okusawamiikun’s 30 Day Challenge!

Day 24: Favourite overall vocals

I know.

"Tsubame you biased fool you're not basing your choice on musical elements alone—"

I KNOW. LET ME EXPLAIN MYSELF. Look, like with Kasumi, I didn't really like Arisa's voice either at first, you can't tell me I like it now purely because of best girl influence hhh. I watched the anime a couple of days after getting the game so really my first experience of hearing her sing was in Ep 11's unaccompanied Mae e Susume (yeah Sing Girls was the ED but I didn't pay attention to the solos), aka the best scene imo, but y'know, it was rough, because it was supposed to sound rough. Then I went and listened to Su-Suki Nanka Janai, which was an okay song until it grew on me. My first impression of Arisa's voice was just . . . "Yeah. Typical, cutesy. Probably a closet idol."

That changed when I started greedily consuming all the live footage I could find, as you do. I liked her seiyuu's stage presence, but more importantly—that one solo in HashiKimi acoustic. So soft and pretty?? Lovely dynamics? To no one's surprise, I hunted down more of Ayasa's work and gave my entire soul to her. So . . . I guess you could say this is more Ayasa's doing than Arisa's lmao.

Those solo bits where Arisa's voice sometimes catches or wavers, which I usually don't like? I thought it was a seiyuu quirk at first, not a character quirk, but as I found, Ayasa doesn't sing like that in other roles. As Kaoruko from Revue Starlight, she's smooth and lilting and flirtatious as heck (this is turning into Ayasa lovemail but I'm in love with this particular song, it's a duet but yeah).

Anyway the point is, Ayasa purposely makes Arisa sound awkward and sort of repressed and I've come to adore it after knowing it's intentional. I mean she does genuinely have a nice voice, it's just people wouldn't usually pick hers as a fav so I felt compelled to explain further? That's all I will shut up now