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There was quite a bit of demand for the Inoue Marina section of the event where she talks about herself sharing similarities with Kana and showing her “dojikko-ness”, so here it is. And yeah I quick-subbed it out of personal amusement and boredom, and no I don’t plan on doing any more nor seeding this on torrent, making it available for download etc.

Marina is pretty convinced that she’s a “dojikko” and shares similarities with Kana. What do you think?

I know exactly what the other unnamed seiyuu whom auditioned for the role of Housaka feels when he said to Ono-D that Ono-D is definitely getting the role of Housaka. Watching this little clip and you know the guy is perfect for the role.

The bonus footages on the first Minamike DVD was LOLZ in the non-sensical Minamike way. Ono-D of course steals the spotlight. On the other hand Inoue Marina trying to appeal with her non-existing dojikko-ness somehow makes her image overlap with that of Kana’s (Is Kana really stupid? Or she’s just trying to do stupid things to get attention?). Marina making a big fuss by telling everyone that she dropped her mobile phone into the toilet, yet somehow seem proud of it all looks like something Kana would do. Heck that’s almost a Minamike gag right there.

First a happy new year to you all. seiyuu3 is currently reporting from Osaka, energy all spent just after attending Mizuki Nana’s countdown live at Grand Cube Osaka.

At today’s concert, Nana-chan announced the title for her 17th single. The title is “Star Camp EP”. According to Nana-chan, the title came from card number 17 of a tarot deck, “The Star”, as this is her 17th single, “Camp” represents where everyone gathers together to have fun, and “EP” as in Extended Play, as this single will contain 4 songs. The big news is that “Star Camp EP” will be the Feburary opening theme song for mainstream TV music program Ongaku Senshi Music Fighter, which broadcasts on Nippon Televison Network. Readers with good memory might recall that “Orchestral Fantasia” - one of Nana-chan’s song from her latest album “Great Activity”, was featured as a power play song for the same music program in November last year. Nana-chan providing her song for this program as an opening theme is a huge achievement, as going through the list of artists whom also performed songs for the program will get you familiar big Jpop names such as Hamasaki Ayumi, TRF, EXCILE, hitomi, Every Little Thing, to just name a few. This might give Nana-chan a shot to get some more single sales, though I doubt we would see record breaking numbers as the coupling tracks for Gonzo harem love comedy “Rosario to Vampire” isn’t going to have what it takes to pull in the numbers like the Nanoha opening theme singles IMO.

Nana-chan is set to kick off 2008 in a big way.

I was lucky enough to get tickets for Horie Yui’s Xmas Live and managed to organise my yearly trip home to allow me to come back in time for it. There were two reasons for wanting to come back early. One, Yui doesn’t do solo live events often and two, I’ve never spent a Christmas in Japan. Having experienced the latter now, I can’t say I care for it much. But Yui’s Live event turned out better than I had anticipated.

True, having been to her previous solo lives, I wasn’t expecting aural excellence on par with Nana or even Yukarin. Out of your top selling seiyuu, Hocchan is a particularly weak live performer. Her acting is far better than her singing. However, having recently seen the Love Aice5 Tour Final there was some reason to hope for improvement.

１「恋の天使舞い降りて」
２「マッシュルームマーチ」
３「Time machine」
４「ショートショートケーキ」
５「かみさまおねがい」
６「桜」
７「Days」
８「クリスマスメドレー 」(きよしこの夜)
９「Happy snow」
10「Say cheese！」
11「Love Power」
12「Merry Merrily」
13「恋する天気図」
14「try again」
15「ヒカリ」
16「Angel恋をした」
17「スクランブル」
18「ラブリ♡エブリデイ」
19「Lady GO！」
20「笑顔の連鎖」

Encore
21「ずっと」
22「Love Destiny」
23「Happy happy*rice shower」

The set list for the night was a pretty good mix of new and old with Yui singing 3 new songs from her upcoming album as well as some old favourites. During the MC, she mentioned she wanted to perform “Christmassy” songs but she found that there weren’t all that many amongst her own songs. So there’s a bit of Yamato Nadeshiko here and Aice5 there and she tried to pick songs that conveyed a feeling of happiness and togetherness. There were even some carols, 「きよしこの夜」 is “Silent Night” in Japanese.

Performance wise, I have to say that Hocchan was terrible at the start, which didn’t give me encouragement to hope for better towards the end. But by the 3rd song in it seemed that she had warmed up and was actually hitting notes on cue. That actually put me in a good mood for the rest of the concert, coupled with some great oldies like Sakura, it brought a smile to my face as things got swinging.

Interspersed during were some “interesting” bits of drama and prerecorded video instead of regular MC sections, which if you ask me were a clever way of playing to her strengths in acting while giving her singing voice a break. It also gave good opportunity for costume changes.

However, as it turned out, there was little reason for me to worry as Hocchan’s stamina held up to the very end. She even managed to pull off 「try again」which impressed me since she notably failed to hit the notes during last year’s fanclub event. Though I think she’s still not quite Yukarin level yet, Yui is at least approaching that, perhaps in part due to the “training” with Aice5. There were definitely some really nice performances last night, especially one of the new ballads. So I’m actually looking forward to picking up her new album 「Darling」 come January 30. There’s also a good chance that this event might be released on DVD too since there were enough cameras and they were shooting in widescreen.

Going along with the theme for the night (the drama about the snowman wanting to meet up with his girlfriend and Yui dressing up as Santa Claus), there were ending credits rolled instead of the usual encore calling. However Yui came out afterwards anyway and had her free MC for the night. She spilled some interesting things like the fact that she’s spending this Christmas with Kanda Akemi as she has done so for the last two years. And also how she had a challenging time relearning the Aice5 songs for solo performance as she learned not to sing the other parts.

Speaking of Kanda Akemi, she was actually in the crowd, apparently wearing a mask and sitting somewhere behind this guy.

Overall, I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected and I’m rather looking forward to the fanclub event in February. And, if Hocchan can keep this up, hopefully more live events next year.

These should be enough to convince some of you to buy the Animelo Summer 2007 DVD.

“Rondo - Revolution” - Okui Masami and Mizuki Nana
“Revolutionary Girl Utena” OP - Original vocal by Okui Masami

“Seishoujou Ryouiki” - Takarano Arika (ALI Project) and Mizuki Nana
“Rozen Maiden Traümend” OP - Original vocal by ALI Project

Let’s get the bad bits out of the way first:

The video is bad, as in “zomg I see pixels”. Packaging leaves much to be desired as well for the full price. But get over it.

The sound is still linear PCM Stereo. OK, not 5.1, but the mixing is good and consequently the awesome songs are still awesome.

Rewatching all the songs, the awesome feeling is still there.

Multi-angle for the duets and last encore is epic win. They’ve finally discovered the DVD spec.

Must see acts: Suara, Jyukai, Nana (of course), all the duets, JAM Project, move, Takahashi Youko, Okui Masami. (Actually it’s really hard to leave people out of this list.)

Skippable: Bouken Desho Desho ~ Punk Desho version.

Major disappointment: They took out Dekaranger.

Verdict: Buy (Better with discount)

Link: Amazon.jp / CD Japan

Remember what I said for Chihara Minori’s previous concert? Minorin’s previous birthday live was a great concert, as everything was perfect. i melody, however, was merely an okay one.

It wasn’t Minorin’s fault - she was magnificent that night. The choice of music was a nice mix-up of her personal offerings, old and new, as well as some anime tunes to add variety. Special mention to her covering “卒業” (Sotsugyou/Graduation) by Ozaki Yutaka, a hit song from the 80’s, which demonstrated a side of her vocals that we’ve never heard from her in any of her current works before. Her acoustic section was also fantastic, as she play tunes on her new guitar, named Rain, and performed yet another song she had composed and written herself during her roadside performance days, as well as getting everyone to sing along with a short new song she composed just for this live. The live band that they assembled for Minorin were also great musicans. Even the sound engineers did a splendid job of ensuring that the volumes for each instrument is tuned at the right levels.

So what went wrong? A bit on the management side, a bit on the venue, and as much as it pains me to say it, mostly from the crowd.

While the venue was rated for 400 people, it was simply an absurd idea to actually try to fit 400 people in there, especially since they took out some space which they reserved for the VIPs (friends and relatives). Everyone in the arena were rubbing shoulders and trying to not step on each other’s toes. Add in a small bunch of crazy fans that are now showing way too much enthusiasm without concern of others as well as the lack of space - jumping up and down to the beats and waving 5 different colours of glowsticks depending on the song - it was a real mood breaker. There were two instances where brawls nearly started next to me as crazy fans jumped into the people in front of him which led to some pushing and shoving, and I had to withheld MY own urge to punch one guy in the face as he jumped into me several times without apologising. Good thing is this is Japan, because I can’t see how anyone will be able to get away with this kind of behaviour anywhere else. The crazy Minorin fans also picked up a bad habit from the Tamura Yukari fans - yelling “Minorin! Minorin!” at the top of their lungs during the chorus of several songs, drowning out the vocals. And finally, when the crowd left the floor was covered with rubbish - used glowsticks and promo flyers were littered everywhere. I pray this doesn’t give Minorin a bad reputation - because Yukarin once received a warning due to the misbehaviour of her fans at a certain venue which nearly got her blacklisted from major concert hall venues in Tokyo - though in Yukarin’s case the fans quickly step back in line when words of that got out and now everything is okay again.

With how much love and care Minorin shows to her supporters, I hope that the fans can also learn to be a bit more considerate to others themselves. Let’s hope things will improve come the concert tour next year.

みのりんのファン達、みのりんを困せないように、マナーを守って、一緒にコンサートを楽しみましょ。

At today’s birthday live, Minorin has given every attendee a hand-written thank you note. Yes, every single one of the 400-plus attendee recieved one, each slightly different from the others.

This is why I love Minorin.

It appears that although it’s going to be a birthday live, it’s actually not going to be on the day of her birthday!

Titled “10th Anniversary: Tanaka Rie Birthday Live” (whoa, it’s been that long), to be held on the 27th of January at Studio Cube 326, which has a capacity of around 600 in total. Tickets goes on sale on the 22nd of December. Also there will be 2 sessions on the day.

Now that there’s no schedule conflict, I’m almost certain that I’ll go to this one.

According to her most recent blog entry and comments on the page’s BBS, it seems that RieRie is going to hold a birthday live in January. I know RieRie does a lot of shows for the fanclub tea parties, but I don’t remember RieRie having done a proper, open personal live before (there was this one mini live that she did which was streamed on the net quite sometime ago though), I wouldn’t mind going to see her live once myself. Will keep my eyes on this one.

PS. Interesting that so many veteran seiyuu are sort of crawling back out from under the bridges after lots of inactivity in their music career. RieRie’s last personal album was almost 5 years ago. I wonder what songs she will sing, anime character songs?

PPS. I just remembered that RieRie’s birthday is the 3rd of January, and Nana-chan’s biggest concert at Saitama Super Arena is going to be that day too, this is not good…..