seiyuu3

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 Animelo 2008 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.

Really busy with work and because I have a short trip coming up I won’t be able to do all the video editing until after the 13th, so I’m posting an intermediate clip for the time being. Also it looks like a lot of people don’t have a 360 and/or Halo 3 so they can’t download the replays. As I don’t have a capture card/video recorder so I’ll have to record the footage the ghetto way – film the replays on the TV, and well that’ll have to wait till I get back as well.

Anyway about the clip – currently it’s mostly the talk in the lobby before the game, so if you don’t understand Japanese and/or just want to see some action, jump to the 6 minute mark.

I’m still working on getting the videos (I’m getting there). But in the mean time for those with a 360 as well as a copy of Halo 3, you can go to bungie.net and download either the entire replay clip of my match that day, or selected shorts I’ve made, to your own Xbox. Ueda Kana was playing as player “LIVE Park 10″ so you can keep track on what she was doing. You won’t get the voices, but at least you can see how she plays – she made a few nice sniper kills as well as a couple of classic Halo beatdowns.

BTW don’t look at how I play, I suck. :P

I had to do it.

More details (and possibly video) later.

But do let me say this first – she definitely knows how to play.

Ueda Kana is another one of those seiyuu widely known as a heavy gamer. She’s not just hardcore, but HARDCORE. For starters, she has a Xbox 360 [insert Xbox 360 epic failure in Japan comment here], what’s more, she plays Halo [insert all Japanese hates FPS comment here]. She has talked about her obsession with Halo 3 in her blog numerous times. Her obsession goes as far as forgoing sleep on work days to the point of messing up her breakfast, 16 hour marathons, as well as organising numerous gaming sessions with her seiyuu friends (apparently Shimizu Ai is quite a sniper according to Ueda Kana). Well it seems that her unhealthy obsession has gotten noticed by Microsoft.

This coming Saturday (23rd), between 1pm to 3pm Japan time, there’s a special event on Xbox Live where you can have a chance to go head-to-head against Ueda Kana in Halo 3 online multiplayer, and even chat with her for abit. To have a chance to play against her, all you need to do is send a friend request to either gamer tag “LIVE Park 09″ or “LIVE Park 10″ – anyone applying to both tags will be disqualified – and on that day if your request is accepted that means you’ve got in, and you will then be randomly invited to party games during that time. I’m not sure if the people at Microsoft will be bastards enough to apply any sort of geographical and account filtering, but it won’t hurt to give it a shot even if you live outside of Japan.

Guess it’s time for me to fire up a bit of Halo too.