside of music. At first, the show was an absolute mess but when it started getting its shit together it was really good. By an absolute mess I mean the show was just not following any real storyline. In the end, it picked one up but it really was nonexistent for half the show. I highlyrecommend this show to those who like music but those who don't should look elsewhere
LilMonsterx
this anime has an interesting concept and it has potential but the plot and storytelling are messy as hell. i was confused most of the times. i wasn't sure about the anime's objective until episode 10. some episodes are not necessary. some characters are not necessary to be introduced, they should've just use the characters that was already introduced earlier for certain things (example: like that episode when they play the game). i'm not a fan of the art style. the 3 main characters that they focused on, uta, saku and sousuke are ugly, uninteresting and annoying. other characters are better than them in all aspects.they should've just make other characters to be the main characters (characters that they focused the most). i was so glad when they focused on other characters in certain episodes just so i can watch other characters instead of those 3.
my initial rating was a 3, but i gave it a 5 because of the nice concept and the ending. it could've been a 9/10 if the plot was written nicely.
Rinshuu
I was looking at reviews for this anime just for fun and I couldn't help but notice that a very important point was left out of a lot of them. This anime is, at its core, a love letter to VOCALOID and the culture surrounding it. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fully understandable! And I definitely think it would detract from how much someone enjoys this anime, but I do however think that this is not a bad anime. And I also do think there are things to enjoy even if you don't like VOCALOID. Let me explain. The anime follows a boy, Saku, wholives in a city surrounded by a big white wall. No, really. It's bizarre.
In this city, he lives a normal life - goes to high school, has a deathly sick sister; you know, the usual stuff. His sister's health is declining rapidly, so rapidly that he refuses to join a song trio with the deutergonists, Uta and Sosuke. In his desperation to save his sister, he remembers her telling him that the "white shadows" (beings that co-exist with them in the world) can grant wishes and, by some stroke of luck, him singing Uta/Sosuke's songs gathers a crowd of these white shadows.
As you can see, it's a pretty standard plot for your typical idol anime, but... white walls?? White shadows?? What???
Well... that's the charm of Actors! The story is absolutely bonkers. There is definitely no point in the story where you'll be able to predict what's gonna happen next, and I do think that's the beauty of it.
It's quirky on purpose, definitely a love letter to other surprisingly dark slice of life anime like Kemono Friends, so the story was entertaining to me.
As for the VOCALOID part of it...
Each episode has a cover song of a VOCALOID song sung by the characters. Why is that? Well, Actors is (was?) a CD cover series where-in famous Japanese voice actors sing VOCALOID songs. Although this exists in plenty by now, especially with the popularity of games like Project Sekai, back when Actors came out, it was pretty much the only thing of its genre.
First and foremost, the anime is a project made for the loyal fans who stuck by the CDs for 10 years (!!), just listening to song covers and hearding drama CDs.
If you're confused by characters, don't understand why they're sometimes shoehorned in/underdeveloped, et cetera, that is sadly just the reality of these anime adaptations made for fans. I didn't mind this as I've been a fan for a long time, but it is definitely a detract to most people coming blind in. Hopefully the anime sparked your interest in listening to the CDs as well!
Overall, I think this anime adds more than it detracts. Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely not. Far from it. But I think the insane premise, the music and the ability to turn off your brain and just enjoy it as an "cute boys doing cute things" anime makes it a net-positive overall.
cocolita22
If I could score this anime on art alone, it would be a 9. But when I factor in how bored I was half the time, I have to say ... 4. I finished it, yes, but mostly because I wanted to see it through. But most of the episodes genuinely dragged and I just wanted the end to come sooner. For starters, the plot was SO confusing. I still can't explain it even if I tried. Even at the end, there was zero resolution and I have no idea what in the world was happening. I just went along for the relationships and thebeautiful art.
I think this is not worth watching, but if you really like shows with a thread of bromance, you'll probably kind of enjoy this.
slodkalili
Because of the nature of the show not much can be said without spoilers, so if you want to go in absolutely blind don't look at this. I'm going to avoid the important parts but I need to explain the basics for anything to make sense. Basically, this is half slice of life, half mystery. Now that that's out of the way I'll start with the elephant in the room. The plot has an ok concept but was executed in the worst way possible. I'm the type that can never tell even when everyone around me says how illogical a series is but in this caseeven I could tell. Plot holes are all over the place, plot points come and go seemingly at random, and most of the parts you'd actually care about don't get explained. I assume this is because they wanted to keep our main cast oblivious to what's going on, and they never had a chance to bring it up in a way that seemed natural, but the result is a lot of guesswork based on a handful of short scenes of somebody already "in the know". I decided to be generous and give the story a 4/10 for getting me interested enough to finish the series.
Next, the art. At first glance it looks great, maybe a bit generic. The animation isn't anything to write home about but gets the job done. Then, as it went on I started to notice some corners being cut. I figured I wasn't some snob and could handle low budget and continued on. At least until the last episode rolled around and I realized the extent of it's problem. For once there was some action here and it made the lack of effort (or time) very apparent. The crowds are completely static even when based on the sound they were clearly meant to be moving, and apparently the team wasn't even bothered to add those action lines low budget series usually do. I assumed they had no 3d character but I was wrong, as later in the same scene they use them. Why nobody thought to use those earlier I can't even guess. It wasn't just the character shots. A good half of the episode was nothing but stills until I started feeling joy when at least the mouths would move. Also, I thought I should mention they reuse the same clip no more than 3 minutes away from each other, which is especially obvious because it's the only time the crowd makes any kind of motion. This is all in the same episode as I said before, which is good because it's not as obvious in the rest, but confusing because you'd expect the most work to go in to the finale. 5/10.
The sound is probably the best part of the show. Hardly outstanding, but nice enough. The protagonist is genuinely a good singer and the 3 or so songs they use for all the performance parts were fine. I can't remember any of the background music but then again that's not exactly uncommon for me. 7/10.
Oh dear, the characters. They range from boring to annoying. There's quite a few weirdos that appear like 3 times over the course of the series, I assume so they can serve as plot pushers in the last episode. Obviously I don't expect everyone to be well developed but their quality is pretty close to the main cast. The main protagonist is bland, his friends are either mentally challenged, forgettable, or frustrating. The teacher never got enough personality, although I liked that he was the only one to question what was happening. By the end they all step in to protect their school with the power of music but because of the jumpcut I couldn't tell how they were convinced to do so. I doubt the protagonist explained anything because he just obeyed a single cryptic message he got without wondering what it was at all. 3/10 the cat lover was fun.
There were a few parts where I thought the comedy was good, mainly involving the cat lover I mentioned earlier. Honestly though the hardest laugh I got was from the animation in the last episode. I felt absolutely no tension or even cared when I should. unlike most I kinda liked the slice of life parts, except for a few bits that I couldn't comprehend because of how absurd they were. One involving a fight that both started and ended with no good reason. Enjoyment gets a 5/10.
Overall I'd give this a 4. Please don't be as stupid as I was and just skip this. It's not worth the time. I had more fun eating the snacks I brought along than actually watching this show. Even if you think the start is decent or the plot is cool trust me, it'll go downhill before you know it. If anything I'd say a youtube compilation of the 30 minutes the show was good would be a better watch than the whole thing even accounting for the confusion from skipped scenes.
Kays90
I wonder where to begin this review. Shall I start with my usual about what I feel about this anime in terms of various departments or shall I make it a bit different this time. Well considering the high drop rate & considerably low rating, I guess I should tackle those issues first. Frankly its a shame that people drop an anime just after watching one or two episodes. Well this anime is worth watching. This anime is not at all boring provided you are willing to leave your affection of classic school or music themes stories. There is much more to the anime than most summariesor genre listing denote. I would love to talk about the same but don't want to spoil your fun. Most people watched the first few episodes and find it a bit wierd & cliche at the same time. They didn't wait for the story to unwrap. I am a big fan of music themed animes due to their cheerful environment & music. Definitely I was expecting to see the same storyline as most school club animes but that didn't stop me from opening my heart for the story to flow within me. Frankly, I find this anime to have a quite refreshing touch.
The art work was good too (though not as great as other animes released this year still no complaints from my side). As for sound effects (incl. voice overs), I find quite a few instances where I was somewhat disappointed. Dialogues of one particular character were missing even though one can see his lips syncing in first 2-3 episodes. This issue was noticed in dubbed version. I don't know how was the subbed one. I read some review here, where user complained about lack of expressions in voice overs but I didn't find that issue in dubbed version.
Character development was good too, not great but still manageable. I personally find it wierd, that the director opted showing a certain club so many times during the series (even in Opening Animation) that had a miniscule role in last episode. Direction in first 2-3 episodes could have been better and the mini-recap of previous episodes should have been avoided.
Well at last, I will again say this. I like this anime recommend others to give it a chance. I personally have seen quite a few bad animes thay deserve a high drop & hold rate, but this anime is definitely not the one.
