With "OreGairu", Wataru Watari has earned a lifetime spot as one of my favorite writers. His take on human relationships, sharp dialogues and wide reference-base are really all I could want from a slice of life creator. This time he ventures off from the tried and trusted formula of a high school romantic comedy and decides to instead explore the less explored teritory of the insides of anime industry.

By the way, I'm focusing on the story here, so I might spoil some themes and plot threads (while trying to obscure the particularities of course) - if you'd rather avoid that, this is your fair warning!

Meet Chitose Karasuma, a rookie voice actress whose career is having a very slow start. After playing couple of small, episodic roles, she finally lands a lead one as a result of the corporate decision to create and promote new, young stars. The other characters include her fellow cast members, rookies and veterans alike, an irresponsible producer and his assistant, the author of source material, her manager who's also her older brother and all sorts of people who work in and between the anime industry.

Quite frankly, the first few episodes were really tough to watch - in a good way. They focused on the "it's all about keeping up appearances" side of the showbusiness, letting us hear thoughts of Chitose and see how her actions actually correspond to them. But we couldn't hear thoughts of other characters, and that was just terrifying. The question "what did they mean by this?" was rushing through my head after every line and gesture.

Chitose herself is a fascinating character. She's very cynical and realistic when it comes to understanding how that industry works, what's expected of her and why she earned the opportunity she did. But at the same time she's somehow completely delusional about her own abilities and likeability, letting herself believe that things are fine and there's nothing to worry about, right until things come crashing down and it hurts inside. It's that sort of insecurity where she realises she's not the best actress and she's not that popular, but if someone suggests she's even lower than she thinks, that wrecks her. At times she appears completely oblivious to certain comments and mood changes around her, and that seems related to her complete lack of stage freight (while voice acting is done in a studio, a voice actresses life is seemingly filled mostly with promotional appearances, recording vidcasts and shooting bonus Blu-Ray content in bikinis, because anime audience amirite).

They way the story is structured is that at the beginning, it heavily centers around Chitose. Things aren't all that great, but she keeps that weird cynically-optimistic attitude of hers and we learn about the others and the industry mostly from her perspective. She overcomes her initial hurdle and things aren't looking all that bad for a moment, until she reaches a brick wall. From that moment, I honestly didn't know what to expect. For the next few episodes her arc mostly stays in place and instead we learn more about other characters, their own issues that come with their positions and we get to know them on personal level. These episodes especially reminded me of OreGairu, with issues reminiscent of those of episodic characters from that show.

Thanks to that part of the plot, we can finally identify with these characters and recognize whether they are saying something they want to or are just being polite. This serves the final thread of Chitose having to decide what to do about that brick wall she's hit, as other's opinion of herself and her situation play a big part. Overall I really like this story and while the way it presents the anime industry is certainly very cynical, there's space for some optimism, positivity and just straight up laughs.

Obligatory paragraph about the production means it's time to mention that the colors and backgrounds in this show are absolutely gorgeous (personally reminded me of The Rolling Girls). Otherwise nothing really caught my eye, neither in good nor bad way.

tl;dr Wataru Watari does it again.