English Dub Season Review: Maesetsu! Opening Act Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Mafuyu, Fubuki, Rin, and Nayuta are four hardworking friends who also happen to be big comedy fans. But they have a long way to go before they’re going to be able to compete professionally with their fellow stand-up comedians. The four girls form two comedy duos and start practicing to give themselves the experience they’ll need to compete at higher levels.

When they get the chance to perform in the New Comedy Kings contest, they jump at the chance. But in the end, their paths don’t take the direction they dreamed about at first—neither team makes it to the winning rounds. But they still keep working hard at comedy, and when a famous group wants them to be their opening act, they know they’ve made it!

Our Take:

It’s taken roughly two years for this show to make it into dub form, but the time has finally arrived. I reviewed the first couple episodes of Maesetsu! Opening Act when Funimation dropped them last year, but now the full season has been released in dub form so it’s time to revisit our friends and see what’s up.

The remainder of the season sees Mafuyu, Fubuki, Rin, and Nayuta are still going strong and working hard in order to achieve their goals of becoming comedians and performing live at the Namba Grand Kagetsu. And what else hasn’t changed?

Unfortunately, it’s the fact that this show is seriously unfunny. Maybe it’s just me, but I expect a series about up and coming comedians to be at least a little funny? Honestly, there are some jokes that the girls tell where I start actively rooting for them to fail and pick different career paths. Maybe it’s the fact that comedy is one of the hardest things to translate into a dub. Between wordplay, puns, and cultural cliches, it’s really tough to copy a joke into an entirely new language and still make it funny (while fitting it to the existing mouth flaps.) That’s not to say the fault lies with the dubbing team—I don’t think this show is very funny subtitled, either.

Of course, there’s more going on here than just the failed attempts at humor. If you replace the comedy with any other activity, the show is just another average slice of life where four friends work together to achieve their dreams while making new friends and overcoming obstacles. The girls themselves are enjoyable enough to watch and have okay chemistry, although the show never really does anything with the fact that they’re all college-aged instead of the more standard high school protagonists.

On the production side of things, the animation is fairly flat and boring, but never flat out bad. I still like the character designs as much as I did the first time around, although Rin’s height still really pushes the line of incredulity for me. The dubbing work is great when it comes to the cast—although I was a little miffed that Remi Joseph didn’t get much to do in the last little bit of the show thanks to Rin losing her voice.

When it all comes down to it, I like the show less than I did after watching those first two episodes. I kept waiting for a ball to drop, for something to click, for the girls to finally find their stride and start making me laugh. And it just never happened. Maesetsu! Opening Act may be fine for those who are just after a humdrum slice of life, but people who actually want some comedy are going to find themselves closing the door on this act real quick.