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It’s almost non-news now in regards to seiyuu artists performing as solo acts at Budoukan when we’ve got Yui and Maaya having their appearance at Budoukan not so long ago and even GRANRODEO announcing their Budoukan live. I guess Budoukan usage fee must be getting cheap?

Congrats to Minorin either way, too bad I’ve lost interest in her music career since her second album from Lantis. I still think Lantis pointed her in the wrong direction.

The fans are crazy, so there’s no surprise that when the Kugyuu appeared in person on the day, chaos breaks out, and makes it to the news (again). You can watch a clip of the news here.

So apparently more than a thousand fans tried to cram into the event space just to get a glimps of the Kugyuu in person, a couple of people fainted (literally), many fell due to the pushing and shuffling, and one of the book booths got pushed over by the crowd causing thousands of volumes of manga to be scattered on the floor.

To finish off this post, here’s a pic of one person infected with the Kugimiya Disease showing off his loot on TV.

EDIT: More video

So the fans were climbing barriers and even dissambled the dividers to get a look (whoa, show some manners, dudes!), some took advantage of the chaos to pick pockets (smart guys… I mean damn you thieves!), and the guy showing off the loot was one of those who camped 20+ days, and he wore a glove to shake hands with the Kyuguu so that he can treasure it, hmmm, okie dokie…..

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Yeah you read that right, that’s some serious crazy shit that Taiwanese otakus are doing. The Kugyuu is going to be guest at the Taipei International Book Exhibition 2010 and will be doing some signing provide you buy some Shana goods, limited to the first 89 customers, from one of the venders which goes on sale on the morning of the 27th. However not just one or two, but up to twenty crazy otakus decides that it’s a good idea to start lining up on the 3rd – 25 days before the sales date, and predictably they made it to the news.

Just when you think fanboy craziness can’t get any crazier, someone is out there to prove you wrong.

Everyone into computers are familiar with the all-bunsiness-and-no-nonsense image of Lenovo, well that image is no more, at least in Japan.

Lenovo Japan is holding a 2 day event in Ikebukuro this weekend to promote their new PCs equiped with Windows 7, and they have invited seiyuu Minaguchi Yuuko, most famous for her role in YAWARA! in Japan for the old generation, while younger Japanaese fans might be more familiar with her role in the otaku cult game Love Plus. Overseas fans living in the Intertubes might know her as Akiko in Kanon and Fuuko’s sister Kyoko in Clannad.

Speaking of which what I find interesting is that only the overseas computer companies does these sorts of seiyuu events (Microsoft, Lenovo, Microsoft even did a tie-in with Ultraman!) yet I haven’t seen the domestic companies such as Sony, Toshiba and Fujitsu do them. I know Fujitsu has KimuTaku (Kimura Takuya) from SMAP as their spokes person for a while now, which is loads more famous than just about everyone else you can get with money in Japan, and Toshiba has pretty boy band NEWS member Yamashita Tomohisa for their notebooks. My theory is that the the costumer base for the foreign companies are probably more niche and made up of hardcore geeks which overlaps squarely with the otaku base and taste, whereas the domestic players goes for the general consumers.

Practically everyone and their PCs knows about Nana-chan’s involvement as Madobe Nanami with Windows 7, but she’s not the only one taking part in the launch of the OS. Here are some more Windows 7 launch events that involves seiyuu.

DOSPARA gets Furuya Touru (Amuro Ray) for their Wednesday night launch party. This is not the first time that Furuya had done PC related event as he had attended numerous Intel CPU launch parties in Akiba before. Apparently he is a PC builder himself too and even writes his own little programs, truely living up to his Amuro persona.

Softmap gets 3 seiyuu for their launch event on Thursday morning (weird time to have a launch event since its not a holiday, but I guess they are expecting NEETs): Imai Asami, Shiraishi Minoru and Yanase Natsumi. AFAIK Mingosu is a gamer but not a tech head, Minoru probably knows a bit about PCs but he’ll just wing the rest like he usually does, and I’ve got nothing personality wise on Yanase Natsumi. Very weird combination to say the least.

I wonder if they give out signed copies at these events. Signitures from any one of these guys would be infinitely better (to us seiyuu otas) than the Steve Ballmer signed copies they are giving away elsewhere.

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Lantis has announced that it will hold a two day outdoor concert at Fujikyu Highland Conifer Forest on September 26th and 27th. The official homepage can be found here.

Hailing itself to be the first ever big size outdoor anisong concert, the venue’s capacity is up there with the likes of Super Arena capable of seating some 18000 people. The line up of artists contains a lot of familiar names that we’ve all seen at Animelo, some other fairly well-known/experience artists/seiyuu, plus a few more of the less active seiyuu artists that usually won’t be seen much at live events, let alone one of this kind of scale. With Kageyama Hironobu/JAM Project at the helms leading there shouldn’t be much to worry about, and I fully expect this will look and feel a lot like Animelo, though we are obviously lacking in a couple of the big acts of Animelo from other music labels. The line up is by no means shabby though it remains to be seen how well Lantis can pull something of this scale and size off all by themselves. One thing is almost certain though, with only Lantis behind this event, there shouldn’t be any rights issues and we can probably expect that they will release this event on disk sometime in the future. Just hope that it is not as bad as the 2007 Animelo disk set that Lantis was responsible for.

Official PoRk sauce.

I know that a lot of Japanese guests and companies planned attendance for overseas anime and game cons/events had been heavily affected by the swine flu, and understandably fans aren’t happy. Just thought that I’ll throw in a balancer so that people can know that the Japanese domestic fans are getting hit too (well they should, considering that Japan’s confirmed cases of swine flu is so high and still going up by the day).

FWIW, the Fukuoka session is still a go, while the Tokyo session is under review.

While most will already know about the upcoming new album (Nana-chan said it should be coming out around May), the “one last thing” for today’s final concert at Budoukan was a summer concert at the Seibu Dome on 5th July this year.

While this is not THE Tokyo Dome we are talking about, it is a baseball dome revenue capable of seating some 36,000 people (Tokyo Dome holds 48,000) and one of the only two dome structures in and around the Tokyo area. This would very likely make Nana-chan the first seiyuu artist as well as anime song singer to have a dome scale concert.

Tokyo Dome and Kouhaku might really be just around the corner.

Hopping onto the bandwagon. Categories not in any particular order, I’m just writing it as they come to my mind.

Most Memoriable Seiyuu Moment – I killed Ueda Kana in Halo 3

It wasn’t memoriable just because I fragged her, but because she was actually a competent player. While I am not so shallow as to think that there are no female gamers (some of my friends are quite heavy gamers), but you have to admit that a certain amount of skepticism is in need about the way Ueda Kana professing her addiction to typically very male orientated games like FPS and Monster Hunter that I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see for myself if it was just an act or was she for real. It turns out she is the real deal and all the more respect from me to her.

Oh and sorry about the video, I’ll probably never get around to it. *runs*

Most Memoriable News Announcement – Brief Return of the Sakamoto/Kanno Golden Team

When they announced that Sakamoto Maaya and Kanno Yoko were going to work together again for Macross Frontier, I was ecstatic – I’m the old schooler that thinks everything non-Kanno Yoko by Maaya is crap (yep I’ve said it). While opinions on Triangler seems to be leaning towards the negative side, personally I much prefer it to the more popular Lion. Only Maaya can screech and still sound sort of good.

Best Concert/Event I Attended – (tie) THE IDOLM@STER 3rd Anniversary Live and Animelo 2008

A lot of the other concerts/events I went to seems to suffer from little things which keeps me from enjoying them to the fullest – such as Nana’s horrible wardrobe in Live Fighter or the unsatisfying Minorin Fanclub event. In the end, it is only for the IDOLM@STER concert and Animelo 2008 where I can say I was completely and totally pumped and excited for the entire duration of the concert. Too bad neither seems to be coming out on DVD anytime soon.

LULZ Award – “Aya Style”

Hirano Aya’s bikini screw-up leading to the coining of the new term “Aya Style”. It was even funnier because it was a female friend who pinged me about it in the first place and said, quote – if she wasn’t flat as a board, that would hurt. It made me laughed so hard that I had a stomach cramp.

Best New Personal Seiyuu Discovery – (Tie) Imai Asami and Shimoda Asami

It seems that not only do they share the same given name, but also some other similiarties too – similarities which also happens to be what made me like them.

One is their singing abilities. They are both really really good singers with distinctive voices. Imai Asami has a deep powerful mature voice while Shimoda Asami can sing in both her normal voice and her nasal character voice which is quite a rare talent even amongst great seiyuu singers. The second are their quirky personality. Imai Asami “Mingosu” is a gamer-erojiji-lolicon-otaku with a chest complex, while Shimoda Asami “Asapon” is a multi-facet character (which includes her normal female self, a cute/dumb/wtf elementary school loli personality as well as a, you guessed it, lesbian side where she likes to claim fellow cute seiyuu as her waifu under her male personality named “Asao”) with a talent for voice imitations and writing original lyrics to songs and performing them live on her radio show. Sounds too good to be true? Think it’s all a marketing gimmick? That’s probably true, but that’s what makes seiyuu idol personalities interesting and warrants closer examination, right?

MVP – Tomatsu Haruka

Tomatsu Haruka without a doubt is the new rising star that dominated this year with a very strong list of memorable characters and roles. Nakajima Megumi may have gotten better limelight, but she hasn’t demonstrated the same versitility and range that Tomatsu Haruka had shown. Ever since Polyphonica last year it was pretty clear to me that Tomatsu Haruka has that something in her to make it big, this year was the year that she capitalised on it to make her mark on everyone’s radar. Even though I’m not found of Kannagi, it’s hard to argue that Tomatsu Haruka’s Nagi was quite a vital attraction of the show.

It also helps that she has very nice legs.

Best Seiyuu Gaming Moment – Senjou no Valkyria

It was an all-star cast for an incredible game (though not my Game of the Year though, that would actually be Fallout 3). You can read about what I had to say about the game here. While the presence of Fukuyama Jun did add a big LOL factor, it was Inoue Marina that made Valkyria for me. I really like Inoue Marina’s protrayal of the down-to-earth girl that is Alicia, it’s distinctive yet subtle, it catches your attention without being loud. It would be nice to hear Marina repraising the role of Alicia in the upcoming anime version.

Favourite Song – Shiny Smile from THE IDOLM@STER Live For You!

As it was my most played song which was released in 2008 according to my iTunes log it takes the crown of Favourite Song of 2008. To be honest 2008 was a pretty rough year for me, and Shiny Smile was one of the songs I went to for a pick-me-up. It’s a very simple catchy tune that gets you to sing along instantly, plus it has the right lyrics and attitude – the never give up, never stop moving forward and to just go for the goal with a bright smile was really what I needed when I’m feeling a bit down and just don’t want think too much while helping me to keep a positive attitude.

Someone went to the trouble of subbing the song and post it on Youtube. The translation is stiff but it gets the jist of it.

Most Disturbing Seiyuu Related News – Crazy People Making Death Threats to Seiyuu

Mizuki Nana and Chihara Minori both recieved death threats this year which made it to headline news. While they both seem to turn out to be nothing more than pathetic pranks when the police caught the ones responsible, it is still disturbing that people would use such things for fun, especially for the fact that they seem to be inspired by the tragic incident in Akiba.

“About f#@king time” moment – Area 11 Discovers the Rest of ZA WAARUDO!

In the form of half-heartedly setting up the “Overseas Fan Choice Award” in the Seiyuu Award. Doesn’t change the fact that the award itself is still a joke though.

“I can’t believe he/she did that!” Seiyuu Moment – Miyano Mamoru’s Shotgun Marriage Announcement

I will not claim knowledge on how fangirl logic would work (though I’m guessing it is probably not that different to how fanboy logic works), and I know that the entertainment industry here are generally pretty harsh when it comes to idols coming out with “shameful” and image damaging news such as these – and sure enough they pretty much cleanse the usual sources of his video message announcing his marriage, including his own official page, and tried to pretend that nothing happened (but the internet being the internet, you can still find the video if you spend 10 seconds on teh googles). That’s some gutsy thing Miyano did, but ultimately foolish with how the industry here works and I wish him luck and hope that he’s not going to be regretting this decision of his anytime soon.

Linky.

There’s 20,000 spot this time. Admission starts at 18:50 Tokyo time (GMT +9) on the 23rd and the event starts at 19:00. There’s a countdown clock on the page so it’s easy to work out the time in your own timezone.

キラッ☆ and out.