Tags
comedy, ecchi, eroge, Fumika, hentai, Kanna, Koe de Oshigoto, seiyuu, voice acting, Yayoi
Koe de Oshigoto’s first two episodes managed to hilariously and convincingly described the significance of voice acting in breathing life into a character and sensualising the sexual content. Despite being a mild hentai, the lewd scenes didn’t overpower the comedic plot nor ruin the good-nature and innocence in the characters. I also find that the hentai scenes were used cleverly–although I’m not fond of it–to efficiently stretch and tickle the viewers’ imagination.
A quick overview of the story is it’s about Kanna Aoyagi. She was asked to become an eroge voice actress on her 16th birthday by her sister, Yayoi. Initially Kanna refused because she couldn’t bear the embarrassment of saying indecent words. However, after realizing that her sister chose to enter the eroge industry in order to support her, later on she agreed to help in order to show gratitude to Yayoi`s kindness. Like any other voice actresses, Kanna’s main dilemma was due to being inexperienced. She struggled how to overtly articulate sexual scenes and found it hard to keep her job as a secret. Slowly, with the help of her sister and friends, she got used and understood the nature of her job.
Voice acting is the performing craft of narrating compelling stories, creating realistic characters, and bringing audience in a different realm using only the spoken word. It’s important to emphasize that seiyuus don’t just do voice but rather create the persona. They artistically and sagaciously embody the character to give life to the inscribed emotions and carve the story on the audience’s memory. In terms of eroge, the fetishized sounds have been the heart of the voice acting, obviously due of the characteristic of the game.
Let’s take for instance Fumika, a professional eroge actress and Kanna’s role model. As an eroge seiyuu, her ultimate goal is to arouse the gamer. She pleasingly portrays the character by eroticizing her moans through the use of different variations of tempo and rhythm. The speed and pace of her fetishized tone creates excitation and stimulation in order to seduce and arouse the player. Further, the dynamics of her pitch such as the thoroughness and repetitiveness of the heaviness in breathing are being utilized to sexually and leisurely lead the scene into its climax. And, in order to accentuate that the threshold has been reached, she executes an abrupt variation of her voice from low to high pitched range.
Moreover, setting the right body conditions to be in-synch with the imagination is integral to apt voice placement e.g. it can be through nasal, back of the throat, normal etc. For instance, due to lack of experience, Kanna was asked by Yayoi to jog for 30 min in order to emanate a suited sexual tiredness. Her mouthwork has been also trained and developed. For example, in order to produce highly sexualized fellatio scenes and the necessary sound effects, Kanna was asked to suck Nagatoshi and Motoki’s fingers. This vastly eroticized the slurped noises. In addition, this didn’t only help Kanna to become more emotionally attached to the scene but also completely absorbed her into the lewdness of the script–despite being uncomfortable she couldn’t help to come in front of the crew.
Overall, I find Koe de Oshigoto a pretty decent anime regardless of being ecchi. I like how it keeps on reminding the viewers that the main characters aren’t the ones doing the perversion, but rather the personas that they’re portraying–which is actually the main job of the eroge voice actresses. Furthermore, in playing eroge, no matter how intense and creative the pictures are, they can only go as far as visualizing the scenes. However, together with the sounds it takes sensualisation and arousal into a different level, transmitting and eroticizing the exoticness of the writer’s thoughts into the gamers’ imagination.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Side Comments:
- This post was supposed to be for last Thursday. Let’s just pretend that I posted this last Thursday.
- Thanks to my beloved cousin for posting this. It sucks not to have an internet connection.
Lol *Frisky
Haha, that’s one way to put it. ^^
Honestly, I loved this OVA.
Me too, I’m really hoping for a full season. ^^
Not just sexual innuendo but telling the tale of a seiyuu aspirant having it hard in the business makes this seiyuu fan quite sympathetic. I admire seiyuus a lot and having to see Kana’s troubles in delivering quality voice acting very much amazes me, even if the content is perverted. I mean, it’s probably hard for her to keep doing her job with a straight face and at the end of the day, she gets troubled but what she did during her voice acting. Hope they turn this into a 12 episode series though.
I really like this anime too. It’s very comedic, but at the same time it’s actually showing us the hassle that the eroge seiyuus face. And just like you, I have huge respects for seiyuu regardless of what genre they’re doing.
I’m also hoping that they’ll turn this as a series. ^^
@baka
Haha, but the thing is, Kana doesn’t do it with a straight face. She has a full-on erotic face the whole time, but I see what you’re trying to get at.
I don’t know if Koe de Oshigoto! is a realistic anime though. I think it might have hit the nail on the head in terms of the process of creating eroge and how hard it is for the seiyuu, but is it realistic to assume that this is really representing reality? I have my doubts about Kana being allowed to voice eroge, she’s only 16 after all.
I’m not also sure if this really portrays reality. But if we’re going to look at the underground industry, illegal child labour is prevalent–which can be seen in Kana’s case. Yayoi even mentioned that there are lots of small eroge companies like them who use underage seiyuus.
Honestly, I found this anime to be very distasteful, especially the second episode. I enjoy looking behind the scenes of voice acting, even if it’s the ecchi kind. And I agree that having to sync up imagination and emotions is needed for the best acting. But I found all the different… “techniques” the crew forces/ manipulates Kanna and the faulty information the crew is giving her about sex to be kind of disgusting. For example, when she is asked to suck someone else’s finger, she had no choice to refuse given the environment. The sort of peer pressure and job pressure the crew puts on her to perform is hard to stomach.
I’m sorry to hear that it disgusted you. Personally, I find it comedic but I also don’t like some of the scenes particularly the plotline of their eroge and the awkward sex scenes.
Sorry but I don’t totally agree that Kanna was manipulated. Although she’s only 16, I believe that she has understanding about the nature of the business. Definitely there’s some peer and job pressure, but Kanna wasn’t forced to join and she acted on her own peril. As for the finger, at first they let her used her own but it didn’t work that’s why her sister thought of something that will turn her on, and that object only happened to be a guy’s finger–I appreciate that none of the guys took advantage of her. As for other techniques like informing her that the male fluid tastes like milk, it might be wrong to lie but at least they are sort of still protecting her innocence–for whatever reason they have–and for the jogging technique, I find it a clever idea.
I actually like how they portray voice acting in general, not just for hentai. After being exposed to both Japanese and English dubs of anime for many years, I think English voice actors could learn a lot from their Japanese counterparts.
As for the hentai scenes to help with the imagination, I was actually a bit surprised at first. Sure, it shows what Kanna is trying to act out, but if this came out in the early 90′s, it would’ve been classified as hentai. In fact, there are a lot of older hentai that are less erotic than Koe de Oshigoto. Just goes to show how relaxed the industry is about this kind of stuff now.
Agreed. Personally, I don’t see this as hentai although it’s really hentai. How I find it is that they’re just showing the power of the voice and how it can tickle one’s imagination–the easiest way to do that is if you’re going to add some ecchi-ness into it.
It’s funny though how they dubbed animes in English especially ecchi and hentai. They’re trying to voice act such as the moans and screams but most of the time it turns out to be really awkward and weird. I guess culture has somethig to do with it that’s why they couldn’t fully incorporate the similar sound.
In my opinion this was good series, but it shouldn’t have ended so abundantly. Yes, I understand it might have been affected by the earth quake, but it shouldn’t be a “ova”. The manga series is actually quite long, and there is so much they could put into the series. It’s funny, but they put enough eroge in it to make people understand what the main character is dealing with. >.< I would love if they would at least officially put it on "hiatus" and turned it somewhat of a series. For all of us who have come to love the series. -_- This series truly helps people not only understand what eroge voice actors deal with, but what all voice actors probably deal with.
I think i've said enough. |3
I thought that they’re going to make this as a full series but until now we’re still waiting.
“This series truly helps people not only understand what eroge voice actors deal with, but what all voice actors probably deal with. I think i’ve said enough.”
Totally agreed, that’s why I truly enjoyed the OVAs. Plus, it’s really clever how they used the ecchi genre to explore the voice acting industry and relay it to the viewers.
Btw, thank you for sharing your thoughts. ^^