~con allegrezza~

~with liveliness~

This is the first episode where things happen. The story still hasn’t caught my interest, but at least things are moving along for the characters.

The time lapse in the middle is a bit disruptive, as one moment Yuuki is talking about being away for a week, then the next scene is after her return. Maybe it flows better with a commercial break in the middle?

Yuuki acknowledges something I brought up about Miu before: Yuuki says she doesn’t even know much about Takizawa. Well, now she has a chance to get to know him. When the other girls said she left without changing, my initial thought was that she confessed, and things didn’t work out. Next, I figured she may have lost her nerve. The outcome was the scenario I least expected, but probably the best. Otherwise, Yuuki would either be left depressed from rejection or beating herself up over not taking the chance she had prepared for. It didn’t help any with all the build up with Miu having to practice piano that afternoon, then having to stay later and continue practicing. With things working out for Yuuki and Takizawa, and the “fateful encounter” between Miu and Takahashi at the music store, she should have an improved practice in the next episode.

I’ll have to check Miu’s calendar sometime and see what the underlined week it. My guess would be summer vacation, with this being the week Yuuki’s out, but there are two weeks following leading up to Yuuki’s birthday. If Yuuki’s birthday is over summer vacation, then how many weeks are the students off?

If it’s still summer, does that mean a vacation for Miu’s family is coming up? Miu’s father thought Akiko might be back hearing the CD being played up in Miu’s room. Unless he believe she’d be back out of the blue, I take this to mean her return to Japan will be soon, and he thought maybe she returned early. Or maybe he’s just such a dedicated worker that he has no idea what’s going on at home, which makes it so much easier for Hitomi to selectively choose misleading or unclear things to say Miu to him.

At one point, Miu’s mother makes a comment on Yuuki’s energeticness being what she likes about her. This suggests that Yuuki’s been over to Miu’s house, which in turn may suggest the girls have been friends for more than just the school year, maybe even since before starting middle school. A comment by Miu’s father in a prior episode threw me off as he wasn’t completely certain who Yuuki was, but that makes sense as Hitomi’s at home during the day and Seiji is probably at work more often than at home, not even taking into account the time at home spent sleeping.

Rebecca Soler has been keeping up the status quo with voicing Miu, at least considering the first three episodes. The voicing sounds forced during the episode, “try to sound young” rather than “sounding young”. During the next episode preview, the voice sounds natural, and it would have been a great improvement for her to use that voice during the episodes.

Yuuki’s dub voice continues to suffer from echoing when she’s speaking loudly, which is common for the character. I don’t know how they let that get by for all these episodes so far, but hopefully they noticed the problem and took care of it before too many more episodes.

I didn’t find any issues with Takahashi’s dub voice. Mr. Shirakawa’s dub voice isn’t quite the same as the same as the Japanese, but I think it might fit his character. Fitting the voice to the character is something which often seems overlooked, but I believe is very important. Sure, Soler gives Miu a soft voice, Zoe Martin gives Yuuki an energetic voice, and Marc Diraison gives Shirakawa a brooding, depressed voice, but that’s just the basics. You can cast 20 different people as a soft voice for Miu, and they’d all provide different results.