ガーリッシュナンバー

GI(A)RLISH NUMBER

ANIME

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
12
RELEASE
December 23, 2016
LENGTH
24 min

DESCRIPTION

College student Chitose Karasuma is determined not to do boring things as she enters the adult world. To this end, this bad-mannered beauty barges into a facility that trains would-be voice actors and actresses, somehow landing a job at “Number One Produce,” a voice actress agency managed by her older brother, Gojou. In Chitose’s mind, she’s poised for greatness, but finds herself at a loss when she continues to only get minor roles. As she clashes with other girls in the agency, including a cunning airhead and a girl with a Kansai accent, Chitose is about to learn that there’s more to succeeding in this competitive industry than she imagined.

(Source: Sentai Filmworks)

CAST

Chitose Karasuma
Sayaka Senbongi
Koto Katakura
Yui Ishikawa
Yae Kugayama
Kaede Hondo
Kazuha Shibasaki
Saori Oonishi
Momoka Sonou
Eri Suzuki
Nanami Sakuragaoka
Amina Satou
Goujou Karasuma
Yuuichirou Umehara
Kuzu-P
Kazuya Nakai
Towada AP
Takuya Eguchi
Juuzou Matsuoka
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka
Namba Shacho
Kenyuu Horiuchi
Line P
Youhei Hamada

EPISODES

Dubbed

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REVIEWS

WillQ
80/100
A cynically-optimistic story about realities of being an anime voice actress
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.
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nflstreet
60/100
A promising anime series that was cancelled before it could reach its full potential (ultimately for the greater good)
Girlish Number is a strange anime. Not in the "WoW, jApAn Is So KoOkY!” type of way, but in the way that it was conceived. Its creator, Wataru Watari, is also the creator of my favorite anime series, Oregairu, started this series right after its second season ended, and when the (at the time) penultimate volume of the light novel was released. One can say that Girlish Number was a temporary escape from the grind of the Oregairu series--one where he wrote 14 volumes and oversaw two seasons within five years. Others might say that Watari only wrote Girlish Number to try to prove to himself that he can have more than one popular series. Either way, Girlish Number did not live up to the hype in the end. Does this mean that Girlish Number sucks? Definitely not, but it’s no Oregairu.

Girlish Number stars Chitose Karasuma, a college-aged newbie seiyuu, through her journey of having a leading role in an anime. The only problem is that Chitose has a giant ego and terrible work-ethic. On top of that, the anime she’s leading in is horribly managed, with awful animation and unreliable people residing over the project. While her fellow seiyuu seem to be getting more work, Chitose is stuck with her one main role in a bad anime series and mob roles for other projects.

As expected from Watari Wataru, Girlish Number is a more cynical take on the production of an anime than an anime of similar nature like Shirobako. Since Watari had experience from anime production with Oregairu having two seasons at that point, some points of this series could be considered personal from him. Like Oregairu, the characters in Girlish Number are more interesting than characters from a typical anime series. They aren’t fleshed out enough compared to his other work though, which drags away from having any personal connection to them. Chitose isn’t as relatable as Hachiman is either--maybe I would think differently is I was a woman though.

Girlish Number also explores the lives of seiyuu that Chitose works with, especially Koto Katakura and Momoka Sono, who are already established voice actresses, with issues dealing with their families and work. This anime bounces around a lot with plot points, most of them unfortunately being left unresolved at the end. The main problem with this anime is that it is directionless when it’s not dealing with Chitose’s attitude problems and narcissistic delusions. I think part of this is due to only two volumes of the light novel being out during the airing of the anime (the second one being released during the anime’s airing.) With not that much source material out yet, it would be unwise for the anime to go that far ahead of the light novels. Not that it would have mattered that much in the first case, since the light novel ended prematurely the year after the anime.

I don’t know what the sales numbers were for the light novel, but the Girlish Number anime was a flop. The first volume of the anime only sold 1,008 blu-ray copies, well below the (arbitrary) breaking even point of 2,899 sold copies. While that doesn’t tell us anything about how popular the light novel is, the fact that it was stopped, along with all other Girlish Number related projects, in July 2017 probably means it wasn’t as popular as they wanted it to be. The fact that Wataru Watari already had a hit series in Oregairu that he was ignoring while writing Girlish Number was probably the reason that it was dropped eventually. There’s no need to write another series that performs well below expectations, especially when your other series is one of the most well-liked light novel series of the decade. Was Girlish Number as good as Oregairu? Definitely not. But it really never got the chance to prove itself. We might never know the full intention behind this series. Did Watari start this series because he was sick of Oregairu at this point? Did he do it to try to prove it to himself that he wasn’t a one-hit-wonder? Was he running away from having to write a conclusion to Oregairu? Since I don’t know Japanese well enough to dive deep into the history of the Girlish Number series, speculation will have to do for now.

Girlish Number is a fascinating anime for reasons that have little to do with the actual anime itself. It’s sad to say that this series was canceled before it had a chance to prove itself. Maybe it was for the better good, since Oregairu wasn’t going to write its own ending. But it's also sad to see a series like this one to get abandoned. At least it got a full anime season for what it's worth. While it definitely is an unfinished product, Girlish Number still is a decent anime that is fun to watch. You could also read the three light novel volumes if you become fluent in Japanese. We’ll have to wait to see if Watari ever comes back to this series, or if he thinks he would be better off starting a new series.
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