seiyuu3

I can’t think of anything meaningful to say, so I’ll leave it up to you guys.

According to her latest blog entry, made on the 4th, RieRie has changed to an agency named リトリート (Retreat) effective from April 1st. A quick search on the netz turns up surprising little information on an agency with such a name. Now not so long ago, 2ch had threads (also covered by Canned Dogs)about a large amount of seiyuu leaving their agencies, and the one which suffered the most lost was Tokyo Actor’s Consumer’s Cooperative Society (Haikyo). The rumor has it that seiyuu Morikawa Toshiyuki is starting a seiyuu agency himself and invited many in the industry to join his company, and that the company’s name would be named sometime in April. RieRie’s new agency Retreat could very well be the agency in the rumor.

Currently, a lot of the old time seiyuu agencies are actually spinoffs from talent agencies. It’s not too difficult to imagine that the two sectors has different requirements and work rules, thus it makes a lot of sense that some of the old veterans whom are slowly moving down from the front line are now doing their part in helping the industry.

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…..

 Last Friday September 22, houkoholic and I were lucky enough to score tickets to the first ever orchestral concert for Japan featuring music from games. 「ファミ通 Presents PRESS START 2006 －SYMPHONY OF GAMES－」. Held had Bunkamura’s Orchard Hall in Shibuya, the concert featured pieces from popular japanese games such as Metal Gear Solid 2, PoPoLoCrois, Mother, Outrun, Zone of Enders, Ys, Romancing Saga, Monster Hunter, ICO and of course, Legend of Zelda.

Conducted by 竹本泰蔵 Takemoto Taizou, it was night of acoustic bliss as these familiar melodies were wonderfully recreated with the audio harmony of the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert was also littered with guests from the games industry such as designer 桜井政博 Sakurai Masahiro and composers 植松伸夫 Uematsu Nobuo, 伊藤賢治 Ito Kenji, 大島ミチル Oshima Michiru, 近藤浩治 Kondo Koji, 甲田雅人 Koda Masato, 酒井省吾 Sakai Shogo, 柴田徹也 Shibata Tetsuya to name a few. Each came out to talk a bit about each piece and what they were currently working on.

So what does all this have to do with a seiyuu blog? Well, one of the highlights of the night was the fact that the concert was hosted by none other than 田中理恵 Tanaka Rie. And did she look particularly fetching that night in her white evening gown. Rie was there to introduce each of the guests and announce each of the pieces as “Navigator” for the event. And I believe there are some very good reasons they chose her. First of all, she has the looks and an air of gracefulness about her. She also possesses a certain elegance in her elocution. And best of all… she is one hardcore gamer!

Rie has played nearly all of the titles that were featured and to hear her talk about the games there was no doubt that she really played them. I was impressed and a little surprised. I knew that a lot of the seiyuus are avid gamers but this was nothing short of prolific. All of this warrants closer inspection.

Rie has also blogged about the concert herself and is most generous by posting some nice photos of herself in that evening gown. Click for joy!

Update: Yes, I stole one of her pics!