English Dub Review: Actors: Songs Connection “con brio” ; “dolente”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The first episode of this week is con brio. When some of his friends from school eat at the restaurant where we work as a waiter, Saku somehow gets challenged to a curry competition by Kai, the resident chef in the group. They all go along with the archaeology club to the beach where most of them goof off or cook, while only the supervising adult, Mr. Usuki actually investigates. He finds a weird portal connected to the white wall. Kai and Saku both make delicious curry and everyone has fun until Saku sees white spectors out by the wall and almost drowns trying to reach them.

In dolente, the singing club makes more efforts to get Saku to join them, including visiting him at his places of work and forcing him to serve them delicious honey toast. Also, Saku adopts a weird cat who I thought might be a white ghost but is actually a hidden camera? And to top it all off, his sister is definitely seeming like a goner, which makes him hesitate to join any club or start a band for that matter.

Our Take:

One thing I will say after watching the second and third episodes of Songs Connection – this show is consistently inconsistent. One minute we’re having a curry cook-off, the next we’re investigating a secret portal in a creepy ruin. Three episodes in and I haven’t quite wrapped my head around it. Is this a show about Saku coming into his own as a singer? Is it about him discovering his true purpose that’s somehow connected with the white walls and saving his sister? Or is it about him exposing the creepy surveillance that is associated with the singing club…

The first episode of this week, con brio, is definitely the weirder of the two. It begins in a very ‘anime’ way, with our main character being challenged to a nonsensical curry competition and instead of turning it down like any sane person, he just accepts it and goes along for the ride. After the premiere, I assumed Saku was a little withdrawn and singular, but after this, I’m not sure how to read him. He doesn’t seem to be that outgoing, but at the same time, he’s fine with coming along on a club field trip with a club he doesn’t even belong to. Of course, Kai can be very persuasive when he sets his mind on something. There was so much food in this episode.  I don’t even like curry, but I was craving it by the time the end credits rolled. I’m still wondering about Mr. Usuki the teacher, though.

In dolente, things settle down a bit as we return to the normal world of education and after-school jobs. Saku apparently works at two different places, the curry shop, and a karaoke bar. Hinata and the club president of the singing club come to visit him at the karaoke place, where they eat a lot of honey toast and try to convince him not to waste his youth. (The honey toast looked even better than the curry. For a show that’s ostensibly about music, the food wouldn’t look out of place in a cooking anime.) There’s also a weird reveal that the cat Saku adopts is actually a moving hidden camera that a guy called Keishi is using to monitor the entire town. Oh, and he used to be a member of the singing club?

These episodes were very different from each other, but I did appreciate they both kept the connection going between Nozomi and Saku and the issue of the white walls. Saku keeps seeing white ghosts appearing everywhere. While it could be argued they’re just a figment of his anxiety over Nozomi, I feel like there’s definitely more to it now that we know the teacher is also seeing things like portals. I’m a little conflicted about Nozomi herself. I love her relationship with Saku, but I also feel like it’s a little cheap to use the only female character as emotional-bait to just be killed off at the end of the season. We’ll see if she surprises me with a miracle recovery.

The dub is solid. I especially liked Kyle Igneczi’s performance as curry-master Kai. Howard Wang is funny as Uta, although his voice gets a little grating at times. “At my house yesterday, you literally cried tears of joy over my curry.” Kai’s dedication is admirable: “The two of us are now bonafide curry rivals!” “I love the sea and the sea loves me!” Uta is one of my favorites thus far. Floppy arms forever! “He kinda did my a flavor favor.” Mike is cool, too. Honestly, I like the archaeology club more than the singing club at this point. “And if you don’t listen, was I actually speaking to you?” Usuki’s run-in with Mitsuki was hilarious, as was Saku’s with Ryo: “You need to eat people food.”

Actors: Songs Connection continues to offer up a few surprises with the second and third episodes. It’s definitely not going to go down as a highlight of the year or anything, but I could see this show snagging a few recommendations depending on how it ends up going. At this point, I would only give it a go-ahead if you like guys with wacky hair and don’t mind the occasional song. For an anime with ‘song’ in its title, there sure hasn’t been much focus on actual singing yet.