seiyuu3

A new seiyuu agency named Early Wing just popped up in the last few days and had snagged away Kitamura Eri and Imai Asami from their previous agency Kaleidoscope. There’s also one more seiyuu Abe Reiko signed with this agency but she’s relatively unknown compared with OtaEri and Mingosu. These 3 are the only seiyuu thus far announced to be belonging to this agency. They have an official blog, which would probably be spammed by OtaEri the most judging from her posting habits from the past when she was blogging on the Kaleidoscope blog, which unfortunately had purged all her posts already it seems.

Not much info on the agency right now, but seems to be a fairly low-key operation. Company’s address is all the way out in Chiba-ken which is kind of unusual as traditionally the companies are located inside Tokyo city, suggesting that the company might be really small on a tight budget. Either way hopefully this would mean a better future for OtaEri and Mingosu, especially for their music side of things.

EDIT: I just notice that they misspelt actors as acters in their logo. Way to go with the vote for confidence!

Stole the pics from their page, but they are are too bright. I know making it bright hides the less-than-perfection face of almost anyone and anything, but the aim is not to blind someone.

Kitamura Eri first personal single coming up?

The Animate online store has an entry listing which essentially says “Kitamura Eri 1st Maxi-single” with a serial of LACM-4513, coming out on July 23rd. Since KitaEri has released numerous character singles for anime such as Seto no Hanayome and Kodomo no Jikan already I’d take it that this is going to be her first single under her very own name. I’m pumped for this release as I think KitaEri is another power seiyuu singer that has plenty of potential to make it big. However, LACM points to the single being released by Lantis, so there’s this looming bad vibe about this which I can’t shake off as well.

Either way, this is a good time to re-visit KitaEri’s Hyakka Seiran anisong covers to see why I’m excited:

Tamura Yukari’s Budoukan Live DVD set release confirmed

Anisong site Axive has reported that Yukarin’s historical live at Budoukan “Love♡Live 2008 *Chelsea Girl*” will see a DVD release on July 23rd (damn what’s with this day?!). A DVD release is expected and anticipated by many, but the real bit of news is that they are going to have a 5.1 soundtrack – a first for King Records’ seiyuu DVD releases I believe. Due to various circumstances I actually had to pass on this concert, and while there is no substitute for physically being there, at least a nicely mastered DVD with 5.1 soundtrack can capture part of the magic. Yukarin is taking one for the team here – as I’m sure depending on how this release is recieved that a 5.1 track for Nana’s Live Fighter concert for this year would be a given. So here’s hoping that the release will be good.

I have Minorin fanclub goods

Lazy man way to finish off this entry.

Hyakka Seiran is a project started by Seiyuu Grandprix sometime last year. The premise is simple enough – grab some famous seiyuu, male and female, and get them to cover famous anime songs, then sell some CDs and voice ringtones. Sounds like a winning (money-making) formula, no? So what could possibly go wrong?

The volume I purchased, volume 2 of the female side, contained more than enough names that I’m very familiar with to pique my interest – Inoue Marina, Nazuka Kaori, Pak Romi, Kaneda Tomoko, Hirohashi Ryo and Yamamoto Maria. Throw in some interesting covers – like Inoue Marina covering Gurren Lagann’s “Sorairo Days” and Gundam SEED’s “Annani issyodatta no ni”, Pak Romi’s Fullmetal Alchemist’s “READY STEADY GO”, Mobile Suit Gundam’s “Ai senshi”, Aura Battler Dunbine’s “Dunbine Tobu”, Kaneda Tomoko’s “Combattler V” (yep I’m quite an old school mecha head) it was enough to get me to do a one-click purchase.

However, like everything too good to be true, there’s a catch. You see, they don’t actually get to sing the whole song, rather just snippets of it. “Hyakka” in the title – literally “one hundred songs”, means that the aim was to collect 100 songs on each CD, and how they did it was to have 10 seiyuu each singing 10 snippets to make it 100, so in reality you only get about 7 minutes for each seiyuu. This wasn’t a big issue, as I’ve already read a review which highlighted this fact, so although still rather disappointing, I was ready for it. Production, on the other hand, is clearly on the cheap side. It sounds like they gave the seiyuu no practice at all and just shove them in front of the mic and tell them to sing, karaoke style. Some songs even had clipping in the recording. Painful.

So why am I still talking about it? Not to discourage potential buyers nor going into a rant actually, because even with all the negatives, it still manage to turn out to be somewhat of a neat purchase.

While the karaoke-ness of the recordings was initially a huge turn off, after listening to a few of them singing it dawned on me that it can also be viewed as to how well some of these seiyuu can sing without mixing aids and after touches. While a majority of them sounds more or less like people singing in a karaoke, a few of them performed well enough that it was close to recording level of quality. The ones that managed to do that were Kitamura Eri, Pak Romi and Nakamura Chie.

Working backwards from the list, let’s start with Nakamura Chie. I’m not terribly familiar with Nakamura Chie (I don’t watch Naruto lolz), but she had that old-school style of singing that made her cover of 80’s classic “Pajama no mamade” (Creamy Mami) and “Natsu no Mirage” (Kimagure Orange Road) instantly triggering the nostalgia in me.

Pak Romi’s line up was a trip down the mecha memory lane. Her cover for Turn A Gundam’s “Tsuki no Mayu”, Brain Powerd’s “Ai no Rinkaku (Field)” was just pure love. Also her ability to deliver a sound that almost matches that to MIO’s (now known as MIQ) original powerful vocal performance in “Dunbine Tobu” commands lots of respect.

Finally, Kitamura Eri. Another one full of classics like Rinbu revolution, You Get to Burning, Give a reason, Alone, Pure Snow etc. and possiblly the best cover of Yuzurenai Negai I’ve heard, seconded only to Momoi Halko’s version last year. In fact it did so much for my opinion of Kitamura Eri’s singing ability that if she was to announce a CD right now, I would buy it in a whim with no questions asked.

Some of the other decent ones came from Yamamoto Maria and Inoue Marina. And to top it off Kaneda Tomoko’s track is just off the chart crazy since there is just no way for me, and I assume a lot of others, to take her voice and singing seriously – which is all good and well for comedic effect though.

The CD is clearly for the seiyuu otaku only, and even for those interested, the best way to sum up this CD will be that it’s like a box of chocolate samplers – some are tasty, some are not terribly good, and some makes you crave for more of the same flavour, but in the end there’s just not enough of it. I’ve made clips of what I think were the two best performers on this disk – Kitamura Eri and Pak Romi – and embed them below. Have a listen yourself.

Kitamura Eri’s



Pak Romi’s