seiyuu3

If there’s anyone looking for yet more proof that the suits in companies wants to cash in on the big spending power of the otakus, look no further than this upcoming piece of gadget that won’t come to your overseas electronic stores anytime in the future.

Segnity is a 1-seg (a Japanese digital TV broadcast standard designed for portable devices such as mobile phones) portable TV device with a very otaku trick up its sleeve. What it does is that it provides voice guidance to the user as he/she flips through the days’ TV programs. “So what?” all you gadget geeks would say, “voice guidance’s been in gadgets for years!”. You sirs would be quite correct, nothing is new here technologically wise. However what if instead of the usual silky smooth, professional, but ultimately boring-to-a-T voice, your guide is tsundere? Oh yes, I think I’ve just gotten your attention…..

With 3 adjustable levels of tsundere-ness ranging from full tsuntsun’s “see if I care if you leave” to full on “you’re leaving already??” deredere even as you power-off the device, I can already hear the suits laughing all the way to the bank as otaku eat this up. And obviously someone at the development department has done their research, as the tsundere voice is, although not officially confirmed, said to be voiced by tsundere queen Kugimiya Rie. You can even listen to some voice sample here. It’s so wrong, ultimately useless, yet so perfect. What’s more, the device is also upgradable – different voices can be loaded into the device via miniSD cards, allowing for specific anime character and/or seiyuu voices to be sold. The possibility is endless and I can picture a red model with Char Aznable’s (Ikeda Shuuichi) voice on it already.

Peg to be sold at under 10,000yen (~US$80) and launching at the end of September, it’s pretty affordable in terms of Japanese spending power. I’m tempted to buy one myself for the novelty factor alone.

Oh and where can I vote for a Wakamoto Norio voice pack?

This entry was posted by houkoholic on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 16:26 and is filed under その他/Other, 声優, 釘宮理恵/Kugimiya Rie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.