This Review Contains Spoilers for Wave, Listen to Me!

I think the creators of Wave, Listen to Me! put too much stock in the phrase, “first impressions mean everything.”

In the first ten minutes of the series we follow our main character, Minare Koda as she apparently hosts a radio program while on Mt. Sapporo in Hokkaido. We're immediately drawn in by her cadence: natural-sounding and rapid-fire, sounding wholly unlike the standard anime fare. Soon, Minare finds herself face-to-face with a bear, but, as they say, the show must go on, so she continues with her segment. We cut to Minare in a sound booth, reading a script as her co-workers and technicians look on. She gives relationship advice in tandem with her pretending to fight a bear, all gorgeously animated, mind you. Even when this bit ends, Wave, Listen to Me! is still committed to viewer engagement via interesting situations. We flash back to a drunken Minare impassionately complaining about her ex-boyfriend to Mr. Mato, a "total stranger she met forty minutes ago." The next day, while at her restaurant job, she hears her voice on the radio. She then storms off to the studio that played her voice. She discovers that this "Mr. Mato" is a radio producer and as she storms in, they saddle her with a new, live segment. This episode was perfect.

First impressions are important, no doubt. It's why it's called a "hook;" you want something to snag your viewers or your fish. And with the right bait and the right wiggle motion, the hook will be too tempting to pass up. But then you have to reel them in. You can't just walk away from the line and expect your audience to just sit through the entire thing because of first impressions alone.

Oh, sure, I did, but that's only because I'm insane.

After a strong start, Wave coasts by. It's never bad per se, and there are moments that reminded me why I picked up the show in the first place, but those are unfortunately few and far between, leading to an anime that has little to write home about at the end of the day.

But what are those things in the letter?

The best, most consistent aspect of this show is Riho Sugiyama's performance as Minare. Apparently, when she was first starting out as a voice actor, she was told that she couldn't get into the industry, for she lacked an "anime voice." It's a good thing she didn't heed their criticisms, because Sugiyama was absolutely made for this role and it's precisely due to this so-called "lack of an anime voice." The energy needed for Minare's voice would be bungled by any other given voice actor/voice direction. Her rants and tirades sound powerful without dipping into the over-the-top territory that most anime operate in. Minare sounds like a real person that you'd bump into. You'd find her voice humorous, yet oddly mesmerizing, as the listeners to her radio show no doubt do in-universe. Minare talks a mile per minute and I applaud Sugiyama for her performance. The show should be based around Minare and the unique voice that Sugiyama provides. When everything takes a step back to facilitate this, Wave truly shines. I get chills listening to Minare say “Mitsuo, I will kill you even if I have to chase you down to the end of the earth.”

I've heard this show described as an "adults do adult things" ala this season's Sing "Yesterday" For Me. I disagree. For one, I initially thought Yesterday handled this so well that Wave really wasn't much of a contender in this regard (keyword: initially) and two, I actually liked the show more when it focused on radio. Wave Listen to Me! can serve as an “in” to real careers and aspirations that can feel worlds away from us. Ping-Pong, drawing, chess, and tennis are all things that many of us might write off as boring, or at the very least, "not for us," yet the passion that the characters in these shows exhibit will draw us in. Radio personalities aren't really anything I think about. It's nothing Minare herself thinks about: prior to getting roped into the field, she had the perception that radio was dying. I picked up Wave, in part, because I felt it could be an entertaining "in'' to a real-life space I hadn't been exposed to.

I also kind of shy away from praising this show as an "adults do adult things"-type show because it's the exact opposite of what I felt so compelling about the initial episode. While the show is often more subdued and grounded than your standard fare (Kureko vapes for crying out loud), I believe Wave excels at being absolutely insane. Minare begins the episode pretending to fight a bear. I apologize for being uncouth, but I could care less about her woes at the restaurant. Give me the bear! Give me a blend of navigating the world of radio while Minare cooks up/gets into hijinks. This show can be laugh out loud hilarious at times and most of the laughs are garnered from the radio portion. This is easily the most entertaining part of the show.

It's a somewhat minor point, but, for whatever reason, I found myself intrigued at the fact that this show takes place in Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido. Anime generally take place in Tokyo (Tokyo is essentially to anime what L.A. or New York is to Hollywood), occasionally other places in Honshu, and rarely in Hokkaido or Kyushu. If you're interested in seeing an oft unexplored setting depicted, then Wave, Listen to Me! might be worth your consideration.

The art isn't anything too crazy, though it gets some points for uniqueness and also being committed to this realistic direction.

So if that's where the show excels, where does it fall flat for me?

Everywhere else, unfortunately.

The second episode largely focuses on the restaurant that Minare works at as it prepares for an upcoming Summer festival. I really didn't care for this focus at all. I found that I didn't mind the restaurant's role in the first episode because I assumed it would simply serve as the set-up for Minare's radio gig — here's where she worked before she found herself flung into the radio business. I was dismayed to see the show returning to the restaurant because I didn't find this aspect of Wave interesting. It's not simply because it's not what I signed up for; that would be fine, but it's often quite boring and doesn't bring with it the energy or passion that comes with the radio segments. I guess you can gleam some enjoyment from this part of the show if you enjoy Wave in an "adults doing adult things" capacity. I however, found this aspect unrelatable, and, infinitely more damningly, boring. Hurting things further is the fact that this aspect of the show often takes it over, shoving the radio portion to the side. It's one thing to have an aspect of the show that I don't care for. It's another to have that aspect actively cannibalize the other aspect. Unfortunately, this is only an appetizer. The entirety of Wave is out to lunch with itself on the menu.

Wave Listen To Me! seems to have an identity crisis and at the end of the day, I'm really not sure what exactly, if anything, the show was going for. You have the radio aspect of Minare's career. In addition to being in the booth, this also categorized as obtaining material for her show. Then we have the events surrounding the restaurant she works at. Then we delve deeper into this to focus on her co-worker, Chuuya Nakahara and his attempts to run the restaurant in his indisposed boss' stead and this eventually develops into focusing on the relationship between him and Makie Tachibana, the daughter of the man who caused his boss' accident. You would be forgiven if you mistook Nakahara for the deuteragonist of Wave, considering how much focus he gets. I'm not done, by the way. Then we have Minare's assistant director and roommate, Mizuho Nanba and her dreams for advancing her career. Then we have this weird love triangle (I think?)/ will they/won't they involving Minare, Nakahara, and Makie. Then there's the situation with Minare and her ex. There are other things that I'm forgetting, but the point is that there are a lot of moving parts to Wave and they rarely seem to work in tandem. Once again, the radio aspect of the show is often buried under everything else and I'm left frustrated.

I said earlier that the show "coasts by." I say this due to a combination of the aforementioned identity crisis combined with the pacing. The show seems to languidly meander through, abandoning the speedy pace of the first episode. Interestingly enough, Sing "Yesterday" For Me also features a meandering quality. I actually think it works in Yesterday, as it effectively emulates the character's indecision and the lack of notability seen in most of our day to day lives. Unless you count pursuing the characters' love interests a concrete goal, the characters in Yesterday aren't really aiming for anything. Wave however, gives us a clear goal; a carrot on the stick. "Here's this high octane, zany radio program. Minare is to pursue it, thus our show is to focus on it." But, for whatever reason, it takes its sweet time pursuing said goal. It gets distracted by all the different parts and I distinctly remember being unsure of what the show was trying to achieve. There were times where I questioned why I was watching the show.

The characters generally aren't very notable. At best, they're somewhat one-note, though comedic. At worst, they're one-note and boring. Makie's character can be described as being quiet. Nakahara is dense and takes his job very seriously. Mizuho is competent and sweet. While there may be more to their characters that I'm implying, it really doesn't seem like it, and, at the end of the day, I don't quite care. Throughout its run, without contest, I found Minare the most compelling and fun character. She generated the most laughs and I was genuinely interested in her life; from her relationship with her father to her situation with her ex. She too, unfortunately finds herself buried. This is despite the fact that it's her show.

It's a minor, petty point, but Minare's skit segments could be a bit too silly. There would be an outlandish concept that was somewhat dark and comedic, but the show would take it a step further and throw in ALIENS or the like and it would make it so over the top that it ceases to be funny. It's the feeling of cringing at someone trying too hard. At least Minare acknowledges the incredibly lame plots, I suppose.

As I touched upon at the beginning, Wave doesn't completely eschew the elements that I loved in the first episode. For example, I love the episode in which Minare and Mizuho go to investigate the former's neighbor and cook up an insane conspiracy involving him (to be perfectly fair, the reality they based the conspiracy on was pretty wild). I loved the part where a would-be murderer abandons her would-be victim because, while listening to Minare's program, she inexplicably describes exactly how she is going to kill him. I love the bit where Minare's father tells Minare a story of how she got her name. Even though it wasn't as funny, I loved the episode where Minare goes on a date with her ex. All of this makes Wave a hard show to put down. Most of it was a Certified Slog™ for me, but, quite insidiously, there'd be just enough of what I came for that I'd feel like I was missing out if I dropped this show completely.

The final episode is a perfect example of this. I found the beginning so boring that I was more compelled to start my laundry than watch it. I was on my phone as the episode played before thinking, "Oh, right. I'm watching this subbed." But then, towards the end, there's an earthquake and Minare must use her skills to professionally yet entertainingly calm her listeners. While the episode was filled with things I didn't care about, at the end of the day, it contained something I enjoyed, preventing me from dismissing it entirely.

With all this said, I'm wary of writing off Wave, Listen to Me! as a bad show. It's certainly a show that bored me more times than not, it's certainly a show that seemed confused, but a lot of this can be explained as the various aspects of Minare's life having an impact on her radio show. While I came for the radio aspect of the show, I'm sure some can find enjoyment in the other aspects. I'm not sure I'd call Wave an inept show, but it's one that I often struggled to find enjoyment in.

Wave, Listen to Me! is the only (kind of) show I've reviewed that I don't know what to make of, in terms of recommending it to others. On one hand, I personally didn't enjoy it all too much, so it really wouldn't feel right to recommend it based on my personal experience, but on the other hand, the things I docked points from are probably fine, just not my cup of tea. For this show, I'll defer readers to the other reviewers of this show; I can tell you what I didn't like about this show and they'll be better equipped to tell you what they liked about it.

While this show might be great to some, at the end of the day, I felt that the show as a whole used too little of what I loved about the first episode. The things that worked are certainly still there, but you'll need to do a bit of digging to get to them.