English Dub Review: Actors: Songs Connection “appassionato”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

As the rest of the school prepare for a school trip, Saku and his friends are getting bummed out. Saku is excited to go on the trip, but his lack of funds poses a problem. With the hospital bills, living expenses, and how much it costs to live in this world in general, he’s broke. Luckily, Sosuke and Uta decide to help by publishing their song and giving him some profits.

However, when they discover that the pre-recorded backing loop can’t match up to Saku’s incredible vocals, they embark on an instrument quest to find some live music to back him up more suitably. Once they’ve got the song itself finished, it doesn’t get much hype behind it despite its star status. So a member of the film club helps them out by directing a promotional music video for them which quickly goes viral, allowing Saku to go on the trip after all.

Our Take:

After last week’s fiasco of an episode, I was glad that this sixth episode of Actors: Songs Connection returns us to the usual world of school life and singing. Everyone at school is excited about their upcoming club trips, and I was looking forward to another trip to the beach where we would possibly learn more about the white walls and the other weird things going on in the town. The show quickly subverts these expectations, instead of showing us an overview of everything that goes into making a great song.

It all starts with the music and lyrics, of course. Sosuke and Uta get inspired and come up with a pretty cool song. Saku’s vocals are a perfect fit, naturally. But they run into issues with the recording space in their tiny dorm room. (As a fellow dorm-liver, I can commiserate.) This is where the singing club joins the storyline in order to provide a top of the line recording booth for the three of them to use. It’s still kind of interesting to me that our main character and his friends love making music, but still haven’t gotten around to joining the singing club. It feels a little like they’re using the club members only when it concerns their interests, so hopefully, they’ll explore that more in the future.

The funniest part of the episode, and probably the highlight for me, was the process of Saku and his cohorts creating the promotional music video for the song. Saku might be able to sing his heart out, but he sure isn’t great at emoting on video, much less dancing without toppling over his own feet. It makes Saku feel more realistic that he isn’t already a perfect singing idol or anything. Kakeru is a fun addition too, with his amazing vision for the video that slowly goes down the drain the longer Saku appears in front of the camera.

The dub is a solid effort, with all the singing vocals sounding pretty good this time around, with less obvious auto-tune going on. “We are singers, after all, so why don’t we all come together in harmony?” The singing club president has one-liners! “A pigeon came and landed on my head the other day, so…” Ryo making friends with animals is sweet. “Angry face, frowny face, and me!” Uta’s description of him and his friend group is perfect. “For a guy that eats cat food, you’ve really got it together.” After hearing Saku’s vocals, Ryo burns him in a positive way. “For starters, you could come down off the roof and start talking to people.” Kakeru has burns and marketing ingenuity!

While appassionato isn’t the best episode that Actors: Songs Connection has ever put on display, it does give us a nice look into the connection that has formed between Saku, Sosuke, and Uta, and the beautiful music that can come out of that relationship.