English Dub Review: A3! Season Spring & Summer

Overview (Spoilers Below):

When Izumi Tachibana receives a letter calling her back to the Mankai Theater Company’s doorstep, she heads back to her childhood haunt to see if the message could be from her mysteriously missing father. But instead of her dad, what she finds is a theater on the brink of ruin, as there’s only one member left and its current owner is threatening to demolish the building.

Seeing some of herself in the actors, she resolves to bring her father’s theater back to its former glory and enlists all manner of actors and non-actors to help her do it. There’s only one problem: she only has one year to form four seasonal acting troupes and stage successful shows that draw full houses on the closing nights.

Our Take:

Act! Addict! Actors! Those are the words behind the name A3, and they’re a pretty good summation of the show in general. A3 is about a group of people who are extremely passionate about one thing: the theater. Apparently it’s based on a video game, but I wouldn’t have known that without doing research, because there’s no real action or intrigue to be found. It’s just a simple, sweet slice of life about a bunch of cute boys trying to work together to protect something they love.

The plot of the show isn’t particularly interesting; the series follows the setup from the premiere episode, with Izumi and her fellow theater geeks working to recruit more members, create a show, and then perform said show for the maximum number of people. What is sort of unique is the way the series is divided into four ‘arcs’ of a kind. Since the original idea for the Mankai Company was to have four rotating acting groups that came and went with the seasons, that’s the bargain Izumi finds herself stuck in, and that means that the only character who really sticks around throughout the first season is Izumi. Which is great, because she’s one of my favorites: clever, focused, and able to look beyond the reality to see what things could be.

It’s neat that we get so many revolving main characters, though, depending on how much tolerance you have for anime boys. My favorite troupe so far is the Spring cast, comprised of Sakuya, Masumi, Tzuzuru, Itaru, and Citron. Sakuya is the best, because he starts out as the sole member of the troupe and commits to saving it after like, one day of acting experience. The Summer boys aren’t as fun, but Tenma is a cool character who gets the rest to band around him and their final performance is quite the spectacle.

As for the more technical merits, the show is unfortunately pretty mediocre on the animation front. There’s not really any  highs, since there aren’t any flashy action scenes or anything, and that means everything is just kind of a low. It’s passable to look at and the characters are fairly well-designed, but it won’t be winning any sakuga awards. Luckily the English dub is a lot more deserving of praise, with solid performances by the cast and a good script that does its best with some awkward ‘yay team’ type lines.

A3 is an interesting show that will appeal to a very narrow niche of people. I can see it being enjoyed by fans of the game, as well as those interested in seeing a bunch of pretty G rated anime boys bond together as an acting family. It might even spur some viewers to try out local theatre themselves—and if that’s the most lasting impact the series will leave on the world, then hey, that’s not too bad.