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堀江由衣 Horie Yui, this year has been progressively holding more and more interesting events. Following her book signing and continuing this trend, Hocchan recorded her radio program in front of a live studio audience for the very first time since the show began.

This special recording, held on Sunday July 30, marked the 200th show of Horie Yui’s radio program 「堀江由衣の天使のたまご」 “Horie Yui’s Angel Egg” and, trust me, there was no better way to celebrate the milestone.

I was lucky enough to be one of the 100 audience members invited to attend the recording at 文化放送 Bunka Housou’s new studio in 浜松町 Hamamatsucho. A very slick new facility just opposite Hamamatsucho station.

For regular listeners of her show, the 200th will be a bit of a departure from the usual program as Yui the opportunity to revive some old segments and reminisce in amusing moments they had during the previous 199 recordings.

I won’t reveal too much as the show will be broadcast this coming Sunday August 6 at the usual time of 24:30 (that’s Monday morning 0:30) on 文化放送 AM 1134 kHz. However, Hocchan did have two surprises in store for us during the event.

Towards the end of the recording, she disappeared to change outfits and returned to perform a mini live! Appropriately, Yui sang the opening and ending themes for 天たま, 「Romantic Flight」 and 「Angel 恋をした」 and as a bonus for me, my first time experiencing 「ヒカリ」 performed live.

As a second surprise to top the day off, Hocchan unveiled her new goth band. Named the 「黒薔薇保存会」 (Kurobara Hozonkai), they performed their one and only song to close off the event. What does this mean? It means that Yui is going to be one busy seiyuu. It also seems that Starchild are leveraging her popularity with this little experiment into the goth music scene. However, their performance was actually pretty good and it will be good to see Yui sing with a live band again. Watch this space.

Overall the event was very enjoyable and I would love to go to another one. The crowd was great too and you could feel the emotion in the air and Yui even got teary-eyed toward the end.

One thing that stood out was that there were a good number of females in attendance. Close to 50% of the audience. It struck me as a very similar situation to Hirano Aya’s Hey!Hey!Hey! appearance. Plus they checked everyone’s identification on entry. On the whole, the event was very well organised which is usually wanting at times. Could this be a new trend?

Woot yes!

I am going to the first public recording session of Horie Yui’s Tenshi no Tamago 「堀江由衣の天使のたまご」 at 文化放送 Bunka Housou in their new location in Hamamatsuchou.

I’ve been a semi-regular listener of Tentama until recently when BSQR closed shop. Usually it’s pretty funny program and sometimes a very insightful peek in to some of Hocchan’s life outside of her seiyuu work.

Looking forward to it!

This is a bit of old news but Horie Yui is going to be in the new Zegapain game that’s coming out on July 27.

Called 「Zegapain XOR」, Yui will play the character of 「ミオ・レディネス」 Mio Readiness. Mio is selectable as one of your support pilots amongst others. I’m not a particularly big mecha game fan and the original Zegapain didn’t really impress when I saw it at Tokyo Anime Fair, but after playing the demo of Zegapain XOR on Xbox Live, I found it quite enjoyable. The controls were not unweildy like the last game and it didn’t take long to be kicking some ass.

I’m also keen to see how much of a role Yui will get to play in the game and if the story will be enthralling enough to take an interest in the franchise. If I’m not mistaken, the character designs for the game are by the same designer as Mai Hime which is nothing to complain about. And the anime is done by Sunrise who generally produce quality work.

In all likeliness, I’ll find out next Thursday when I pick it up, if not for the gameplay then certainly for the voice.

Horie Yui is opening up one of her recordings of her radio program, 「堀江由衣の天使のたまご」 Horie Yui’s Angel Egg, to the public. The event will be held at Bunka Radio 文化放送 in Hamamatsucho 浜松町 on July 30 and it would be there first time she has invited a public audience for the recording.

There will be two sessions on the Sunday one at 13:00 and the other at 16:00. To attend you will need to fill out a special Reply Postcard with your details. For information on how to apply, visit her official page here. (Use a dictionary and try very hard.)

I am definitely going to try to go to this. Yui seems to be doing an unusually greater number of events this year which I can say that I have been more than excited about. So I’m taking all the chances I can get while it lasts.

Source: Yui Dream

Just a quick post to say that the full version of Horie Yui’s 「ヒカリ」 Hikari PV is floating around on YouTube. Ripped from Music On! TV’s top 100 countdown on which Yui ranks 14th! Sadly here at seiyuu3 we don’t get Music On! TV so no high quality screen grabs …yet.

Enjoy the show!

In what seems like an unprecedently good week to be a Horie Yui fan, amazing news has surfaced releaving that Yui’s new single 「ヒカリ」, Hikari, has hit number 5 in the Oricon Weekly Chart. To top that off, Aice5’s 「Believe My Love/友情物語」 weighed in at number 7 putting two works involving Yui in the Top 10!

This would be Hocchan’s first single in the Oricon Top 10 with nearly 29,000 copies sold, besting her previous highs of 11th with 「Love Destiny」 and 「ALL MY LOVE」.

The 堀江由衣 threads on 2ch are abuzz with prospects of seeing 「ヒカリ」 on the TV music ranking programs. The first of which aired today at 6:52am. And here is the screenshot to prove it, courtesy of KSH.

The next ranking programs early morning Thursday and late Friday with the famous HEY!HEY!HEY! next Monday at 20:00. I’ll be looking out for that but unlike what happened with Nana-chan, I won’t hold my breath for a special guest appearance.

Source: ウォッチ！声優版 which is sadly no longer updating as of today.

There’s a one minute fourty second clip of the PV for Horie Yui’s new single 「ヒカリ」, Hikari, circulating around YouTube for those of you itching to see more (like me).

I maintain that this is the best looking PV yet to come out for any of Yui’s songs and definitely a step in the right direction for her image. It’s a little sad that Inukami doesn’t live up to expectation in that way. But that fact does not take anything away from this song. It’s brilliant!

I hope Hocchan and her staff decide to make a PV for 「Farewell rain」 as well. It’s such a beautiful song. 

Yes! As promised the main event today was 堀江由衣さんのサイン会, Horie Yui’s book signing, at 紀伊國屋書店・新宿南店, Kinokuniya Book Store, South Shinjuku. It wasn’t cheap because having missed the signup day due to being out of the country, I had to get it on auction. But, it was well worth it!

The place was, as should be no surprise now, packed out. With 500 people to greet and give books to I wondered how tiring it was going to be for her. The organisation was pretty smart. The event was set to start around 14:00. All of us were split into groups and each were told when they needed to arrive. The first 200 were asked to turn up at 13:45. I was in the second group at number 233 meaning that I was to be there by 14:15. And so forth. This was optimistic at best as these kind of events always move pretty slowly anyway. I arrived at 13:45 because not being confident in understanding the instructions, I wanted to check out the scene first, in case I messed anything up. It turned out to be unnecessary but turning up early meant that I made a new friend while waiting.

Most of the event ended up being waiting. After the first 200 people, Hocchan needed to take a break for 5 minutes which was totally understandable. When I finally got to go in it was already past 16:30. 

The encounter was short but sweet. I greeted her by saying I was happy to finally meet her (in japanese of course). Hocchan is all class when she heard that. I’m sure she gets a lot of people saying that and so her reply is a very calm “me too”. I then said that I was actually from Australia which I think got her attention and drew a look of surprise and wonder. I then tried to give her my meishi with my mail address on it which she took. The rest is between me and her :P

So here it is! Two major milestones in my seiyuu fan career achieved in a single event! I got to meet Hocchan and talk to her and I finally have an autographed item and what better than her 2006 Tour Book.

I’m back in the country finally and work hass been hell but I did manage to pickup some long awaited goodies yesterday. Horie Yui’s new single 「ヒカリ」 (Hikari) and Aice5’s 「Believe My Love」 single. I got a nice little signed postcard with comment with 「ヒカリ」 as well as the signed alternate cover for 「Believe My Love」. No real autograph for Yui yet but that main event is coming up this Saturday.

I have to say I am loving the 「ヒカリ」 single. Yui doesn’t do many upbeat trancy type songs but I’m glad this one turned out groovy. Kudos goes to YUPA for the composition and arrangement. I fell in love with the C/W song 「Farewell rain」 instantly as well. Currently both songs are getting lots of replays.

The Aice5 tracks are not so immediately impressive but quite catchy. 「Believe My Love HYPER TRANCE MIX」 certainly gets you moving and 「友情物語」 (Yuujou Monogatari) is very cute. Nothing bad so far but not groundbreaking. Though without a doubt this gives JPOP a run for my money. 

 Update: Yui’s single 「ヒカリ」 hit 7th on the Oricon daily ranking!

Just wanted to drop a quick post before I head out of the country again. (Back next week!)

I’ve been catching up on the news and saw that Yui’s PV for her new single 「ヒカリ」 on Oh!sama TV. You’ll have to be patient and wait for it to come around since they disabled the ability to select the PVs from playlist.

I really like Hikari. It’s a catchy uptempo song which suits the pace for Inukami for which it is the opening theme. It’s a pity that Inukami isn’t a terribly good anime to begin with and has recently been in the news for the wrong reasons. Maybe it will get better (unlikely).

As a bonus, Yui also has a special comment in the Anime section on Oh!sama TV. I’m looking forward to picking up the single next week along with some Aice5.