Rec
 

REC is the first anime I know that is set in the world of seiyuus. I've been looking forward to it, and it started today. I enjoyed the first episode, with reservations.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ara-aka_sm.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...hara-matsu.gif http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...che/record.jpg

The episodes are half-length, just under 12 minutes long. The animation is just okay, in my opinion. I've just taken a look at some of the manga and I like the character design better there. (So what else is new?)

But the story is fairly captivating, and they did a lot in 11 minutes. The basic story: a 26-year-old blah-looking salaryman is waiting outside a cinema and feels he has been stood up by his date. He is about to throw his tickets away when a girl tells him not to waste them, so he ends up giving her one and going in to see the film. She sits next to him speaking all the lines spoken on-screen. It turns out she is a new seiyuu... The seiyuu for the heroine, Aka, does a nice job. The role is not easy, and kind of like a school exercise, since she is always pretending to be different characters, practicing constantly. Reminds me a bit of the role of Maya in Glass Mask in that regard. The seiyuu is a newcomer called Sakai Kanako 酒井 香奈子. The only other anime role she's done is one of the sisters (Chiaki) in Magikano. She was born 1986.11.11, so she's 19. She already has a good home page. She has done one game (Ar Tonelico) and has done some radio. More info on ja.wiki

The director, Nakamura Ryutaro 中村隆太郎, has a good resume: he directed Serial Experiments Lain, Kino no Tabi, and Sakura Wars. The animation director/character designer, Morioka Hideyuki 守岡英行, did key animation on Neon Genesis Evangelion, character design on Sakura Wars and Ultimate Girls, and was animation director for Sakura Wars. Animation by Shaft. Broadcast on TBS Thursday nights at 25:55 starting 2 February, and a week later at 25:00 on satellite BS-i.

Anime News Network page

official site

I was surprised there wasn't already a thread for this. If there was, please merge this post.

There was one, and it had quite few posts in it, until it got deleted when the forum went down.

REC
レック

Its based on a manga thats serialized in the seinen(young men's) manga magazine Sunday GX (Sunday Gene-X).
For now there are 5 volumes released of this manga, here are the covers:

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/5072/vol1dc7.jpg http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/4808/vol20kt.jpg http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/9977/vol3fw5.jpg http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/8783/vol47ap.jpg http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/83/vol52uv.jpg

Genre: Seinen, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Info from AnimeNfo:

Genre: Seinen, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Same here, just without the reservations. ;)

I've not taken a look on the manga but the character design in the anime seemed ok. I liked especially Aka, she's just too damn cute. :D

Anyway the first episode was nice and had a few surprising elements.



I agree on the seiyuu for Aka. She does a splendid job in the first episode and I expect her to do even better in the next episodes when they show her in the studio. :)
Hmm, took a look on her page and I wonder, does anybody else think that she's looking quite cute on the photos? =P

Overall a quite nice first episode. The only thing I could complain about is the shortness of the episodes and the series itself, only nine episodes. :(
It felt somewhat rushed in the first episode, which actually might be better for a lot of people, though I wouldn't mind a somewhat slower pace. :)

Hmm, lucky bloke.

I don't like the whole half-episode thing though....

I wish it was normal length, but otherwise I loved the first episode. It's a different, more adult, take on a romantic comedy than I've seen in anime before. And Aka is really cute, which doesn't hurt things either.



Definitely looking forward to the subs so I can get all the dialogue, my Japanese skills suck enough I caught maybe 5% of what they were saying.

I had an interest in this show so I took a look at the manga and I found it to be very hilarious, and I cant even read a word (here's hopping someone will translate it).

I havent seen the anime yet (awaiting the sub), so here's hopping some of the good parts get animated. The funny and the sexy. :naughty:



Oh yeah Aka looks alot like Mahoro in the manga.

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/9880/00603rr.th.jpg

ep1

so is there a chance of this getting subbed by someone?

Let's hope so. I'd be pissed if nobody subs it <.<

I really hope so >.<

I had a look at the manga, and it looks great :)

Most likely yes...not that I'm insinuating anything... :heh:

Cross your fingers...

Anyways, great first episode, lots of story development, good voice acting (Aka's voice is quite good, ranging from high to low). I liked it a lot.

Too bad it's only 9 episodes of 12 minutes each.

Froth-Bite is actually waiting for the widescreen version of the raws to be available before making releases

Miscalleanous released episode 1. Time for this to move to the fansub group!
________
Henry Ford Picture

dled Studio ADTRW/Buttrock's version, no subs?

I couldn't miss an anime focused on the world of seiyuus.
I liked the first episode pretty much. It's very likely going to be one of those anime very focused on character development, which are my favourites in absolute.
Original way of depicting things and actions, the animation isn't outstanding but fits the mood of the show, that's the most important, imho.
*Excellent* work from the main girl's seiyuu, with a great range of roles all in one. she even gave quotes of the largely famous theathrical movie set in Italy and interpreted by Audrey Hepburn in the Fifties (1957 I think). I found weird they went to see such an old movie. Oh well.
The only major flaw here seems to be the shortness (both for single episode, both for series' overall lenght)

Looking forward to episode 2.

Wrong. You've got a playback problem. Do what it says on the AnimeSuki Playback Guide. If you still have problems do NOT POST HERE. Post playback help problems in the Playback Help Forum.

Just watched the first episode.


Anyway, here's my first impressions/the OP.

Well at least you know it's not going take untill the last ep before they kiss.
So this in my opinion shows how it builds on a started relationship, similar to, say Kare Kano.

Anyway i'm also a bit sadden that the show is only 8 eps long. Ep 1 was preaty much chpt 1 of the manga, so it seems they're not going to build on much of what Rec really is. Sad realy.

being an avid watcher of old classic movies, i found the Audrey Hepburn references very interesting.

http://gunsightone.net/RECHepburnWorship.html

Heh

Nice. Nicely found. Very cool indeed.

The first two were very obvious. The last one was not; i knew i had seen that image before but had no idea what movie it was from.

1st is Roman Holiday, 2nd is Breakfast at Tiffany's (of course). Anyone know what movie the 3rd one is from?

Well if I had to guess I would say the 3rd one is from Funny Face where she wears a similar outfit during one of the musical/dancing numbers.

I loved the Audrey Hepburn hints too *hehe* But I just noticed the second one myself (well it is the clearest :heh: )

Am I actually the only person who thinks that Aka's seiyuu's rather doing a mediocre job? I mean, every seiyuu is supposed to be able to do different voices - and sounding "right". Aka's seiyuu however sounds rather unbelievable to me as soon as she tries to change her voice (the ticket, Audrey Hepburn etc.)

All in all, I like the anime though. Aka's an interesting character, the story starts in a pretty interesting and unconventional way... I browsed a bit through the manga and I wonder how much of the manga will be covered in this anime - and whether the anime will be as ecchi and crazily funny as the manga *g*

Edit: Just like froinlaven has pointed out in his blog, Aka's chest is smaller in the anime. Maybe there really isn't as much ecchi (which I hope a lot).

Mine is just a guess, but couldn't this be due to the fact that Aka is still a novice seiyuu? Hence her skills and overall level aren't still supposed to be those of a pro.
What if her VA is purposally acting, for using your words, "mediocre"? Usually, no one is a master in his/her work at the beginning.
A little hint is also given by Fumihiko reaction to Aka's actings, not only he doesn't understand at all what she's doing and doesn't praise her, he was more for suggesting her to get lost..

As for the sex scene, I agree: it's unusual. But I think it's positive in this case: it probably means that the Fumihiko+Aka relationship isn't the focus of the tale, so better get it fixed already. Hence the focus could be on other most important thing by now, since the attachment between the two main characters has already been settled.
We've enough of infinite "pick & leave, leave & pick" relationships, so I think we can easily bear with how this anime dealt with state of things ;)

Funny face would be my guess as well. I can't think of any other movie, offhand, where Audrey wears an outfit like that. All three are very good movies:p

Hmm, no one's put a TL note about that cup cracking. It's supposed to be a sign of bad things to come in old Japanese belief.

yeah i know it is nice!

Hm, I watched ep 2.. it's kind of funny at times but I can't say it's anything special, really. For one thing the episodes are too damn short!! Arrgh.

Yeah, i feel they end jsut as they start getting interesting.

She is 20... ok :heh: I wouldn't of been suprized if they said she was younger ^^

Wow! It was really short not including the opening, it was just over 10 mins, well the show is alright.. I like the main girls VA and Boy they sure got strait into things with the relationship... :heh: but I dont really like how they just went into it after her house/apartment got burnt down... :/ but meh.. will see how it turns out, one thing I loved! was the opening song it reallly was Great! and the animation style was fairly nice too .

EDIT// Oh! and froinlaven Nice! review, and I agree somewhat on Matsumaru.. :/ not really a fan of him, and one thing to add why! just why! cant they make more interesting male character designs arrgh!! At the start his design was kinda good, but it seemed a bit over the place the whole episode (imo) seemed like his face got more fat.. throughout the whole episode ^^;;

nice anime:)
but i didnt like the voice of Matsumaru :eyespin:

The first episode was enjoyable. The two main voices were a bit of a treat for me - there was something about the way they both spoke that made the Japanese words easier for my untrained ear to distinguish than in a lot of the other anime I've seen. So, even if the story doesn't hold my interest, I can still use the downloads to help with my language training.

One Japanese language question: When Aka explains that she is a "voice-actress in training", she uses the phrase "seiyuu no tamago". Is "no tamago" a common idiom for "trainee" or "in training"? I haven't knowingly encountered the phrase before, although it makes sense even when translated literally.

I had noticed that myself, and since I got curious I made a little search.
While "tamago" by itself measn "egg", the expression "no tamago" indicates a future (substantive) .. for the subject . I.E. "seiyuu no tamago" will be "a future seiyuu". Alternatively it could be meant as "freshman/beginner", which would be close anyway.
This was what my little search brought to. Maybe a japanese native speaker could go further.

I also wanted to second evil-samurai remark about the OP, I loved it too, really catchy, fresh and enjoyable. This bring other points on the book of this new Voice Actress :)

I think "Seiyuu no tamago" means "Seiyuu in the making" in that context. But there is no clear cut definition as it's interpretted in many ways.

I've added Aka's VA, Sakai Kanako, to the "newcomers" page of Hashihime's Seiyuu Gallery: photo, links and some info.

I've had a chance to look at the first volume and a bit of the manga, and I like it a lot. I can see a couple of divergences from it in episode 2, but that's understandable considering how few short episodes the anime will have. A real shame.

woa *Sakai Kanako* is cute. thanks for the info.Is there any divergenences from the manga ? really ? how ? I just thought the episode 2 is very much less attractive compared to the episode 1.

I really enjoyed the first episodes I must say. I was a bit surprised at the length when I first started it but realized that I totally forgot about that fact. The interactions between Aka and Matsumaru were wonderful and their voices were great. Looking forward to episode 2. ^^