Justin: Kei Yonagi’s life is rough — her dad left the family and her mom’s dead, leaving her to care for her younger siblings. Doing odd jobs to make ends meet, she still dreams of becoming an actor, but unfortunately, she fails an audition. However, an opportunity arises when one actor drops out and allows her to step in. Yonagi uses that to showcase her talent, which mesmerizes everyone and even has them clapping at her performance. That totally means she passed right?
Nope! The CEO of the famous studio Stars, Arisa Hoshi, rejects her because she believes Yonagi’s type of acting — method acting — is dangerous and will only end up harming Kei. So yep, she’s failed the audition twice. But that’s not going to stop Sumiji Kuroyama, a now-struggling director, from harnessing what he believes is a super talent that can shake the industry. And once the two meet again formally at the end of chapter 1, this begins Yonagi’s journey into the world of acting.
A couple years ago I checked out the first three chapters of Act-Age, when it was part of Shonen Jump’s Jump Start program. I said it was awesome, unique for WSJ (female protagonist, acting), hoped that it would be a regular in US WSJ, and this would be around long enough in JP WSJ to explore everything about the world of acting.
Well, it did not make it into US WSJ. But over two years later, it
- Definitely has been a staple in JP Jump.
- Is now available to read digitally in US Jump and MANGA Plus.
- And now the volumes are starting to come out in print!
So needless to say, I’m glad this manga has done well.
Act-Age, at least in its first volume, does manage to explore Kei’s psyche and her determination to take care of younger brother and sister. It does this while also displaying the levels of acting that exist in the industry. That is, generally, most aren’t good; even the most talented actors can be disqualified due to other factors (looks, words, etc), and then there are the few that can capture the audience’s attention. Kei finds herself being able to do the last part, but her actual acting has a ways to go — with only her experiences and watching movies as her guide, her perspective is limited. However, Kuroyama knows this and looks to make her understand she can only get better.
The manga does a good job of balancing this while also highlighting just how weird you kinda have to be to make it. Like Kei totally seems detached from reality if acting isn’t a thing, and Kuroyama ends up using a director doing a shoot to totally improve Kei’s skills as an actor. There’s someone that shows up later in the manga that jumps onto the stage using the audience seats. Totally weird, but sometimes, a little weird is good. I’m curious how that plays in contrast to those who are acting but seem normal, at least on the surface.
Between the art style, the pacing of the chapters, and the comedic back and forth between the main actor and director of this manga, Act-Age is a strong read. It goes in-depth into the world of acting without being too dense, gives us enough reasons to see Kei succeed and hope she learns, and also has a clear purpose in mind that makes me wonder what happens next to Kei and Kuroyama. Looking forward to reading more.
Justin’s rating: 4 out of 5
Helen: Kei Yonagi is raising her two younger siblings on her own after the death of their mother and her father leaving them, something that doesn’t leave her with a lot of free time for anything other than work. Kei’s siblings tell her that she has a wonderful gift for acting and that she should pursue it as a job and Kei agrees, although she doesn’t fully understand her talent. She has a hard time expressing and showing emotion in her own life but she’s an excellent mimic and is truly able to understand the depths of emotions on the stage and screen. People in the industry call it method acting and while many people aren’t sure how far it can take her, or if constantly re-living her own emotions to nail a scene will scare Kei for life, director Sumiji Kuroyama thinks that she’s the talent he’s been looking for.
Act-Age is completely different from the other, recent acting shōnen manga series, Curtains up, I’m Off which focused on a high school drama club versus this series which focus on Kei alone so far. That also makes Act-Age a bit different from most other shōnen series — it’s rare to have a female protagonist and the only other recent series with one that I can think of, The Promised Neverland, had its female lead Emma share page time with two other male leads. I just can’t see Kei doing the same. In some ways her personality seems rather unusual for a Weekly Shonen Jump series as well, as multiple characters remark she’s practically gloomy when she isn’t acting, but looking at Kei’s personality the other way, the personality of someone with a untrained but great talent that looks poised to shake the (acting) world feels very familiar indeed.
But first, well, Kuroyama doesn’t have the funding yet to make his movie so for the moment his company is more of an acting agency, earning money from commercials and such, and he’s nabbed Kei as the studio’s star. Having Kei act in many different kinds of situations lets the reader get a sense of her own personality, even as she’s erasing it to become someone else, and in many ways I like how strange she is. Kei’s pretty face hides a lot of awkwardness and some naivety but that, and just how seriously she takes every acting job, makes her fun to watch.
I did have to “turn my brain off” for some of the events in the early chapters as the story needed to shuffle both into place to get Kei into jobs and the agency and Kuroyama to explain what were probably very basic acting lessons to her, but even then I was entertained. I’ve been chomping at the bit for over a year with this series, waiting for VIZ to release more than the initial first three chapters, and I’m glad that time has finally come!
Helen’s rating: 3.5 out of 5