Special note: this review is for both seasons A3 Spring Summer and Autumn Winter Mankai Company is a far cry from its glory days as an allmale theater. With only one member left and debt collectors at the door a young woman finds herself in over her head when she boldly confronts the Yakuzas loan sharks promising to bring her fathers theater back into the spotlight. She might be able to recruit enough talent but can they bloom into the actors she needs? Unlike Touken Ranbuhttps://anilist.co/review/12908 which I watched because it sounded fun and didnt learn until later that its based on a mobile game Ive been playing the A3 Act Addict Actors mobile game and knew what to expect going in. And unlike Touken Ranbu: Hanamaruhttps://anilist.co/review/12908 whose anime seems to be a thing all its own more separated from the fighting/training focus of the game A3 just transposed its builtin storyline to animated form. Which is honestly a good idea The existing base story is perfect for a series: Trying to locate her missing father Izumi Tachibana ends up at the theater company he used to direct just in time to try and stop it from being knocked down by yakuza coming to collect on debt. She makes a deal: theyll put off claiming its large debt for now if she can gather enough members to form a troupe and put on a successful play. The problem: the theater currently has 1 member with no prior experience. So shes got to find 4 other guys a script and get them to put on a wellacted soldout performance in the span of 3 months. When thats successful she goes on to put together the theaters other seasonallynamed subtroupes in sequence aiming to get the company back to its former glory and make enough money to pay off its debt and ensure its continued existence. And the anime makes this easy: both 12episode seasons are split into two 6episode arcs that follow each troupe from formation to closing night. And through it all members learn to work with others/open up/express feelings/all that good stuff because of course they do. The fun of A3both games and animeare the characters. The game has no romance function rather its focus is training the actors and putting on shows and the instory struggles are usually because Character A and Character B keep butting heads or Character T and Character Z had a fallingout years ago or Character S just wants to fight. The story doesnt change from game to anime and some things actually get cut but animation does let it expand on other things particularly what the stage plays actually look like. I really enjoyed it because they are all dorks but they are all dorks Ive been playing for months and I know what their deal is. Theyre all designed to be likable I like seeing Yuki and Tenma snark at each other all. the. time. I like sweet Misumi and his mysterious obsession with all things triangle. I like Citrons cheerful language mistakes and Homares bizarrely ethereal poetry recitations. There are 20 actors in the main story 4 troupes x 5 actors each so while its a lot of characters overall the story focuses mainly on 5 at a time so you dont feel lost in a sea of people. Verdict English Dub? As of this writing only the first 3 episodes were dubbed before the pandemic interrupted and it doesnt look like finishing it is a priority. The dub that exists is decent though and I particularly like Monica Rial as IzumiI think she added a layer of humor that I dont get from the original voices. Visuals: Mediocre. I mean the hair is nice and shiny but the first season in particular often has faces that are slightly off and characters stand straight or are seen in profile often not moving much in group scenes. Camera shots arent creative. It did improve in the second season which got a new character designer new art director and new show director. But even so A3 was cheated. Worth Watching? Listen. I am an active player of the A3 mobile game and each troupes anime arc mirrors their storyline from the game. So for me this was really fun a chance to see characters actually moving around to see visual gags a different way to watch a story Ive seen play out on my phone. And sure theres a chance youll like it without that background. But would I recommend it if youre not playing the game? No. The story is better the characters given more depth in the mobile game so without that background the anime likely falls flat. The games strength is its story so that adds to my disappointment here: theres already a good existing story the base material is great why did so little effort get put into this? The theme song is very fun though as are the openingswhich change every 6 episodes to focus on the troupe thats getting the spotlight.
64 /100
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