Sore ga Seiyuu Episode 13: Assessment (Final Impression)

“I want to be a seiyuu people remember and keep working for a long time.”

After a successful concert, the girls go back to their daily lives. But an important moment arrives for Futaba: her assessment. At first Futaba thought that’d she’d be fine as she thought that since the previous year she’s grown. But it’s not for her to decide whether she’s grown or not, it’ll be the people at the assessment. Basically at the assessment she’ll be asked questions like an interview. Also the people there already know about her roles so they’ll look at that too. Later in the episode Futaba’s confidence started to falter but as usual she got advice.

Just what kind of seiyuu did she want to be? Is what they asked her. You need to have a lot of confidence in yourself in this type of career. If Futaba had broken down in that room, she would have said goodbye to her seiyuu job. Other than Earphones, Futaba hasn’t really had any notable roles. She’s been doing minor things here and there so her resume isn’t totally impressive. The work that she has now could also reflect her jobs in the future. But Futaba still wants to continue being a seiyuu no matter what, even if she’s old. Luckily, Futaba “passed” the assessment. Passed as in she wasn’t fired from the agency, but she also wasn’t made an associate member. Instead she was deferred, meaning that she was given a one year grace period. She was given one more chance, so for the next year she’s going to really have to work hard or else she really will get fired. But if all things go well for her she’ll be able to stay.Even if it’s not a concrete “yes”, Futaba is still elated. So good for her.

As for Rin, she takes her entrance exam and passes. For Ichigo, she landed a job to voice a gross strawberry mascot. The girls are getting jobs, all looks nice UNTIL THE END. The three of them leave the studio together like they did in the beginning and Kaibara all of a sudden pops out and tells the three of them that he planned something HUGE. The girls freak out but we don’t see what it was. And that’s the end.

Wow what a tease. That’s the perfect set up for a second season, whatever Kaibara came up with even though I’m tired of him. The show comes to a close, so what did I think of it?

I really liked it. I’m not sure if there are many anime about the voice acting industry so it was nice to see one. Even though we had three main girls we had more focus on Futaba because of the harsh policy of her agency. I do think that Futaba has grown, maybe just a little. Her confidence wavers here and there, but I do think that she’s a matured maybe a little from the first episode. Just a little bit. I enjoyed watching the girls and I’m glad we had episodes dedicated to them, even though, again, most of them were for Futaba.

What this show was trying to do was show the audience what the voice acting industry is like. It mixed comedy and a serious side to show the ups and downs. It also brought us special voice actor guests almost every week. Their roles were to provide advice and for us to learn a little bit about themselves too. What struggles they faced with and how they feel about their jobs, about dark times they’ve had, and so on. It was pretty interesting to see. As for how in depth this show went when trying to teach about voice acting, I think it did it’s job. It really did jump around though which I wasn’t too crazy about. We went from auditions, to actually voicing an episode, to suddenly a web radio show, to units, concerts, events, commercials, foreign movies, audiobooks, and video games. It really covered a lot of things in a short amount of time! Of course there were some things that didn’t really need more detail but I would have liked to learn a little more about some voice acting areas. With the web radio show we saw how Earphones really struggled and I was excited to see them improve little by little, but it suddenly jumped to them finishing their show so we never got to see that growth. The stuff that we learned was fascinating enough but I do wish that we did get to see more. I’ve avoided comparing to Shirobako as they’re shows about the same and different things, but what I liked what Shirobako did is that they focused on a myriad of characters each with a different role when creating an anime (animator, director, voice actor, etc.) The cast was a little too big, but by focusing on them we really got a good view on the anime-making industry. With Sore ga Seiyuu we really only focused on Futaba, Rin, and Ichigo with also a random in-depth episode on Konno. And out of the three of them, I’m saying this again, we focused on Futaba a lot. But I think having a smaller cast is a little better in this case as voice acting is a little more solo than an anime team so we got a better feel of the characters.

This show could lack at times but I still had fun watching and learning. I really cared about the characters and I’m glad things went well for them. It’d be nice if this got another season, but we’ll just have to wait and see. 8/10!