seiyuu3

Dengeki Online had posted an indepth report of the The IDOLM@STER 3rd Anniversary Live.  The report can be accessed here.

The report is full of photos, all the thumbnails are clickable for access to some pretty decent size pictures (VGA resolution)  - except the ones that has Kugimiya Rie in it.

Now this may seem strange to some of you, but Japan has a concept of “Portrait Rights” (I seem to recall that some other countries such as Hong Kong has it too, but don’t quote me on that) - I won’t go into details, there’s a much better article about the concept here, but basically it boils down to that you are not allowed to use any pictures of any person without their consent because it is a violation of personal rights as well as property rights, this is one of the reason why if you visit Japanese blogs, especially those similiar to the Akiba blog varity, you would find the webmasters painstakingly mosaic out all the faces on the photos.

While I won’t go into the debate of whether this is a stupid law or not, what this law means is that in the Japanese entertainment industry it is actually possible for celebrities and their management to control exactly how, when and where their faces appears in most forms of media and publications, such as magazines, videos and websites.  The fact that this report is missing pictures of Kugimiya Rie had caused all sorts of negative speculations amongst the diehard iM@S fans - because thus far, it’s only ever been anything related to iM@S that has received the block-out treatment, while everyone knows that Kugimiya Rie had no real issues posing for her other works.   No one knows for sure what the true reason for this is - whether it is because Kugimiya Rie personally objects to it, that her management refuses to have her being associated with the iM@S franchise, or simply a failure of contractial negotiation, but the implication is that the chances of getting a non-butchered (considering the amount of performances she was in), let alone uncut, version of the concert on DVD is slim when even something as simple as a coverage report gets the big NG, which of course greatly disappoints all iM@S fans.

Count me in as one of those that is disappointed. :(

Mizuki Nana tops this week’s Oricon charts

Mizuki Nana’s concert DVD Live Formula sold some 16000+ copies in its first week, beating old-school famous Jpop duo CHAGE and ASAKA’s Live concert DVD released on the same week to claim first spot on the Oricon Music DVD Weekly, as well as ranking in 4th on the Overal DVD sales ranking. Note this is actually not the first time that Mizuki Nana had claimed top spot on the Oricon Music DVD ranking - her PV collection NANA CLIPS 3 was the first to do so. NANA CLIPS 3 was also the first ever seiyuu music DVD to rank first on the Oricon Music DVD Weekly charts. The result of Live Formula proves yet again that when it comes to seiyuu artists, Mizuki Nana is in a league of her own.

Following on, supporters of anisong singers and seiyuu artists has a lot to talk about in the past week when it comes to Oricon rankings. We first have Sakamoto Maaya/Kanno Yoko making a bit of history with the Macross Frontier opening theme song “Triangler” staying in the top 10s for 3 consecutive weeks, then you have May’n’s Sheryl songs ranking in 3rd on its debuting week. The power of Culture ™ is not to be under-estimated. Now when Nakajima Megumi releases her debuting CD as Ranaka Lee we will know for sure the branding power of Macross.

Kugimiya Rie’s appearance on NHK’s Anigiga

Now usually I have issues with NHK’s reporting (long story), but Kugimiya Rie’s recent TV appearance on Anigiga on the 14th May was actually a very nice piece of interview that is worth watching if you have even a remote passing interest in her. Her mentioning about how she was not much of an anime fan early in childhood due to her being raised in Kumamoto and how she utilise her interest in books to help her get into the voice acting was surprising, seeing how that there is an increase tendency for seiyuu to be huge anime fans as of recent. The other interesting thing was how her parents, wanting her to stay close to home, suggested her to be an announcer instead. I can’t picture this myself because her current vocal image is too deeply ingrained into my brain. For those who’s not fluent enough to watch the video raw, I still suggest you to watch the live adlib in the studio. The video file is now floating around on the Intertubes at the usual places.

I know it’s not a particularly flattering picture, but I like what she said there.

Chihara Minori loves Chinese dresses

Just an excuse for me to talk about Minorin, she posted a picture of herself in yet another Chinese dress (her fourth time). The dress (shown on the far right below) is a gift given to her by Inoue Marina. Let’s all give a big “Thank You” to Inoue Marina! Thank you Marina for indirectly giving us Minorin eye-candy!

Nobody beats her when it comes to “dressing up” though:

Can you tell who that is? (no clues in the tags, har har)

If there’s anyone looking for yet more proof that the suits in companies wants to cash in on the big spending power of the otakus, look no further than this upcoming piece of gadget that won’t come to your overseas electronic stores anytime in the future.

Segnity is a 1-seg (a Japanese digital TV broadcast standard designed for portable devices such as mobile phones) portable TV device with a very otaku trick up its sleeve. What it does is that it provides voice guidance to the user as he/she flips through the days’ TV programs. “So what?” all you gadget geeks would say, “voice guidance’s been in gadgets for years!”. You sirs would be quite correct, nothing is new here technologically wise. However what if instead of the usual silky smooth, professional, but ultimately boring-to-a-T voice, your guide is tsundere? Oh yes, I think I’ve just gotten your attention…..

With 3 adjustable levels of tsundere-ness ranging from full tsuntsun’s “see if I care if you leave” to full on “you’re leaving already??” deredere even as you power-off the device, I can already hear the suits laughing all the way to the bank as otaku eat this up. And obviously someone at the development department has done their research, as the tsundere voice is, although not officially confirmed, said to be voiced by tsundere queen Kugimiya Rie. You can even listen to some voice sample here. It’s so wrong, ultimately useless, yet so perfect. What’s more, the device is also upgradable - different voices can be loaded into the device via miniSD cards, allowing for specific anime character and/or seiyuu voices to be sold. The possibility is endless and I can picture a red model with Char Aznable’s (Ikeda Shuuichi) voice on it already.

Peg to be sold at under 10,000yen (~US$80) and launching at the end of September, it’s pretty affordable in terms of Japanese spending power. I’m tempted to buy one myself for the novelty factor alone.

Oh and where can I vote for a Wakamoto Norio voice pack?