For anyone familiar with anime or Japanese games, you’ve probably seen the Nitroplus cover girl, Super Sonico in some form online or elsewhere. Featured across countless pieces of merchandise, the pink haired, headphone clad buxom babe is all over the Japanese market for figures, keyrings, games and I had no idea that she recently got her own anime series as well! Last month, MvM entertainment brought the 12 episode series to the UK on Blu-Ray and DVD, featuring titular Super Sonico and her day to day life.

The story follows aspiring rock star Super Sonico who’s in her own band with fellow music enthusiasts Suzo and Fury. Since Sonico’s immediate family are deceased she lives with her grandma who runs a restaurant which she helps at from times to time and also supports her studies through modelling, pin up modelling.

Jessica Nigri as Sonico's Voice
Jessica Nigri as Sonico’s Voice

If you’re a Cosplay fan, you will be delighted to know if you do listen to the English audio you have Jessica Nigri voicing Sonico’s ditzy character. After meeting Nigri in person, her voice sounds different in her performance as Sonico for this anime series, perhaps as the result of lots of voice acting lessons. Bizarre as it is, since this is her debut as a voice actor, she is in a team of more talented artists such as Luci Christian, David Wald, Monica Rial, Jay Hickman, Hilary Haag and more.

I would class the anime as slice of life as you simply follow Sonico’s adventures with her friends, manager and work commitments as well as her band, First Astronomical Velocity with bandmates Furi and Suzu . We don’t really get a background story on Sonico but we are introduced into her present lifestyle through episodes such as a journalist follow her life for an article where you discover Sonico’s love for animals, how much she loves her cats and how they help her run her life smoothly.

cats

Her band is a top priority and the modelling is simply to fund her tuition fees and lifestyle. Where possible she gets practise in for her performances and helping out friends whether it be at a maid cafe, teaching kids about whales or cosplaying for work. It’s nice they explain Cosplay as Sonico is voiced by popular cosplayer Nigri. They also have an episode just focused on her cats and her new addition Rice who proves to be more of a handful than expected.

One of my favourite character’s is Sonico’s manager, Mr. Kitamura, who wears a demon mask in his everyday life. He didn’t take her seriously when she signed up but has gained admiration for Sonico and her passionate work ethics and will protect her form being taken advantage of. In that respect there is a lot of fan service in the modelling she does and when Suzu tried to exploit Sonico’s and Furi’s ‘assets’ on stage – like with a heat activated dress which melts under extreme temperatures.

manager

We are also shown how Sonico learns to play the guitar and where she inherits her prized piece for an older student who vanishes into thin air but occasionally sends her postcards from the blue. It’s also funny as much as the series hits the inside feels you also have it making fun of Japanese culture such as Cosplay, live action movies, guerilla campaigns using women and being cute gets you everything.

Another great aspect is there are new ending animations per episode making each unique to the story. This kept me interested in watching each ending. Also there are a lot of songs in the 12 episodes which makes sense, I’m not an idol genre fan so that wasn’t what brought me to the series but some of the themes touched regarding friendship and cats were heart warming for me. Despite how much I wanted to hate Sonico for being annoying she wasn’t a complete do gooder, she was ignorant at times so showed she was human.

boobs

Also interesting to see how the series kept referring to Sonico’s and FurI’s weight very subtly but I could understand Sonico was a plus size model and fury was a considered chubby, it’s unusual to have over weight main characters in anime, with the last one I remember being Tyson from Beyblade who later lost weight in the series. There was also an episode about a weight loss cream and how the fat would disappear and how even Sonico considered using this cream as she had her own image insecurity.

Review Summary

Overall this is not my kind of anime to watch, it’s pretty un eventful but if you like fashion and music this is something to entertain you for 12 episodes and well cats – lots of cats ! I think the series was an easy way to make money on merchandise and we never see Sonico remove her headphones, what’s up with that, doesn’t she ever get headaches? Some mysteries are left unsolved.