Thoughts on two anime series my wife and I have been watch. It’s not a review, just expressing enjoyment:
VTUBER LEGEND:
HOW I WENT VIRAL AFTER FORGETTING TO TURN OFF MY STREAM
And
MANY SIDES OF VOICE ACTOR RADIO
My wife and I watch television together; whether it’s Doctor Who or reruns of Castle, it is especially true when it comes to animation like MIRACULOUS TALES OF LADYBUG AND CAT NOIR, MOON GIRL AND DEVIL DINOSAUR, and we’re really looking forward to the new season of PHINEAS AND FERB. Animation is what brought us together after all.
As a kid I didn’t know what ‘anime’ was. These shows were cartoons like everything else I was watching. I probably began watching anime with SPEED RACER and BATTLE OF THE PLANETS. (This tells you how hold I am.)
My wife, as a kid, also watched Battle of the Planets, under its real name GATCHAMAN, when she lived in Japan.
After she moved back to the states, she would discover an Americanized anime we all know as VOLTRON DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE. I would be watching it as well, two states away. However, I would not become the super-fan that she did, but that’s another story.
Now that we are married, we watch the anime together. Last year we had two regular series that we watched; SPY X FAMILY, and FRIEREN.
Since the start of this year, we’ve been watching a couple of series that I found and was curious about.
The First series we’ve been watching is: VTUBER LEGEND: HOW I WENT VIRAL AFTER FORGETTING TO TURN OFF MY STREAM.
I probably would never have paid any attention to this series if I hadn’t discovered VTubers, or Virtual YouTuber, for the first time over a year ago. I’ll write about VTubers, and my attempt at being one, in the near future. To keep it simple; streamers on Youtube and Twitch perform and play games while using an anime style avatar instead of showing their real-life faces.
Part of enjoying the Vtuber community, and there are many across the globe, is that I’ve discovered several Voice Actors who have VTuber avatars. As a Voice Actor myself, I am always interested in what others are doing and learning from them.
One of the Vtuber’s I follow has an avatar by the name of Sylla Aria, a tiny little fairy. In real life they are Hayden Daviau. They have a great fun stream, and even greater when they play alongside their spouse Alejandro Saab who is also a voice actor and has a Vtuber avatar named CyYuVtuber. Bringing this back around to the anime, Hayden is the English voice of the lead character Kokorone Awayuki in Vtuber Legend. So, it’s really cool to have a real life Vtuber (which is virtual) provide the voice of an anime character who is a Vtuber.
I think that’s absolutely fantastic!
I don’t want to give away any SPOILERS, but the Title of the series pretty much does that: “How I went viral after I forgot to turn off my stream.” The main character who is struggling, suddenly makes it big after their audience hears what happens when they think the mic is off. It’s an absolutely fun series that is chaos incarnate at times. As someone who has actually dabbled as a Vtuber (again, I’ll blog about that later), not only is it great to follow the life of a Vtuber, but during the sequences that they are streaming, the character is animated with the same software used to animate the Vtubers in streams on Twitch and Youtube. It’s just crazy and perfect. Through the series my wife is getting to see what I find interesting about Vtubers. We haven’t yet completed watching the full season and I’m looking forward to the rest.
VTUBER LEGEND was created by Nana Nanato, and can be seen on Crunchyroll.
The second series is called MANY SIDES OF VOICE ACTOR RADIO about two young Voice Actors, each struggling with their careers and are rivals, but what they soon discover is that they’re classmates in high school, and are soon cast in a radio show where their characters interact and are completely opposites of who they are in real life.
Anything more would be SPOILERS, but I will tell you how this series impacted my wife and I as we watched each episode.
As the story progresses, our leads struggle to hold on to their dreams. It reminded both my wife and I of our own dreams in the animation industry and how it has been a struggle but that we’re not giving up.
The characters of Yuhi Yugure and Yasumi Utatane are so wonderful to follow and all their friends, family, and fellow voice actors give so much dimension to them and the show.
Yuhi Yugure is played by Moe Toyoa, and Yasumi Utatane is played by Miku Ito.
Having both worked in animation, there are scenes in at least two episodes that give us such joy. They run actual animatics from the series with in the series that the characters are voicing. Animatics, if you don’t know, are when the storyboards are assembled before the animation begins. It’s a test reel in a way, but it is also perfectly timed. In Japan the actors perform to match the animatic they are watching. Watching all this happen is glorious, only the artwork and the dialog with no music or sound effects. It becomes all the more real to anyone with experience in animation. Tugging on our heart strings and our dreams.
Many Sides of Voice Over Radio has not been dubbed into English on Cruchyroll yet, but has English captions. My wife and I agree that this made watching all the more successful (forgetting I’ve been trying to learn Japanese) as we are able to follow the story and the character’s emotions in the animation and was very understandable.
Where I was laughing at the recognizable parts of VTUBER LEGEND, both my wife and I were near tears with MANY SIDES OF VOICE ACTOR RADIO, because parts of it hit so close to home for the both of us. We both have our dreams and not giving up on them, and I’ll be following Yuhi Yugure and Yasumi Utatane as I continue my career as a Voice Actor.
Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio began as a ‘Light Novel’ written by Kō Nigatsu and illustrated by Saba Mizore, and they are working a manga version of the series. There are currently 10 volumes of the book, and though no second season of the show has been announced, there is plenty of source material if they ever choose to do so. I’ll be looking for the books.
Thanks for reading about what my wife and I enjoy together as animation and anime are important parts of our lives.
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