Karaoke Iko! is the last big premiere of the summer. The last that seemed to have a realistic chance to be a needle-mover, anyway. It, along with Muchuu sa, Kimi ni., its Wayama Yama follow-up in this time slot. Wayama is one of the hottest names on the “literary” side of the manga business, having notched Manga Taisho noms for both series (and winning a Tezuka for Muchuu sa). This is her biggest yet bite of the anime apple, and with both series being a single volume each is getting five episodes as part of single short cour.
A lot of the talk (“lot” being a relative term, there’s not much) around Wayama in the English fandom is of the “is it or isn’t it?” variety. Where for a large chunk of that readership/viewership “it” would be a deal-breaker. And for a smaller chunk, a raison d’être. I don’t have much experience with Wayama’s work though I assume Karaoke Iko is the most popular, as it already received a drama adaptation. If this series is any indicator I’d say it isn’t based on first impressions, but it’s certainly suggestive. That leaves it in kind of a no-man’s land (no pun intended) where English-speaking fans tend to ignore a series as it’s not enough for some of them, and too much for others.
The premise here is certainly a bit of a credulity-stretcher for a series otherwise grounded in realism. A third-year middle schooler named Oka Satomi (Horie Shun) is the president of the chorus club, which is ramping up for the final competition for the third-years. One day after a competition in which they win silver (Satomi is disappointed) he’s accosted outside the hall by a yakuza named Narita Kyouji (Ono Daisuke) and basically dragged to a local karaoke parlor. To wit, the guy wants Satomi to coach him as a singer, because his organization has a karaoke contest four times a year. The loser – by the boss’ count – has to have a tattoo inflicted on him by said boss. Who’s not very good at it.
I think you have to have a certain suspension of disbelief here for this to work, but that’s fine. Satomi is no fool, and realizes that getting mixed up with a yakuza is a bad idea. But Kyouji doesn’t seem to want to take no for an answer. Eventually he gets the boy to listen to the performance he intends to give in the competition, a song by X Japan (“Crimson“). He’s predictably pretty bad, and Satomi is relatively honest while centering his criticism on the fact that it’s a terrible song for Kyouji to choose. Kyouji, for his part, is self-aware enough not to smoke around the kid on the grounds that it would raise difficult questions for him to answer at home.
I wouldn’t say we get to know either character particularly well in the premiere. Kyouji is largely the outsized outlier of a person as Satomi sees him. Satomi has his own issues – his self-confidence is iffy, and he’s dealing with what every boy singer does around his age. He’s been given the solo at the upcoming competition but the writing is on the wall already, and the teacher puts a backup plan (his kouhai Wada-kun) in place in case the dam breaks. This is the second time we’ve heard Horie-san confront voice-change issues in an anime, and he reminds us what a superb actor he really is. For a guy in his 30’s he brings a surprising authenticity to the angst of a 14 year-old dealing with this personal crisis.
It’s too early to say where the story is headed, but it is clear that at some point Satomi-kun begins to sort of enjoy this. The attention from an adult, the terms of respect, maybe Kyouji-san himself. We don’t know, and it’s not made clear. Implied in that is that neither do we know what Kyouji’s true intentions towards the boy are. Some suggestive hints are dropped and in most genres the idea would be appalling on its own merits, but that ambiguity is clearly intentional here. This is an interesting start, a rather odd story but one that could go in many different directions. At only five episodes it’s not going to take much to be pot committed, so I suspect I’ll know where I stand after the second episode.
