seiyuu3

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.

Just announced on the official website today is that Yukarin is going to attend the Saturday session of Animelo 2008.

With Nana-chan (Mizuki Nana), Minorin (Chihara Minori), Yukarin (Tamura Yukari), Kurinoko (Kuribayashi Minami) on the same day the Saturday session practically has all my top favourite female seiyuu singers covered - add in ALI Project and GRANRODEO and I’m totally sold on the Saturday session now. Sunday’s session on the other hand is still up in the air. While I’m 120% certain that Ishikawa Chiaki will sing “Uninstall” and I’d love to hear that song live, the line up on Sunday doesn’t quite appeal to me on the same level.

With Nana-chan, Yui and Yukarin all attending this year, this means the three top selling female seiyuu artists of the current generation are all at Animelo. With angela also in the line up this makes me wonder if King Records had decided to throw in their weight this year and stop letting Lantis gets all the glory. Perhaps we will see a DVD release by King Records this time, which may as well, since their seiyuu DVD release are better than Lantis - video quality wise anyway.

I only just realised that “Chelsea Girl”, one of the tracks from Yukarin’s upcoming album “Izayoi no Tsuki, Kanaria no Koi”, was actually made as the February ending theme song for Nippon TV’s late night variety program Shiodome Event-bu which airs on latenight Wednesdays. The show specialises in the coverage of upcoming events and programs that is related to Nippon TV. A short section from the PV for “Chelsea Girl” was shown for this week’s show.

It looks to me that King Records is applying the same formula which worked for Mizuki Nana onto Yukarin. Though I’m not so sure that Yukarin’s music style and appearance would benefit from such marketing tactics.

Mizuki Nana’s 17th single “Starcamp EP” goes on sale next week - to all you people coming in looking for downloads and torrents, check the release date first ya fools! And for the record this site does not provide downloads and torrents - anyway this means that heavy promotion is about to begin. Yahoo Japan is going to stream the PV for Astrogation starting this Friday, and Nana-chan is scheduled to appear on television program “Oto Riko!” on the 18th. In the mean time a 15 second long commerical can be found below.

On a sort-of related topic (related to Nana-chan anyway), I was made aware of this certain scene from episode 17 of Majintantei Nougaminerou:

LOLZ at the two guys that were obviously drawn to cover the two Ns of “Nana”, so this can’t be a fluke. Looks like someone at Madhouse is a Nana-chan fan. If you are wondering where the source pictures are from and for, they are from the canned sweets which were sold on the recent Live Formula tour as part of the tour goods.

Info on Tamura Yukari’s new album is now up. Titled “Izayoi no Tsuki, Kanaria no Koi”, it will be released on 27th of February, which is also Yukarin’s birthday (she’s turning 17, again). The first pressing will come with a DVD containing the PV to one of the songs in the album “Chelsea Girl”. The release of this album also means that there would be plenty of new songs to look forward to for her Budoukan live in March.

Since both King Records and Yukarin’s own homepage fails at images, it is again up to Amazon JP to save the day with a nice big image of the cover.

Chihara Minori will also be releasing a new single on 26th March. Title is not yet known. I think there’s a good chance that we might get to hear it at the final sessions of her live tour.

Horie Yui just released her highly anticipated album “Darling” yesterday. The promotional train for this album is insane - Yui was literally on the cover of every single seiyuu magazine, with hm3 running a cover special which spans 3 consecutive issues no less. We’ve even spotted a big poster ad at Akihabara station (no pictures, sorry). No doubt it is part of VIMS’ plan to get back some lost ground now that a few of the other seiyuu artists are nibbling at Yui’s heels. Will be keeping an eye on the Oricon charts to see whether the big promotional effect is going to pay off or not. sent might also have a word or two on the album later on now that his copy came in.

Finally, one release that surely fell under the radar for many people is Takahashi Mikako’s album “sweet” which was also released yesterday. Not only is the album fully produced by Mikako herself, she also wrote the lyrics and composed the music to every single one of the 10 tracks in the album. Apparently it took her 3 years to do all of this. Mikako is a decent enough singer, I’m tempted to buy it, half out of respect for her effort and half out of curiosity.

The small image is not because of bias, just that it’s the biggest image I could find.

2007 Christmas week sees two big seiyuu DVD releases - Yukarin’s concert DVD “Pinkle Twinkle Milky Way” and Minorin’s first music clip DVD “Message 01″. So how do they stack up and are they worth the price of admission? Read on.

First, Yukarin’s concert DVD set containing footage from the 2006 Christmas concert “Pinkle Twinkle Party” as well as this year’s summer tour “Sweet Milky Way”. After a few fumbles in the beginning, the past couple of years King Record’s concert DVD products has improved dramatically and has remained pretty solid - both in terms of the quality of the actual content on the disk as well as the presentation of the package. “Pinkle Twinkle Milky Way” keeps up with the trend, so what you get for 6,800yen is a massive 3 disk set in a 4 fold digi pack, a nice thick booklet containing pictures and interviews, and a hard cardboard box to house it all. Click on the second and third picture for large size photo.

Just looking at the pictures, you can tell that King Record really knows the people they are selling to. It’s all good and well that the package is pretty, so how about the actual content? Again keeping up with their recent effort, what you get is the concert recorded in anamorphic widescreen with linear PCM stereo sound - this is about as good as they can get without moving to HD disks such as Blu-ray or HD-DVD (FWIW, Suara’s concert on Blu-ray was beautiful, so I’m eagerly waiting for a Nana-chan or Yukarin concert on a HD disk). The video compression is also good, so visually it is nice as well, check out a few screen grabs below (click for full size):

Some of you might have read my ranting against the Haruhi Gekisou DVD at other places, for reference’s sake, here’s a grab from the Gekisou DVD, again click for full size.

Compare the crispness of the screen grabs, added with the fact that the Gekisou DVD was 4:3 letterboxed (with insane overscan compensation) and I think it should be clear that the Gekisou DVD was a damn mess. Not to mention the difference in price was only a mere 800yen and I think you can understand my beef with the Gekisou disk.

As for the content’s side, we’ve talked about Yukarin’s live performance enough here but it’s worth repeating - she sings well and her MCs are fun, so you do get your money’s worth.

Moving on to Minorin’s “Message 01″

The packaging is not fancy - only coming in a standard CD size jewel case, no big deal, but my first big disappointment was the 4:3 letterbox video despite the fact that the entire disk’s video was in widescreen! On the plus side though there were no major problems with the video compression, so not all were lost.

This is the second Lantis produce DVD that I’ve bought - Animelo 2007 being the first which had bad video compression - and judging from this disk it looks like Lantis could learn a thing or two from King Record. Other than that though, the content itself was quite substantial with 96 minutes of running time, off setting the original fear of a 3,000yen price tag for 3 PV clips. The documentary section makes up the bulk of it and it will take me some time to get through the entire disk, though quickly skimming through the footage I found some nice gems in there including videos of Minorin’s street live days in Akihabara, definitely worth watching to see just how far she had came. Included with the DVD was a bonus audio CD containing one track titled “Contact 13th”. My first reaction was to ripped it and add it as the 13th track to the Contact album playlist, then I replace the mangled album version of “Shinji no Tabi” with the full version from the DVD and gave it a few play through and all of a sudden it made the album seem more complete. Surprising how one or two tracks can make or break an entire album. As a side note, Lantis collaborated with the usual anime goods stores for extra goodies and Animate was giving out special posters:

When I saw the sample on Lantis’ special page I knew I had to get the disk at Animate just for this poster, and I have to say it is one of the better free posters I’ve got from Animate for a long long time. Now I’ll just have to decide whether I want to use this poster in place of the Junpaku Sanctuary poster currently on the wall.

In conclusion, Yukarin’s DVD is another quality product that is highly recommended to anyone having a passing interest in her music career. On the other hand, Minorin’s DVD would not disappoint hardcore fans, however I don’t think it will be as worthy of a purchase to non-followers compared to the Yukarin DVD.

I guess I’m suppose to give a review of this, but I’d rather let the pictures speak for themselves. (read: I’m lazy)

Just a heads up that Yukarin’s first photo album “Sorairo” is now up for pre-order at Amazon JP. Go place your pre-orders now!

According to 声優ニュース.com, Tamura Yukari had annouced on her radio show that she will be releasing a photo album titled “Sorairo” on October 10th. Considering that Yukarin is one of the top idol seiyuu, which means being a big sales drivers for seiyuu magazines, especially hm3 which is famous for its gorgous seiyuu photo shots, it’s kind of surprising that it took them that long to come up with a photo album dedicated solely to Yukarin, as many other popular idol seiyuu such as Nana-chan, Hocchan, Enomoto Atsuko had released their photo albums already. What would be interesting though is the direction of the photo album. Yukarin’s trademark dress code - sweet lolita - is quite popular amongst the female otakus, and certainly a lot of Yukarin’s female fans does taken a similiar liking in their fashion choice. If they want to broaden the appeal of the photo album outside of the male fanbase, having a bit of a fashion angle to the photo album would certainly be a very big draw in my opinion. 　

No pre-orders are up yet at the usual outlets, but be sure to keep a look out for it all you Yukarin fans.

Just announced today at her live tour “Sweet Milky Way”, Tamura Yukari will be holding a live concert at every singer’s “holy grail venue” Budoukan next year sometime in spring. This will very likely make Yukarin the third seiyuu artist to hold a personal concert at Budoukan, after Shiina Hekiru and Mizuki Nana.

(很久沒寫中文文章)

不久之前King社的某高層曾說過要加強旗下的動畫和聲優音樂發展, 但是當全世界的音樂商都在頭痛CD銷量下滑的情況下, 為甚麼ACG界反而強調這一方面的發展呢? 當然和御宅族的忠誠習性有莫大關係, 近期ACG系的CD銷量直線上昇, 更有直逼主流音樂CD的銷量的趨勢. 成本遠比動畫製作甚至主流音樂低而利潤又高的動畫CD業在商人眼中當然不能夠放過. 而現在ACG界中的兩大頭音樂社King Records和Lantis雖然現在各有強項, 但很明顯它們想達到的目標卻是一樣的, 在說明這個目標是什麼前, 現在先說一說兩間公司的現狀吧.

首先說King, 為了方便把子公司Starchild也連在一起說吧. King現在可是很令他社羨慕的公司, 無他, 現在銷量最好的ACG歌手大多都是它旗下的藝人 - 堀江由衣, 水樹奈々, 還有最近正式歸屬的田村ゆかり, 三名都是現在僅有可以多憑自己名氣少靠tie-up作品品質而有資格入Oricon週間十大的聲優歌手. 雖然現況甚好但是對於King來說它的未來發展就沒有那麼樂觀, 原因就是King其他的ACG音樂商機卻是不太理想. 除了靠King本身有份投資的動畫作品而用自己旗下的聲優歌手作出tie-up的做法外, 很少會有作品會來跟King要用它旗下的歌手來負責音樂. 其次就是上述的三大天后的”嘗味期限”雖然還不能夠說近, 但是在King多番努力下現在還後接無人的情況下前景實在是大大的不太妙. 不能永遠只靠三位聲優歌手而且動畫音樂也沒甚麼看頭的King當然就想加強旗下的陣容了. 雖然嘴上這樣說但King的進展還是慢得可以(日本人特性?), 到最近都還沒有什麼實質的新動作. 除了還是玩那組聲優樂隊那老把戲試金石和開始大力推捧還甚有發展力的田村ゆかり外, 不久前竟然還要出到把老手林原大姐再請出來灌了大碟這一著. 長遠發展暫時並不樂觀.

另一方面Lantis可以說是正相反. 現在隨便看一套動畫都差不多可以看到Lantis是音樂方面的贊助, 而且它旗下還不缺乏一群雖然不能夠像三天后那樣輝煌但還有一定銷量保證的歌手例如JAM Project, CooRie, 粟林みな実等, 但對Lantis來說它發售的CD中銷量最好的往往是要靠超人氣作品帶動的. 只要拿涼宮與因這套作品紅得發紫的平野綾個人單曲”明日のプリズム”比較一下就知道, Lantis現在旗下的歌手在個人程度來說是大多都沒有足夠的號召力. 每次都要擔懮作品有沒有可能可以達到像涼宮或最近的らき☆すた那種驚人的人氣程度才有銷量保證的話對公司來說當然也不是辦法, 所以Lantis便積極地簽了一群聲優歌手來加強實力. 雖然手上已經有了平野綾這一未來大將, 但是其實現在的平野綾靠的還是演出作品的間接人氣. 平野綾雖然有一定的潛質, 而且Lantis很明顯是看到”God Knows…”等的表現和她的衣著性格而想將平野綾培養成一個靠搖滾歌的小rock后, 可是平野綾本身在音樂上的表現還沒有足夠的實力, 個人風格和演出經驗(特別是live)可以和King的三大天后周旋 - 歌唱力不及水樹奈々, 風格變化不及田村ゆかり, 暫時也沒有由衣的招牌糖衣歌. 加上沒有可能只靠一個人來支撐場面, 所以Lantis還簽下另一位同是涼宮出品的聲優歌手 - 茅原実里. 如果說平野綾是偏向堀江由衣那種賣特定音樂形像的聲優歌手, 那茅原実里就是走水樹奈々那樣的正統實力派. 只要一聽和看茅原実里最近的作品”君がくれたあの日”就已經一目了然公司要她走的方向了, 實在是有向水樹奈々的名曲”Eternal Blaze”作出宣戰的模樣. 加上茅原実里本身的音樂造詣不低, 還有不能小看的live實力(她今年可以出席Animelo已經是一個很好的證明, 不能唱live的人去Animelo簡直是自討苦吃), 她已經成為了Lantis主力力捧的另一對象. 最後擔當和田村ゆかり對台的好可能就是SOS團最後的團員 - 後藤邑子. 她的新作單曲已經宣佈會在八月發售.

為什麼King和Lantis都這麼積極地加強聲優和歌手的陣容呢? 答案就是想做到”一手包辦”這個目的. 要知道現今日本動畫界”製作委員會”制度是異常的複雜和麻煩, 但當音樂公司可以一手包辦主題曲和聲優唱的character song的製作的話, 一來可以減少委員的數目而不必把收入分薄, 而音樂公司自身在業界的地位和收入也相對地提高, 是一石二鳥的發展計劃. 所以兩公司才會有這樣的發展方針. 至於它們會不會成功, 我們便放長雙眼來看吧.