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平野綾 Hirano Aya, has been impressing me in all sorts of ways since the beginning of the phenomenon that is 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. However, it wasn’t until after watching Episode 12 that I was really blown away by her vocal ability. The short is, Hirano Aya rocks!

A feature of Episode 12 is a short live session during a school festival where Haruhi and Yuki fill in for two injured band members for ENOZ (a parody of ZONE). This short encapsulated section was a great way to slip in two insert songs which will no doubt become hits for Hirano Aya. The band plays two songs with Haruhi on vocal and Yuki on lead guitar. The first song 「God knows…」 is an instant hit. Aya’s vocal talent is just perfect for this brand of J-rock. This fact is further exemplified in the second song 「Lost my music」.

To top it off, the animation and synchronisation in this scene is second to none. This is Kyoto Animation at it’s best rivalling their own high quality 30 frame-per-second ending animation of Hare Hare Yukai.

With the news that Aya along with Goto Yuko and Chihara Minori appearing at Animelo, I can only get excited with the hope that I’ll be able to hear Aya perform those two songs live as well as, of course, 「ハレ晴レユカイ」. In the meantime, I’ll have to be content with the CD 「涼宮ハルヒの詰合」 「Suzumiya Haruhi no Tsumeawase」which is out as of today, June 21. As a bonus you also get 「恋のミクル伝説」 「Koi no Mikuru Densetsu」by Goto Yuko. Get!

(If you don’t know what tsundere means, click here for a quick explanation)

It’s was annouced on her official page the beginning of the month that Mizuki Nana will be the lead heroine in yet another game-to-anime conversion 「つよきす」 (Tsuyo-kiss). 

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a fan of bishoujo games, and I also have a distaste for harem shows in general.  With so many game-to-anime conversions failing way short in production quality and story writing, combined with my personal viewing taste, to say that I’m not excited about this show is an understatement. 

However, I’m still planning to keep an open mind and at least watch a couple of episodes of this show, not because I’m a fan of Nana-chan (I still refuse to watch crappy shows even if it stars my favourite seiyuu cast), but because I think Nana-chan will do a pretty good tsundereko.  Having a quick browse of her previous roles will no doubt reaffirms my theory as Nana-chan has done her fair share of either expressive strong-minded and timid shy characters, playing a tsundereko will just means that she’ll have to roll both sides into one, and I think Nana-chan should be able to handle this.

One thing I’m disappointed with though is that they decided not to use Nana-chan to sing the OP nor the ED, d’oh!

(this must be a week of Oricon ranking posts XD)

So what happens when a bunch of otakus decides to influence the Oricon charts? Well you get something like this:

A bunch of loyal followers of Haruhiism decides to get together and flex their muscles to show how much influence they can make. Via simple actions such as constructing a webpage (sadly the webpage has now been taken down) and posting on the infamous Japanese BBS 2ch, they managed to spike the sales of the Haruhi ED theme single “ハレ晴レユカイ” (Hare Hare Yukai) - performed by seiyuu Hirano Aya, Chihara Minori and Goto Yuko - to an astonishing 34,881 copies in a week and ranked it into 5th place on the singles weekly chart. Taking into consideration such as older weekly sales numbers and that the fact on the same week you have mainstream big artists Orange Range releasing their new single, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that this kind of sales number would have placed this single it on the top 3 if it was released on any other slower week.

The power of the otaku is not to be under-estimated.

除非你是不問世事的ACG界隱士, 如果不是的話要最近沒聽過「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」這套片是接近不可能的事.

「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」可以說是這春季動畫中的八級颱風, 一來便把一眾otaku們都給卷入了它的強大吸力中. 這套作品由獲獎小說改編, 再加上近來甚受注目的動畫製作社京都Animation製作的科幻(?)爆笑作品的主要吸引力究竟是從那裡來的呢, 其中之一當然就是劇中那性格鮮明的女主角 - 涼宮ハルヒ了. 而把這個角色配活的就是平野綾.

涼宮ハルヒ不是我第一次聽平野綾的配音 - 早在後宮作品「天使のしっぽ」時我便聽過她了. 那時平野綾是剛出道的十多歲童星, 要說有甚麼配音技巧的話當然是沒可能的了. 加上角色的暴光率不多, 基本上可以說沒有印象. 其後平野綾在「Kiddy Grade」中有機會擔大旗坐正副女主角之一位算是有了一時期的知名度, 但其後沒有任何大作和走了去組少女樂隊”Springs”的關係, 平野綾在那時的聲優界中沒有留下一個明確的記號.

到了2006年, 成為了大學生的平野綾終于開始全力投入了聲優的工作. 而她在「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」將會是左右她今後發展的重要作品之一, 更甚可以說成是她作為聲優的起點也不為過. 要知道, 就像一個出名的演員都會有一兩個會令人記得起的角色一樣, 就像辛·康納利是占士邦, 湯漢斯是阿甘一樣, 要成為一位出名的聲優是需要有一兩個有名的角色在自己的履歷表下的. 而平野綾她很夠運地是得到了涼宮ハルヒ這樣的一個角色. 而她為這套作品所唱的主題曲的單曲碟也拜作品的名氣下在Oricon週間獲得了第十名的驕人成積而令她獲得了更多的注目. 雖然說她在這方面是行夠了運, 但是無可否認平野綾本人作為一位新人聲優(雖然嚴格上她出道了多年, 但經歷淺得只可以說是新人)她在「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」中所表達出來的是相當高層次的配音和歌唱技巧, 足夠證明她不是混混做的. 在這種天時地利人和都齊全的情況下, 可以預見得到平野綾將會是今後相當受注目的一位聲優. 就讓我們放長雙眼看看這位每次上鏡都是笑容燦爛的小女生今後會有甚麼的成就吧.

I thought this originally when I first saw Takamoto Megumi on seiyuu2h@pandora (アニメ天国＃102). And even more so when I watched the first episode of 「ラブゲッCHU ～ミラクル声優白書～」, Love Get CHU ~Miracle Seiyuu Hakusho~. It also seems that some members of 2ch think likewise.

【新人声優】高本めぐみを青田買いするスッドレ☆
7 名前：名無しさん＠お腹いっぱい。[sage] 投稿日：2006/03/21(火) 17:53:51 ID:AXz8jHTO0
堀江由衣に似てる

8 名前：名無しさん＠お腹いっぱい。[age] 投稿日：2006/03/21(火) 22:00:34 ID:BA3wuIcX0
似てるかもね

9 名前：名無しさん＠お腹いっぱい。[sage] 投稿日：2006/03/22(水) 23:37:28 ID:Jnr/QLP90
マジで良いと思ってここに来たんだけど
堀江由衣に似てたんだな。
ほっちゃんも好きだからどうもこういう系譜の顔が好みらしい

Yes, I would say she reminds me of Horie Yui and that she even shares similar vocal qualities.

Takamoto Megumi voices the main character, Ichihara Momoko (苺原桃子) in Love Get CHU, an aspiring new seiyuu in an anime that seems to be a fairly light-hearted take on the goings-on in seiyuu industry from what I have seen so far. Along with Megumi, there are also some favourable inclusions as well. The casting of Mitsuishi Kotono as the Lambda Eight boss is brilliant for one.

Acting wise, Takamoto Megumi’s performance is quite promising and I’ll be keeping tabs on her in the future.

Watch!SeiyuuBan

Sakamoto Maaya voicing the lead role in a new anime called ｢桜蘭高校ホスト部｣ (Ourankoukou Host Club). She plays a character named 「藤岡ハルヒ役」 (Fujioka Haruhi), and apparently she’s been given the thumbs up from the guys on 2chan for a good performance.

895 名前：名無しさん＠お腹いっぱい。[sage] 投稿日：2006/04/05(水) 01:17:21 ID:Hqn3RSERO
男役でも問題なし

898 名前：おむこさん志望 ◆QtGqCwfDSA [sage] 投稿日：2006/04/05(水) 01:40:12 ID:JL2Pz5xc0
すごくよかった 
着てる服によってちゃんと声で演じ分けてるね

899 名前：名無しさん＠お腹いっぱい。[sage] 投稿日：2006/04/05(水) 01:41:08 ID:Q6p/72/A0
全く違和感がなかった・・・
いつの間にか実力上がってたのね。

Her performance drew comments like “It was great”, “No problems with a male character” and “No sense of discomfort at all”. As far as I know this is Maaya’s first male role and while I haven’t seen ｢桜蘭高校ホスト部｣ yet (and I might never) it’s good to hear that she does it well.

Maaya is also doing a weekly podcast for the show which you can subcribe to from here or access from iTMS here.

桜蘭高校ホスト部 is airing on 日テレ(NTV) on Tuesdays at 24:50, which is actually Wednesday 0:50am.

Update: Having watched the first episode now, I realise my mistake. I’ll admit I was quick to assume the content of the show based on the promo art. I really should know better by now :P. Still it was good to hear Maaya acting in anime and I can actually concur that this is a good showing from her. Like one of the others said, “I really did think she was a guy at first”. :)

ID, WatchSeiyuuBan, NTV

Official page can be found here.  (Though right now it looks like it is being hammered like there’s no tomorrow) 

Contrary to what some of you might think, I’m not really much of a bishoujo game freak.  The number of bishoujo game titles I’ve played that holds enough of my interest to complete it from start to finish can be counted on both hands (and Sakura Taisen takes 4 of them fingers), while the titles I just played in total are probably countable with my hands and feet.  Moreover, I’m definitely not a fan of harem shows.  If I watch them, chances are that I’m watching it for the seiyuu and nothing more. 

That said, Key’s work such as Kanon and AIR are the exceptions for me.  The story of Key’s work is a magnificent blend of sadness and heart-warming quantities and are simply very enjoyable.  What’s more is that Kyoto Animation is doing this, so the animation is going to be gorgeous.  And of course, the cast for Kanon is one that is filled with big names:  Horie Yui, Kouda Mariko, Tamura Yukari, Iizuka Mayumi have been confirmed to be reprising their roles, now what’s left is whether the side character cast is going to be kept as well as this would mean adding Kawakami Tomoko, Kawasumi Ayako, Sakamoto Maaya and Seki Tomokazu to it. 

The big thing for me personally is that since Kouda Mariko haven’t been getting many lead roles lately, most probably due to her married life I assume, so it’s going to feel all nostalgic just to hear her voice act, and voicing Nayuki at that too.  I simply can’t wait to hear that super-cute Nayuki alarm clock again. 

A bit of trivia:  Tamura Yukari had a role in all 3 major works of Key - Kanon, AIR, and Clannad.  

Everytime I go to one of these events, it is a unique learning experience.

houkoholic and I were at TAF for two reasons. Horie Yui (mine) and Tamura Yukari (his). I’ve always wanted to go to a seiyuu event that isn’t a concert or live singing. It’s a chance to see a different side to their work. This also seemed like a good opportunity to get an impression on the anime fair.

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