Wave, Listen to Me!

Episode 3

It really says something about what a compelling and relatable character Minare Koda is when you could go through half of “You All Are Soft” and easily forget that Wave, Listen to Me! is even about her hosting a radio show, and the episode wouldn't be any worse for wear. Having officially been canned from Voyager, Minare's existential and financial crisis is the focus of much of the plot, and it's painfully relatable to anyone who has hit similar low points in their struggle to survive their late-twenties. Really, Minare's sloven fallibility is what makes her so charming. She's just self-aware enough to play up her rough-and-tumble personality, but you can tell she isn't trying to be such a mess, most of the time.

For a show all about its heroine's talent for radio, Wave makes excellent use of Minare's expressive face. Early in the episode, Minare executes one hell of a martial-arts maneuver when she wakes up from a night of hard drinking to discover a man grabbing her from behind as she takes off her shirt. This is entirely understandable…Oki explains to her and the police that he has been dutifully carrying the unconscious Minare to her apartment for weeks now, mostly because she literally refuses to leave him alone until he does, returning to sleep in front of his doorstep or bang on his walls until he sets her in bed and neatly tucks her shoes away. Minare wears a deathly visage of horror when she hears this, which is also entirely understandable, though she isn't mortified enough to stop herself from asking Oki whether he might be planning for an extended vacation that would require a house sitter.

That's another quality of Minare's that I think feels so refreshing because it feels so unexpected to see it in an adult woman who is the star of her own anime. Her journey to become a minor-league radio personality isn't even all that related to her natural gift of gab. Rather, Minare's flat-out broke, with only 250,000 yen saved up versus the 260,000 she'll need to cough up for this month alone. When you literally don't know where you're going to be sleeping from night to night, there's precious little time to waste on being “classy” or “a socially adjusted and functional member of society”. This is how Minare ends up back at MRS, negotiating her very own late-late-night program with Kanetsugu. Does she like the idea of becoming a semi-obscure talent for local radio? Sure, but you know what she likes even more? Getting to live rent free in MRS' storage closet.

Of course, Kanetsugu and the others aren't really going to make Minare live in a freezing closet; instead, she moves in with Mizuho Nanba, the Assistant Director at MRS who serves as an impossibly-cute foil for Minare's coarseness. For how much the show has focused on Minare's less-than-ideal relationships with the men in her life, I was wondering when we'd see more of the women in the cast get integrated into her world. In this, I can confirm that it only took this one episode for me to decide that Mizuho and our heroine need to be best friends forever.

At this point in her life, Minare's boss has canned her, her ex apparently stole almost a million yen from her, Nakahara's friendly overtures feel a little too draped in “Nice Guy” mentality to feel completely genuine — I'm pretty sure he's the one that was going to grab her ass when she passed out earlier — and even Kanetsugu has made it clear that his generosity is rooted in his keen business sense. If she is in need of anything right now, it's more positive relationships with people that aren't explicitly trying to use her. Well, that and a paying job. Either way, what has made me confident that Wave, Listen to Me! will have more to offer than just a stellar premiere is that, beyond the funny comedy and the excellent visuals. I want to see Minare's luck finally change for the better.

Rating:

Odds and Ends

• You've Got a Face Made for Radio: Again, nearly every scene has Minare making some kind of priceless reaction to the tragic farce that is her life, but my favorite from this week is the mean mug she gives to Nakahara when they're eating lunch. A close runner-up would be when she's departing Oki's home, feeling so embarrassed that she doesn't even have a face at all.

• A cursory Googling tells me that the wrestling move Minare used on Oki is called a “hurricanrana”. The excellent animation and editing of even small gags like this are part of what makes Wave, Listen to Me! such a joy to watch.

• Speaking of the “handsy” vibes this episode was putting out, Minare explains that she discovered Takarada was gay when she realized how touchy-feely he got with all of the men in Voyager's celebrity photos, which answers Nakahara's confusion over why he kept getting his butt grabbed in the kitchen. It's a shame that such an otherwise progressive show as Wave would have to resort to the “predatory homosexual” stereotype.

• Naruho: “I felt like you were voicing the thoughts I have in my head. 'I will kill you even if I have to chase you down to the ends of the earth!' I want to do that too!” Minare: “By that, you mean you want to say it, too.” Mizuho: “Ah, yes. You're right.”

Wave, Listen to Me! is currently streaming on Funimation.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.