The addition of Toma-chan and Kana-chan is a bit from the left field, since the im@s franchise haven’t been known to get established seiyuu, let alone the freshest and hottest idol seiyuu currently around (Kugimiya Rie was grabbed before her big break FWIW). Potentially this could be a negative thing, as these hot idols will be much harder to book for events and such (refer to Kugyu), so I’m thinking the direction of the DS game and its new characters might be slightly different than the current batch of idols we have so far. Also the singing skills of the seiyuu are a little on the average side, but either way I’ll still be looking forward to Toma-chan and Kana-chan covering the famous im@s songs such as Shiny Smile and Go My Way! because to me one of the most fascinating aspect of the im@s franchise is listening to the seiyuu with different voice qualities and abilities singing the same songs.
Both Toma-chan and Kana-chan made an appearance at the concert today and performed the theme song for the game “Hello!”. Follow the link below if you have a Nico account.
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.
Posted by houkoholic on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 00:35
The channel is here and viewing the videos doesn’t require registration. Though if you want to become a member of the channel’s community (and thus be able to comment on the videos of the channel) you will need to have a NicoDouga account.
Also Asapon’s first cover of a Kagamine Rin song イタズラムスメ (Itazuramusume, original can be heard here) will be made available on the iTunes Music Store (hopefully *not* limited to the Japan store) on May 1st.
Posted by houkoholic on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 22:00
The award ceremony is suppose to be this Saturday, but naturally all the magazines already knew who the winners are so they can do their interviews to make it in time for publications. So while surfing image boards a small picture of the upcoming Voice Newtype came up and shows us that their winner cover special has these people:
So that almost certainly means Kamiya Hiroshi and Kugimiya Rie won best actor/actress respectively. I would think that Kamiya Hiroshi got it for Zetsubou Sensei, but on the other hand I have no idea what the Kugyu would have gotten it for.
The smaller words below also shows names such as Sugita Tomokazu (looks like his picture in the second from left too), Tomatsu Haruka, Nakajima Megumi and Fukuyama Jun. Third picture from the left looks like Endo Aya to me (the kanji just above the picture seems to read as her name too). I think I can make out Sawashiro Miyuki above Sugita’s photo as well.
Speculations and flames on what roles they’ve won it for welcome. ;)
Posted by houkoholic on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 06:48
Animelo 2009 RE:Bridge
I missed the livecast, but thanks to everyone’s live-spamming of this site (lol), I got to know the initial line-up for Animelo 2009 without even having to check the official site! User-generated content FTW? Anyway, with them going to the lengths of setting up an English site, I guess keeping up with this year’s line-up will be much simplier. Now just a summary of what artist we have thus far:
It seems to me that Saturday currently lacks the 萌え idol seiyuu singers while Sunday is lacking the 燃え GAR/male singers. So I’m predicting that they will probably do something about that to balance the two days up in the upcoming annoucements. With Nana-chan and Hirano Aya both on Sunday (FWIW, they have gone head-to-head on the same day before when Aya appeared as special guest in 2007, though I guess most people had sealed that memory away due to that horrendous punk version of Bouken Desho Desho) it’s going to be a sell out for all the rabid fanboys and it would probably be just short of a riot when it comes to them fighting over tickets. If it is up to me I would think that they would do a temporary reunion of Yamato Nadeshiko (Yukarin and Hoc-chan) on Saturday to get the fanboys to step and craw over each others’ smelly bodies for Saturday’s session too. For GAR singers, well, I’m not that knowledgible in those, but I wouldn’t mind if they bring back GRANRODEO or something along that line. Oh and if m.o.v.e makes another appearance, please sing something else besides Gamble Rumble. You have an entire catalog of good Initial D theme songs, use them!
First iDOLM@STER Concert Tour
On other concert news, the iM@S girls are going to have their first ever concert tour in 4 major cities in May. The cities they are visiting are in the order of Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka and final stop at Tokyo. Appearance of the seiyuu are all over the place though from the initial announcements - like Takahashi Chiaki “Chiaking” only appearing at the Tokyo session and Shimoda Asami “Asapon” at Fukuoka only, plus the usual absence of Ochiai Yurika “Yurishii” and Kugimiya Rie “Kugyuu~”. Unless they change the line up it just means that it would be impossible to see to all the performances in one session. Someone made a reference guide for the line-up and I’ve just PS the English bits myself. While Tokyo looks the most delicious (as expected, and competition for tickets will be fierce), the lack of Asapon is going to be a real let down for me.
Nana-chan New Album on 20th May
So we now have a date, apparently it will contain 15 tracks, and the first press comes with a DVD of the secret event for Trickster which had Nana roping in a bunch of her other seiyuu friends such as Sugita Tomokazu, Suzumura Kenichi, Sawashiro Miyuki, and Kuwatani Natsuko and TEH Wakamoto (even though only as narration) did a play. I wonder if the epicness of the DVD will boost the sales even more by getting a few more sales from the fans of the other seiyuu?
Posted by houkoholic on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 19:00
Following closely to her getting number one spot on the Oricon Daily Singles chart with Shinai, Nana-chan now has another record to add to her list of musical achievements - this time for her Blu-ray disk set of the Live Fighter concert ”Live Fighter Blue X Red Side” being the first ever music related Blu-ray disk to have sold more than 10,000 copies in Japan (source).
While this is good news for Nana-chan and her fans, I think this says a lot more about the adaptation rate of Blu-ray in the general population and the condition of the music industry rather than the success of Nana-chan. If no other artists had sold more than 10,000 copies of their concerts or music clip Blu-rays up till now, if I was to be working for someone like SME or Avex I won’t be sleeping well at night that’s for sure.
Posted by houkoholic on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 17:45
Arguably one of the most camera-friendly seiyuu, RieRie is finally releasing her own photo album. Apparently she announced it on a radio show yesterday, which is double confirmed in her latest blog post.
No title as of yet (she’s considering asking listeners for ideas) and other information such as release date hasn’t surfaced, but I’ll keep an eye on this one.
I wonder what kind of photo album can we expect? Will it be full of photos of her in cosplay?
Posted by houkoholic on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 09:34
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 Animelo2008 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.
“I can’t believe I did that!” Seiyuu Moment
Thankfully this category is empty as I haven’t done anything to any seiyuu that would have me writing this from inside a prison cell.
Posted by houkoholic on Thursday, December 25th, 2008 at 07:45
I’m not a religious person, and the Japanese treats Christmas as a couple’s night out, so I hardly feel the festive mood here. That said, this doesn’t mean I can’t join the holiday spirit by posting pictures of seiyuu dressed in Santa costumes. So happy holiday to you all.
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.
The Law of Information Sharing on the Internet Rule 1. Anything can be found on the Internet. Rule 2. If Rule 1 appears not to apply, you haven't looked hard enough. Rule 3. Given sufficient time for Rule 2, somebody else will find it for you or upload it hence fulfilling Rule 1.
- seiyuu3
