Seiyuu Ka! by Maki Minami

Seiyuu Ka! (Voice Over!: Seiyu Academy in the English release) by Maki Minami


Genre: Shojo
Length: 12 Volumes - 70 Chapters

Art and story (c) Maki Minami

            The art has good hair, clothes and eyes. Body shapes are slim and the eyes are large, in typical shojo fashion. Wacky art is top notch, though maybe not quite as detailed as it should be in the beginning. The height ratio between girls and boys is really ridiculous, though, or perhaps the main character is just really short, in any case it hardly makes a difference because its a wonder any two people can both have their faces in the same panel ever. Through out there is a clutter about the pages, its not usually noticeable when word bubbles cover up half of someone's face, but in this manga it happened quite a bit. I don't actually have that much to complain about art wise, except for that. I highly enjoyed it's style, it didn't feel generic or overly familiar, even though it was from a mangaka I've read before.
            Getting tired of waiting for Skip Beat to update, but want some good show business manga to fill the void? Welcome to Seiyuu Ka, a story about the world of voice acting and a high school girl who dreams of being one, only she can't speak in a voice anyone would ever want to record. Yes, Hime has joined a voice acting school but very quickly finds herself at the bottom of the class due to her sadly lacking abilities. How can she make her dream come true when she can't produce even one voice anyone wants to listen to?

            So, show business cross-dressing is really nothing new to the genre but this one is a very good example, despite it's faults it was so very enjoyable right from the beginning even if there were a ton of character intros to slog through. Oh, god, the laughs. THE LAUGHS! Seiyuu Ka is very silly, in situations and in just plain character types. Its a bit like Skip Beat-lite in the sense that you get a lot of character information and Hime is a vaguely similar character-type to Kyoko of Skip Beat, but Seiyuu Ka is also a lot different. Since its about voice-acting most of the 'acting' is standing in front of a microphone, but if that sounds like it's boring, don't worry, there isn't actually that much of it in the manga. Its more about how bad Hime is and how hard she has to work to overcome it. There are some serious faults that you notice as you go along, though. One is the "plot" of this manga. It kind of comes and goes at times so that there can be more crazy things that happen, though this is the least serious problem, it still is a little jarring when there is a sudden chapter about some one's back story out of the blue. Another problem has to be pacing, time is kind of hard to count as the manga races along, sometimes a chapter skips ahead and other times it starts just where the other leaves off, but when it skips its can be hard to pinpoint exactly how far. Rushed would be the word I would describe it as, even in this manga that is twelve volumes long, you definitely feel like the mangaka is moving the story at breakneck speed. Even then, the 'trying to understand something' arcs in the story line would drag out until you were tired of hearing about it. Speaking of, I think there was too much recapping at the beginning of chapters, as well. Of course, I did say that despite its faults it was very enjoyable, so I will move on to this manga's good points before you turn away forever. I already mentioned the humor, so the second defining factor of Seiyuu Ka is the cross-dressing. I love cross-dressing, and this manga mixed it up a little by NOT introducing the cross-dressing right away, giving you a chance to learn the world before it changes. It is something I haven't seen often so I really appreciated it. The art is another plus, as a whole it is a good looking manga that is easily picked up. And even if it looks wordy, with pages sometimes crowded with speech bubbles, and its 12 volume running length, it was actually a breeze to read. Averaging much less than the hour I usually allot for one manga volume (and often shojo is longer because there is much more talking than in action stories), I ripped though it happily. In conclusion of this really long paragraph, I've read better show business manga and I've read worse, yet Seiyuu Ka seems like one I'll really remember due to its humor and its heart.

5/5 A definite read for shojo fans looking for a wacky story about wacky people, and also drawn out love triangles.