 Based on the manga series of the same name by Hiroaki Samura, we follow Minare Kota, a floor manager at a small restaurant in Sapporo who is getting over a bad breakup. One fabled night, she drunkenly rants and vents her frustrations to an older gentleman at a local bar. Unbeknownst to her, Kanitsugu Mato is no ordinary man. He is a radio producer who secretly recorded her drunken ramblings and aired them the following day live on the air. After hearing herself on the radio, Minare storms in demanding the broadcast to end. Instead, through a series of peculiar twists, she finds herself talking on air as the next late night host. Something you should know about me is that when it comes to stories found in anime and manga, I'm a big fan of the slice of life genre. There's something soothing about seeing everyday life and work displayed in your favorite art style. What makes it even better is when you relate to the plot of the story. No, I haven't been on drunken ramblings about past grievances, but I do have working experience in the radio business. We like to joke around that there is a manga literally for everything, but I always state, where are the radio themed ones? Because I'd love to read it. Well, thank my lucky stars that Samura decided to create this Saiyan manga about a loud, boisterous, charming individual going on a crazy ride. Minare is, like a lot of people, searching for happiness, making ends meet, you know, unsuccessful in romance, you get the picture. Working at a restaurant isn't exactly the most joyous thing for her, but it pays the bills. However, when she hears herself and storms into that radio station, it was almost as if a switch turned on inside her head and inadvertently helped her find her calling in life. Look, in real life, that sort of thing happens. When you make it to the radio business, you'll find that a lot of people are kind of odd, crazy, eccentric. A lot of them just simply stumbled their way in. Radio has a power to attract oddity in the coolest of ways, trust me. Wave Listen to Me channels this with the parallels between the unpredictable nature of working on a communications field and Minare's life. Having a story outside of Tokyo really does give a wonderful setting that big time city stations can't possibly recreate in my opinion. The moment I knew I was in for a welcome treat was just the cleverness of Mato as a character in recognizing Minare's amusing narratives and skillful, spontaneous, improvisational skills. In the world of radio, you need to know three things. One, zero distractions. Two, there's a fluidity to things. And three, you have to be able to adapt. This is a live media where anything can happen at any given second and the people working there are expected to react and adapt to the situations in hand. Sure, Wave Listen to Me goes a little crazy with the decisions made. I mean, in real life, you can't just storm into a booth and demand for a broadcast to be shut down. We're much less permitted to refute accusations without proper protocol, but we let it slide narrative-wise for entertainment purposes. One of the other aspects about the story that intrigued me the most is that after Minare gives her speech and counter-argument on air, the station's administration is impressed enough and willing to give her a shot as a radio host for a late night talk show. Ratings wise, that basically a dead hour, you know, the ratings don't really measure that time at three in the morning. So you can experiment a little and do out-of-the-box type shows. As a result, Minare's program is a surprising hit. The program soon goes into like urban legends, life calls, and other amusing stories inspired by their version or their reality of Sapporo. Where Wave succeeds, however, is in showing us the view of how a woman like Minare is able to take what would be a horrible or embarrassing situation and own it and, you know, flipping it on its head. Her talents are to entertain people. In the series, we not only go into the world of radio, we also follow her life outside of it and examine her personality and her odd friends and co-workers in the restaurant business, as well as how her relationship turns south. You know, without the scuffle with her former boyfriend, we wouldn't really have a story here to tell. Just like the manga with its wonderful character designs, Sunrise Studios or Sunrise Animations delivers us a crisp, beautiful adaptation. The city landscapes, the streets, its buildings, they're all wonderfully detailed and really do bring this world to life. The color palette used on the show is both vivid and subtle. It really knows when to highlight emotion and enhance any particular scene. The characters themselves just look gorgeous to me and they're rendered and realistically drawn, which I really appreciate. The control room and the radio booth and all that stuff is just very meticulously rendered and it really gives the viewer a different sort of front row seat to the action. The supporting cast in this series, they're all really well done in my opinion. Each of them brings something unique to the table with their individual problems and they sort of become sort of these elements that influence the story and moves the narrative forward and how Minata reacts to what is happening because, you know, her live program sort of depends on her experiences and how she can transmit in a humorous way what is on her mind and sort of like a reaction type program of the ongoings of the city. She may not know all the characters in the story but throughout her program it's as if she's there alongside them, you know, if they happen to be awake at three in the morning. Without spoiling things, yes, it does matter to see similar things to your life being shown on screen. Heck, the final episode tackled a situation that hit extremely close to home and made me reminisce as well as appreciate the craft and for once I saw myself in an anime and that was the coolest thing ever because I saw that and went I've been in that situation that is awesome. So yeah, just on that level alone, I give this a passing grade. I'd loved this series so much. The wonderful characters, the beautiful city, the personality, Minata's voice actress, she killed it easily one of the best performances you'll hear. Such a joy to listen to. She really does bring this wonderful character to life in a pretty unique way. So yeah, wave listen to me is a wonderful comedy slice of life that I think everyone can enjoy and I wholeheartedly recommended for adults and older anime fans looking for something fresh and fun to consume.