Actors: Songs Connection

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]

Outa, Uta Main

Hozumi, Yuya Japanese

Otonomiya, Saku Main

Kajiwara, Gakuto Japanese

Kagura, Sousuke Main

Urata, Wataru Japanese

Marume, Chiguma Main

Kimura, Subaru Japanese

Enjouji, Mike Main

Ono, Yuuki Japanese

Saotome, Ryou Main

Tsuboi, Tomohiro Japanese

Akika, Mitsuki Main

Nojima, Kenji Japanese

Mitsutsuka, Hinata Main

Hoshi, Souichirou Japanese

Akizuki, Kai Main

Eguchi, Takuya Japanese

Kadonooji, Satsuma Main

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Kaneko, Hirotaka Producer

Matsuda, Hiromi Producer

Kudou, Masayo Producer

Reviews

Dec 29, 2019

Jaikeis

Recommended

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 white ... wall 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 27, 2020

AoiHonou

Mixed Feelings

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Dec 22, 2019

KANLen09

Not Recommended

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 or ... take, 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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