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Early reports are out - Nakajima Megumi’s debut single released under her character Ranka Lee in Macross Frontier sold an amazing 35,000 to grab fifth spot on the Oricon Weekly Charts. Extra bit of trivia - All 4 Macross Frontier CDs released thus far had ranked in the top 10 on the Oricon Weekly Charts during their release week, proving the draw power of the Macross brand.

I’ve been rather enjoying the contrasting differences between the songstresses of Macross Frontier, and they did a particularly good job at matching May’n (as Sheryl’s singing voice) against that of Nakajima Megumi. While May’n has a powerful and confident delivery of a veteran performer that belies her true experience, Nakajima Megumi has a diamond in the rough quality which really adds to the overall experience of watching (listening) her raise that is captivating in a different way.

Now let’s just hope the series will continue to deliver great music.

We have a special guest writer this time! Insomniac, who took my lucky spot while I was away *sob* for this particular event presents to you the “The Tower of Druaga Animation x Online RPG” event.

On March 9 there was an event for Gonzo’s upcoming anime x online RPG project called the “The Tower of Druaga”. The anime has the subtitle “the Aegis of URUK” and features some really good names in the cast such as Orikasa Fumiko, Ishida Akira, Horie Yui and Chihara Minori, while the game is called “the Recovery of BABYLIM”. The event was held in 大学生協会館 (Daigakusei Kyoukaikan) at Higashi-Koenji. I met up with sent at Shinjuku where we then proceeded to take the Marunouchi line to the venue. We arrived pretty early; about an hour ahead of the starting time.

The event started 5 minutes off 14:30. The lights were dimmed and a preview of the game started showing on the screen on stage. After the screening, the MC Maeda Harikenzu came onstage and thanked the attendees for coming, commenting on how the attendees of such events were usually male but there was a surprising large number of female attendees this time. He then proceeded to gush about how cute KENN was as well as how he used itterashaimase (usually used by females) instead of the usual itterashai. Next up he commented on Orikasa Fumiko – or Oririn - and her new hairstyle giving it 100 points.

The guests then came onstage; KENN, (which they made small talk about him saying itterashaimase) Oririn (which KENN too gave her hairstyle 100 points to which she promptly thanked and said it was worth 200 points) and the anime producer Hashimoto.

Next off was the usual self-introductions where KENN introduced himself as Jil - the main character of the anime - instead of himself inducing much laughter from the crowd.

A PV of the anime was then screened. From an anime fan’s point of view, I would say the animation looked pretty fluid and the fighting scenes looked pretty good. I quite liked the CG + effects as well.

The cast were then asked about their opinion about the PV which KENN said it looked fantastic while Oririn said it looked exciting. Producer Hashimoto then proceeded to give a brief introduction on the history of the game and overlay of the anime as well as a brief introduction of the characters appearing in the game. Upon reaching the intro for one of the characters, Utoo, the MC remarked that this character was used by Fullmetal Alchemist (due to the fact that the character was similar to Alphonse in that they were both completely dressed in armour) which drew plenty of laughs.

They then proceeded to talk about the recording where Oririn commented that they had just started on the recording (about 2 episodes to date). The MC then asked who was the mood maker in the entire recording session where KENN commented that it had to be the voice actor who voiced Utoo. Oririn then commented that there was talk that KENN’s childlike qualities helped create the mood for everyone. KENN then proceeded to comment on how there was a period of time where he was addicted to tibbits and couldn’t kick the habit which led to quite a big uproar among the cast. To which the MC commented on how it seemed like more of a young girl’s problem.

We were then treated to a PV screening of the game after which the guests were asked about whether they played online games or not. Both said they didn’t have much experience but expressed delight in being able to play with everyone online today.

KENN and Oririn then took their places behind the computers set up onstage. I thought the setup was very poorly done due to the computers being set on the table. It totally blocked the audiences’ view. Luckily we were sitting on the side that Oririn was so I could get a rather clear view but KENN was completely hidden by the computer and the monitor. There was some fumbling with the mic stand at KENN’s end as the mic kept dropping down to a weird angle. Oririn on the other hand seemed to have some problems with her computer but it was only till they switched the projector to Oririn’s computer that they realized she didn’t know where the game was (it was just the desktop that was being displayed). It was quite cute actually though it kinda made her seem really computer illiterate as the game was the only program that was running (it was just minimized onto the taskbar). In the end a technician came up and solved the problem quite easily.

Rules were explained and KENN and Oririn got to choose the 3 players that were to play with them. The game started and it was quite cute watching Oririn trying to reply to the players in the online chat. She seemed quite unfamiliar with the game (not surprising) and it was amusing when she thought her character Kaaya (in the game) seemed too far behind the others and made her character run forward as well as the time when she suddenly used her power to ‘heal’ (or so I think that was it) another character for which she was promptly scolded by the MC for randomly wasting her power. Her answer? That she thought the other character looked abit out of sorts. なんだか かわいい～♥ w *me in fangirl mode*

They had some fun fooling around with the characters reactions and stuff before getting to the main point of the game that was to get rid of the slimy blobs that kept appearing. Oririn actually seemed to have quite some problems maneuvering her game character while KENN seemed to get used to it rather quickly.

KENN’s character Jil was to enter the tower while Oririn’s Kaaya was to stay outside. They projected the scenes on the monitor at the back but it was an either or thing so we couldn’t see both of their plays at the same time which was kind of disappointing since both their characters were to be at different places in the game.

One thing I can say is Oririn sure wasn’t much of a player. That and maybe the blobs were out of control. She kept getting surrounded and attacked by them. It was really quite hilarious. The MC kept asking her to attack the blobs and she commented that everyone was helping her do the killing. On the other hand KENN seemed ok or maybe because there really weren’t that many blobs in the tower. KENN’s character later left the tower to help save Oririn’s. It was quite funny when she kept saying “help~ help~” and KENN went “sorry, I’m late.”. In the end all’s well that ends well and that was the end of the online game session.

There was lucky draw session where the prizes were a poster and pin set to be given to 3 lucky winners. KENN drew two numbers while Oririn drew one. It was quite interesting as the 2 winners that KENN drew were actually consecutive seat numbers. There was then another drawing for 2 autographed boards by both KENN and Oririn. The first drawing came up to a no show to which KENN remarked that if there was no one claiming he would claim it. Apparently he wanted it because it had Oririn’s autograph on it. sent and I were wanting it for the exact same reasons as well…

The redraw came up to the consecutive seat and the second drawing by Oririn went to the person sitting one seat away from the person she picked for the poster and pins giveaway. Really makes me wonder if the drawings were rigged…

Next up was a video by the group ムラマサ☆ (Muramasa) which sang the OP for the anime. It was really funny that there were so many people in the video but only 2 spoke. It was kinda like “What happened to the rest?!”. After the video KENN was asked to comment a little on the ED which he’s in charge of. He followed up from his comment with a live performance of the song. The singing wasn’t bad but the music was a tad bit loud for my ears. Plus the fact that he seemed like he was trying to carry off an attitude during the performance (my opinion) but failed miserably (my opinion too). The event then ended with KENN, Oririn and Producer Hashimoto plugging the game and anime.

Overall it was a pretty good event except for the computer setup glitch as well as the MC. He got a bit irritating after time.

A current discussion thread on 2ch.

From Bandai Ent. USA’s official Code Geass page:

Taeko Chiba?

Still, probably a lot more forgivible then ADV’s HURAHI fisco.

According to the official production blog, which revealed another surprise trick for this series which had already gathered some attention for its reverse broadcast order, 3 seiyuus had actually penned scripts for the spring season anime “Touka Gettan” (桃華月憚) . Although they haven’t disclosed which episode they partake in, they did release the names of the seiyuus. The seiyuus whom took part are Noto Mamiko, Shimizu Ai and Yamamoto Maria, of which Yamamoto Maria is currently voicing a character in the anime itself. Getting seiyuu more involved in the production seems to be a current fad as we had examples like Inoue Maria doing illustrations for the ending of an episode of Zegapain, but apparently getting them to write scripts is considered a bit of first in the industry. Seiyuu fans whom are following the anime might want to keep an eye on the credit role in the upcoming episodes.

I’m not following the anime personally, but this does spike my interest in giving it a shot. Damn these publicity stunts.

Full of bias, probably makes no sense, and in no way representative of my opinion towards the actual show itself.

Claymore: Solid Houko performance. Houko has been settling into the deeper end of her voice spectrum for a while now and thus her role in Claymore is within expectation. I’m beginning to miss her Yurika days.

Darker than Black: Police woman Nana-chan FTW.

El Cazador: Kajiura Yuki, oh wait she’s not a seiyuu.

Hayate no Gotoku: My pick is Shiraishi Ryoko, she’s getting quite into these boy roles of hers and it’s good to see her finding her strong point which separates her from the rest. Kugimiya Rie’s Shana Louise Nagi is also fun to listen to, I don’t think I will get sick of THE tsundere voice for a while yet.

Idol Master Xenoglossia: It’s a game of re-mapping the Mai-hime/Otome cast.

Lucky Star: I like everyone except Hirano Aya, although I have yet to remember all their names yet. Sorry girls, I really do appreciate your performance, really, just give me some time so I can put your names down next time.

Nagasarete Airantou: Starchild’s long overdue Horie Yui’s personal marketing project, because we all know that her job with Aice5 is almost done.

Nanoha StrikerS: You don’t really want to hear me go on about Nanoha’s cast do you?

Polyphonica: I know you all think I’m going to say Nana-chan but it’s Tomatsu Haruka. Apparently she’s only 17 on her debuting role but she’s doing a hell of a job covering both range of Cordy.

Shining Tears X Wind: Hoshi Souichiro because he is not doing a whiny dude. Putting Ishida Akira and Okiayu Ryutaro in the mix surely would please the fangirls.

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann: Konishi Katsuyuki. Because the person that talks like they’re STUCK IN CAPS is the *soul* of a super robot show.

sola: Normally I’m not much of a fan of Noto Mamiko, but for once I would side with the “Noto kawaii yo Noto” crowd. Nakahara Mai doing a mukuchi character is also refreshing to me.

What do others think?

houkoholic: Yayz for Lyrical Party 3!!!!111111 Hooray for fire hazards!!!!!!!

sent: Lyrical Party for teh winz!!!!11111

houkoholic: ok let’s be serious now, what was your impression of LP3?

sent: Well, there were parts they executed well and some parts, not so much. Let me get this out of the way though, the guests were really done up well today. They looked great on stage. It’s a real pity only the 200 people or so at the front out of 7000 got to enjoy that eye candy.

houkoholic: Seriously, everyone was so glamorous and so beautiful, it’s a wonder why they decided not to, you know, actually put them on those 5 big screens in the venue and instead make us watch powerpoint slide shows.

sent: Ok let’s backtrack a bit for the readers and explain the setting a bit. Events like Lyrical Party are all about the seiyuu. They come on stage, play some games, give some commentary and generally the fans get to see them out from behind the screen. LP3 was much like last year’s Lyrical Party, except this year it’s been tripled in scale with around 7000 in attendance at the Tokyo Big Sight. 10 members of the seiyuu cast were there to celebrate the commencement of Nanoha StrikerS season. This included, of course, Tamura Yukari, Mizuki Nana, Ueda Kana, Shimizu Kaori, Sanada Asami, Takahashi Mikako, Yuzuki Ryoka, and 3 new comers Saito Chiwa, Nakahara Mai and Inoue Marina. That’s an impressive assembly. And with a surprise video message from Donna Burke (Go Aussie!), it could have been a hell of a fun event.

houkoholic: But, and it’s a BIG but, things are just mishandled in various places and the experience was significantly downgraded.

As mentioned earlier, everyone at the event were really dressed up and they all looked fantastic, special mention goes to Nakahara Mai and Yuzuki Ryouka who both looked especially classy. You would think for an event where they went to the trouble of assembling 10 fine looking female seiyuu and went to all the trouble of making them up for the camera in what is obviously a stage show that caters to fans of these seiyuu, they would have the sense to have decent camera work so that the 7000 people can actually see them. Instead, the camera work for the duration of the show was so poor that I barely got a glimpse of them, despite them having strategically set up 5 large projector screens to let people who are too far from the stage to see what’s happening.

sent: The event direction was below par. Not blessed with the best tickets at the event, the screen next to us was all we had to go on. I didn’t really need to be reminded, that yes, I am at Lyrical Party 3, 50% of the time. They needed more wide shots of the stage, and badly. Every time there was anything interesting happening on the stage, the screen cut to the powerpoint presentation telling us which segment we were currently experiencing and they only cut to the stage after it was all settled. That’s just poor direction. The fans are here to see the seiyuu and anything happening on stage is infinitely more interesting than powerpoint.

houkoholic: yeah, like during the picture message game. In any type of TV show that would be the perfect time to do a panning shot of the guests as they draw or when they show each other their drawings, but somehow it didn’t occurred to the video director until quite a few rounds after to do such a thing and swap out the powerpoint and that was extremely frustrating. By the way, I was surprised that both Yuzuki Ryouka and Inoue Marina were extremely good drawers, which makes up for the lack of Kuwatani Natsuko and Mizuhashi Kaori whom provided the amusing drawings from the previous LPs.

sent: This is not to say that the event was entirely substandard. There were parts that were up to scratch. Like the Shuffle Afureco. This is where they take a scene from last season, shuffle the roles and perform it live on stage. The talent of the seiyuus really shone through there and it was highlight of Lyrical Party. The first round was a classic featuring the ending scene from the first episode of Nanoha A’s. The Wii Bowling segment was also good show.

houkoholic: I would say all the games they organised were fun, just that I don’t really get to see what’s happening for the most part due to the poor camera direction. I was particularly impressed with the quick wits of the seiyuu in coming up with made up dialogues to go with the scenes. Vita the loan shark chasing Nanoha for money was funny as hell, and the NHK punch line had me cramping up with laughter. Also big kudos for the Gundam spoof in the second round.

sent: And as much as I like Mishima (note: he’s the producer of Nanoha), he only barely held up his role as MC. There were a few times where his direction could have made the games even more exciting but he seemed satisfied to sit back and let it play out as it was, much like he has in previous encounters.

In a broader sense, the lack of planning to scale is becoming a trend in many of the events that we’ve been to recently. They just don’t seem to know how to address the larger numbers of people. While these events used to be smaller and more manageable, they’re now beginning to reach higher crowd numbers, and evidently the event planners aren’t ready for it.

On a side note, I worry about the writing for Nanoha StrikerS. The style and presentation is certainly different to Nanoha A’s and while I could see what they were going for in the first episode setting up the strong friendship between Subaru and Teana, it lacks the impact that Nanoha A’s carried. Still with 26 episodes to play out the myriad of new characters there is plenty of scope for some classic moments. I would raise some questions about animation quality too but it’s early.

houkoholic: Nanoha is entirely cheese in its core, but I felt they already over did the cheese factor in the first episode with Subaru and Teana’s long chat during the mage rank exam. The opening animation is also not timed as well as it could have been and just didn’t have the same adrenaline rush like with A’s opening, even though I’ve already warmed up to Secret Ambition. On the other hand Subaru’s hand-to-hand style of combat did make for some fairly nice battle sequences. Overall though I say that the first episode of StrikerS is not as exciting as A’s, but with 26 episodes to work with I guess they felt they can ease into the story this time, so will just have to keep watching and see what they can pull off.

Music wise, for the mini-live section it started off with Ueda Kanna doing a very nice performance of “Snow Rain” from A’s. Then it was Nana-chan performing the 3 opening songs in chronological order. Afterwards it was Yukarin’s turn to perform the ending themes. We got to listen to the ending theme “Hoshizora no Spica” by Yukarin for the first time. The song this time around instead of the mellow songs of the previous two it’s more punchy to reflect the now matured and combat-harden Nanoha.

sent: No complaints for the music. Secret Ambition carries that elements garden touch and harkens to the great “Eternal Blaze” and may achieve the same greatness as time passes. Ueda Kana is surprisingly good live. She’s left a good impression on me.

That was it for Lyrical Party III. It had some classic hilarity that LP has become to be known for but execution in the directorial department leaves a lot to be desired. StrikerS should still make an interesting series but I won’t hold out hope for it reaching A’s quality.

Nana-chan and Nanoha goes together, we all know that, so it wasn’t much of a surprise during the “Live Museum” concert on Monday that Nana-chan treated us with the very first public performance of the upcoming opening theme song to Nanoha StrikerS.  Titled “Secret Ambition”, the lyrics is again handled by Nana-chan herself and this time music is by Shikura Chiyomaru.  I was reliefed that Nana-chan wrote the lyrics because although Shikura Chiyomaru is not a bad music writer and I don’t object to him writing the music, his habit of including terrible engrish in all his songs on the other hand bothers me a lot.  Music wise, with “Eternal Blaze” still my most played song in my music library it’s hard for me not to compare “Secret Ambition” and feel that it lacks the immediate impact of “Eternal Blaze”.  Shikura’s music is very much synthetic and heavily electric guitar focused and I can’t help but feel like it’s a step backwards in music style to more campy J-pop music, compared with the works that Elements Garden had put out which had nice string composition adding some more sophistication to the music, though I think I can’t really judge it with only one listen and will have to wait and see how it plays out when coupled with the opening animation which may swing my opinion of it. 

On a final note, the concert was huge.  With reportedly a turnout of 12,000 people, I don’t think I’ve seen so many people lining up to get into a building in my life.  Which also begs the question of where Nana-chan can go, concert wise, from now on.

Starchild and Aice5 were in the line of fire from a lot of 2ch-ers due to a casting decision for yet-another-ero-game-to-anime-conversion (YAEGA - and yes I just made this up) show. The show in question is 「乙女はお姉さまに恋してる」 “Otome wa Boku-sama ni Koishiteru“.

The original author of the game had apparently lashed out against the sponsors for hiring the entire Aice5 team to replace the original cast in “Otome wa Boku-sama ni Koishiteru”.  In his blog entry (now removed, but as usual, someone on the internet had already took a screen cap of it), he had detailed how he strongly fought for hiring the original cast of the ero-game to do the anime but was ignored.  Claiming that he himself is also a dedicated seiyuu fan and that to himself really couldn’t imagine having a different seiyuu for his beloved characters, he goes on to stir up the beehive by making claims that any “seiyuu-mania could see that this is just the record company trying to promote their seiyuu unit” and that a certain “famous seiyuu in that unit has absolutely horrible acting skills.” And finally, closing with remarks such as “no one is going to be happy to see their lovely children (in this case, the characters he created) being publicly raped like this.”

Ouch. Talk about not taking this the right way.

But really, are we, as seiyuu fans, or even just anime fans, surprised by this at all?  A complete change of cast for these YAEGA in general, especially those which are cleansed and transformed into bishoujo anime which are broadcastable on free-to-air TV, are common and almost always expected by everyone - from the original author, the production house, right down to the fans.  The way the author lashed out at the decision on his personal, yet publicly viewable blog, seems unprofessional and naive to me, and all it managed to achieved are some good-ol interweb style BBS name calling and flame wars.  However in the end, nothing had or will change - fans of the original game and cast continue to resort to name calling on the interweb while the seiyuu get caught in the middle and the sponsors still laugh all the way to the bank as merchandise is snapped up, most likely by both camps anyway.

So really, who is at fault here?  I guess if you really want to point fingers, you can point it at capitalism.

在察看安琪莉可TV時才發現，8月份出的劇場版竟然9月份要出PS2遊戲。官網已經出來了，但是還沒有放出太多實質性内容。（只能看到一些一代的人設和新CG，還有小史的語音“そなたに、きっと会えると思うていた。”） 在此正式歡迎櫻井孝弘さん加盟Neoromance的豪華聲優陣容~~ \=O=/
官網：http://www.gamecity.ne.jp/ps2/maihitoyo/

Ange的TV版這邊，也終于快要盼到開播了。除了固定的守護聖大人們，也很期待主役Ange的本名陽子小姐的表現。在宮崎駿影片《側耳傾聽》(Whisper of the Heart) 中擔任主役的她，會帶來一個什麽樣的Ange呢？在官網的日記裏，提到似乎是很自然感性的聲音。與過去三石琴乃小姐的Ange對比會大不同吧。

雖然人物頁只有介紹神鳥的九大守護聖，但既然是4代安琪的故事，應該是神鳥與聖獸的守護聖都會登場吧，也就是說會有20位以上的人物…… 又是一場聲音盛宴。唯一殘念的是，鹽澤兼人先生不能復生 ——對安琪莉可的FANS來説是永遠的遺憾了。

官網：

Thank you sent for my introduction, みんな、よろしくね~

The release date for the Haruka movie - 劇場版「遥かなる時空の中で～舞一夜」 「Haruka naru toki no naka de ~ Maihitoyo」  is now on the movie’s official site.  Set to roadshow on August 19,  the movie will actually premiere on the first day at ｢ネオロマンス・フェスタ 遙か祭 2006｣,  Harukasai 2006, on the August 12.

The official site features a full theatrical trailer as well as the previous short teaser trailer.  Art and production values it seems to be quite OK.  The new theme song is nice, though I cannot give compliments on background song they chose for the teaser.  The theatrical trailer gives out hints about a mysterious young man who Miko falls in love with and is possibly going to be whom Hachiyou 八葉 and Miko will fight in the end. ^^;  The Amayadori scene strangely reminds me of one of the Tomomori event from Haruka 3 ~ Izayoiki 十六夜記. Maybe it’s the hair style and the dress. ^^;

The entire cast of the Hachiyou and main character played by 川上とも子, Kawakami Tomoko will be present at the premiere together with guest 櫻井孝宏, Sakurai Takahiro, who voices the new character 多季史, Oono Suefumi, in the movie. However I don’t see any sign of 置鮎龍太郎, Okiayu Ryoutaro or 大谷育江, Ootani Ikue which is a pity. Also, Ishida Akira will only be there for the second day’s event. The last Harukasai was very successful. Let’s hope this will be a good one too.

Before the release of movie, the Making of Maihitoyo DVD is due for release on the 28th of July, a set of Maihitoyo dolls (Hachiyo + Suefumi) on sale from the 27th, a drama CD on the 9th of August which consists of a new story based on the Maihitoyo, the full version of image song and selected BGM of the movie.