Koe de Oshigoto!

Koe de Oshigoto! (or Voice Work!) is an Ecchi comedy/romance manga by Konno Azure.

The story begins with Kanna Aoyagi, who on her 16th birthday is asked by her older sister Yayoi to help out at her game company. She neglects to mention said company produces Eroge and that she wants her little sister to become their resident seiyuu. Kanna knows little to nothing about sexuality, let alone H-games, so she is less than thrilled at first. Nevertheless she goes along with it, partly for her sister's sake and partly because she has no idea what awaits her. Now she must learn how to be a good voice actress, while being extremely embarrassed by the different things she must say. At the same time she is struggling to keep her career a secret from her friends at school. Can she do the job properly while she is still innocent and inexperienced?

Amusingly enough for a Seinen manga, Koe de Oshigoto! likes to throw staple Shonen tropes in the mix as well, all while giving a surprisingly faithful representation of a voice actor's work. It is also Konno Azure's first attempt at a mainstream series and although not technically a Hentai, still has some very borderline content.

Related works include three Drama CDs, a Picture Drama and an ongoing OVA series. Koe De Oshigoto! The Animation! take:1 was released on November 17th 2010, with take:2 following on May 11th 2011.

NOTE: This page is for general examples only. Character-related tropes should go to the character sheet.

Tropes used in Koe de Oshigoto! include:
  • Ascended Fangirls: Kana's two friends ain't exactly a fan, but they Jumped At the Call, pretty easily.
  • Audio Erotica: Constantly invoked in-series, though obviously the medium can't properly covey it. That is where the Drama CDs and anime come in.
  • Author Appeal: According to the author, the manga basically started as an excuse to draw embarrassed blushing girls, with the seiyuu plot thrown in to make it publishable in a general magazine.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: Sakanami and Fumika, the tension part comes from Fumika, since for some reason Sakanami can't get aroused by her services. For example.
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • Dismeyland.
    • Peposi NEX in the OVA.
  • Bleached Underpants: This stuff's ecchi, which is tame compared to Konno Azure's other works.
    • Several character designs including Kotori, Hadzuki and Fumika are outright recycled from said previous works, among with some personality traits. And just so there is no doubt left, chapter 26 reintroduces the girls from Puberty Crazies as in-universe fictional characters. In a bit of clever reversal the similarities are explained as the eroge characters being modeled after their respective seiyuus.
    • All the doujins shown at Comika are early Konno Azure works as well.
  • Censor Box: The OVA uses a creative type of this that looks like black and yellow police lines along with weirdly sounding bleeps. One of the bleeps is "Dame!", which is Japanese for "No!"
  • Censor Steam: There's one shot of Hadzuki in the hot springs chapter with exactly one tiny puff of steam concealing her breast.
  • Cooking Duel: A seiyuu contest, instigated by Sakanami, between Fumika and Kanna with Motoki as the target of their fierce attacks.
  • Dating Sim: Yayoi uses affection and familiarity values as a metaphor while explaining why Kanna can't enter her trance with Motoki, causing him to wonder whether she's been working on eroge for too long.
  • Disappeared Dad: Mr. Aoyagi died.
  • Emotionless Girl: Kanna's first eroge character was specifically designed that way, because she couldn't yet convey emotions. Non-erotic emotions anyway.
  • Eroge: Not one itself, but uses the voice acting part as its premise. There is also a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the different sub-genres and what goes into the making of an H-game.
  • Everyone Can See It: Everyone ships Kanna x Motoki, as demonstrated in chapter 24.
  • Gone Horribly Right: The suggestion to "completely become the character of the game" probably wasn't meant to be taken quite as far.
  • Gratuitous English:
    • The series Tagline - "Female senior high school student do a blushing character voice story".
    • Kanna's first eroge has one almost as funny - "Stories of girls who burn to volleyball".
  • Hollywood Sex:
    • Yayoi decides to deliberately brainwash her sister into thinking sex always feels incredibly good, for the purpose of improving her acting.
    • It gets better - her co-workers manage to convince Kanna that semen tastes like cream by having her simulate oral sex - sucking on Motoki's finger in her eroge trance - until they decide to throw cream at her face. Yes, really..
  • Hot Springs Episode: Chapter 32. It's even called "Let's Go to the Hot Spring!"
  • Ink Suit Actor: In-universe example with the eroge characters deliberately modeled after their voice actors on at least two occasions.
  • Innocent Innuendo: The first finger sucking scene for Natsumi, Fuyumi and Yokoyama.

Kanna: It's... hard and hot and larger than I thought...

  • Inspired By: A song about an eroge seiyuu by J Pop group Mosaic.wav, who themselves started by doing eroge theme songs. Appropriately enough, they went on to record Kana's first Image Song, way before there were even plans for an OVA.
  • Joshikousei: Kanna, Hadzuki and Kotori are always wearing their uniforms, including to the recording sessions, which presumably take place on off days.
  • Meido: A common theme, including at least two meido-themed games. Chapter 14 is devoted to a Maid Cafe.
  • Miko: Chapter 26 adds mikos to the endless list of exploitable character archetypes. Yes, there is apparently a sub-genre of miko-themed eroge.

Nagatoshi: They are popular y'know. There are no characters that men dislike.

  • Moment Killer: Happens to Kanna and Motoki twice due to overly-eager matchmakers spying on them.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Chapter 26 makes incredibly obvious references to Konno Azure's other series Puberty Crazies, right down to copying its first two pages without changing the dialogue. This is justified by turning it into an in-universe eroge, created by Blue March, with identical plot and characters, apart from minor name changes and making all the main cast mikos. It even lampshades the character design and personality similarities between the two series and explicitly points out who is based on whom in case that wasn't obvious enough.
    • Continues into chapter 27, half of which is made of scenes from Puberty Crazies (redrawn from different angles for obvious reasons) with the exact same lines. For bonus points Koe de Oshigoto! is being scanlated by the same person, who originally did Puberty Crazies.
  • Not What It Looks Like: In chapter 32 Kanna and Matoki end up in a rather compromising position where it looks like he's pushing her to the ground while groping her. Half-naked. The people that catch them then re-enact the scene (with their clothes on, thank God) for everyone who missed it.
  • Pixellation: The only thing keeping it from becoming an outright hentai manga. A good part of the naughty stuff is censored in-universe as well, not that the audience can tell the difference. It leads to an amusing discussion/rant about the necessity of censorship in fiction. Everyone involved is very much in character mind you.[1]
  • Playing to The Fetishes: The series as a whole revolves around exploring the most common fetishes in eroge, so this is to be expected.
  • Plot What Plot: Invoked by Kanna at the very start of the appropriately named fapping game.
  • Porn with Plot: The first couple of games Kanna plays.
  • Punched Across the Room: Sakanami's hammy fellatio lecture embarassed Kanna so much that Fumika had to "sucker-punch" him. It becomes this trope when this is taken Up to Eleven.
  • Punny Name:
    • The name of the game company "Blue March" is in fact a double pun. For one, it was named by Yayoi in reference of her own name. The Ao in Aoyagi can mean blue, while Yayoi means "3rd month". Secondly, as Hadzuki poignantly observes in the first chapter, the name can be abbreviated in japanese to "Buruma". This is homonymous with the english word "bloomer", a type of gym trunks which was commonly used for girls in japanese high schools and is a frequent object of clothing fetishes.
    • Later in the manga, a second brand is established under the title "Blue Orange". The first character in Kanna's name is the character for the fruit.
  • Rape Is Love: Touched upon when Yayoi describes the two main genres of eroge - love and rape - and says that this distinction is not always clear enough.
  • Refuge in Audacity: Much like Gundam Sousei is to Gundam and Bakuman｡ is to Shonen Genre Manga, Eroge Production is awesome.
  • Safe, Sane, and Consensual: Discussed in the context of eroge, with Yayoi saying that hard SM games don't sell, but themes like domination, servitude and slave training are perfectly fine as long as there's no whips and chains involved.
  • Say It with Hearts: All the erotic dialogue. The scanlations even started using censorship hearts.
  • Serious Business: Everything related to eroge voice acting is treated with the kind of passion you'd expect from a Fighting Series.
  • Shown Their Work: About the eroge business.
  • Sword and Sorcerer: A Type 2 non-combat example with Kanna and Motoki. Kanna is athletic but that's all about it, while Motoki is smart but lousy at sports. While in eroge work, however, he "buffs" her so she can enter trance mode.
  • Take Our Word for It: An Enforced Trope in the manga. Since it is a print work about voice acting, the only way to tell whether a delivery was good or not is through characters' comments.
  • Theiss Titillation Theory: Discussed in-universe by Hadzuki and Kotori, resulting in Kanna getting a string bikini.
  • There Should Be a Law: Several characters try to point out that what Yayoi makes her little sister do is wrong on so many levels, to which she simply replies there's no law against it. Nobody calls her out when she suggests something that is actually illegal like coercing a 16-year old to perform sexual acts on her classmate for the sake of sound effects.
    • But, this is Japan we're talking about, so...
  • Thick Line Animation: The OVA uses this style most of the time, which is unusual for an anime and reminiscent of the sprite-and-background look of most actual eroge.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Kanna and Motoki, the first is way too shy and innocent, and Motoki is too uptight and being gentleman about the business.
  • Virgin Power: In one of the most ironic examples ever, virgins make the best eroge voice actors, because sex in real life is nothing like its portrayal in games.
  • Whole-Episode Flashback: Chapter 13, detailing Yayoi's and Nagatoshi's Backstory.
  • Will They or Won't They?: Kanna and Motoki.
  1. ↑ Incidentally, Konno Azure never uses mosaic in any of his other works, instead going for black bars. Very thin, sometimes semi-transparent black bars.
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