seiyuu3

Seems that Microsoft Japan’s aim to capture the otaku crowd has no limits. This time they are running a campaign for their search engine Bing, where if you use the search engine from their special campaign site, a little meter on the page fills up. When the meter reaches a certain stage by the deadline of the campaign, they will release digital items (wallpapers, sound themes) for their 5 new companion mascots. The mascots are voiced by Nakamura Eriko (Amami Haruka of im@s), Matayoshi Ai (some character from Saki), Takita Juri (Otonashi Kotori of im@s, and recently main heroine Satsuki Yuu of Tokimemo 4), Imai Asami (Kisaragi Chihaya of im@s), and Fujita Saki (Hatsune Miku) – quite a nice line-up of some cult favs here.

The meter is currently close to approaching 25% already despite the campaign only started on the 18th this month, and the deadline is January 18th 2010. Bing’s actually a fairly decent search engine (I especially like Bing’s image search, which IMO is better than google’s, and the seamless scrolling is worth trying), so you might as well go and give it a run if you haven’t already, for those who has already tried and uses Bing, go and help the cause to get more moe moe mascots and seiyuu sound themes on Windows.

This time in the form of Nana-chan appearing as guest on NHK’s mid-day program “Studio Park kara Konnichiwa“. It’s a pretty nice recap on Nana-chan’s life, including some bits before her seiyuu career, all conducted without all the Akiba/otaku reference unlike her earlier TV appearances, and they actually treat her like a, well, respectable singer/performer/celebrity. See how differently you get treated once you received the NHK seal of approval?

The letter from mum thing at the end is a nice touch, but a very much over-used and calculated Japanese entertainment trick to get the viewers more into the celebrity in question. Oh well, that’s the entertainment biz for you.

Long leg idol seiyuu Tomatsu Haruka announced in her blog a few days ago that she will be releasing her second photo album as well as her first solo album Feburary next year. She also mentioned that this time there will be swimsuit shots (!). The sound you just heard is a combination of a thousand fanboys (and fangirls) falling to the ground due to blood lost from picturing her in a swimsuit while the album weeps quietly in the dark corner for being ignored.

The im@s girls and Shimoda Asami made the cut to this years Animelo Blu-ray and DVD, but somehow Shoko-tan didn’t make the cut (nobody cares though, right?) yet GACKT did. Proving yet again that the Elevens suck at negotiating rights. The days till they release a full concert is nowhere in sight.

Kawakami Tomoko apparently had a role in the second season of DARKER THAN BLACK, prompting fans to speculate that she came out of hiatus. She went into hiatus due to health problems around July/August of 2008.

Sauce.

I’m really feeling her returning to the seiyuu circle in full force with this announcement. The song choice is awesome. 今はまだ遠いラブソング (Ima ha mada tooi Love Song) was amongst the first few songs that got me hooked on Tange Sakura. Throw in a couple of CCS covers (Catch You Catch Me and Platinum) plus the theme song “You’re my destiny” to the new radio program (which is pure moe crack from just that little bit they insert at the beginning of the radio show) and this already looks to be a solid album. Looking forward to hear how she would go back to cover her earlier songs as well after she spent a decent amount of time in the last few years just singing.

Music news site natalie reports that the theme song for the upcoming Haruhi movie – “The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi” – will be sung by Chihara Minori. This wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone whom is familiar with the story of the novel, but without getting into spoilers for those not in the known, this particular story arc is heavily focused on Nagato, with Haruhi pretty much swept into the background and only making very sparse appearances, as such the movie theme song being sung by Nagato’s seiyuu is the only natural choice.

While the second season (or maybe season 1.5?) of Haruhi received mixed responses and arguably put a large turd on the once shinny brand, “Disappearance” has a very tight storyline as well as full of Nagato-moe that should have the potential to bring the brand back to where it once was. Minorin would be in a very good position to show off both acting and singing skills in the movie.

Watch it before it is gone.

Yukarin’s costume looks a bit Santa-ish, just in time for the festive season?

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.

Music Japan’s latest Kouhaku special has a special segment on Nana-chan before, during and after she recieved news of her appearance on Kouhaku.

I LOL’d at the bit where Misshi was putting on a “gotta talk serious biz” game face which totally freaked Nana-chan out like a school kid trying to figure out why she was being called into the principal’s office. Then Misshi broke the news and the display of emotion where she nearly cried (d’awwww). The final scene of Nana-chan calling her mum to tell her the news is both heart-warming and a little sad at the same time. Heart-warming for all the obvious reasons, sad because as someone commented before, her father is no longer in this world to be able to hear the news. Though Nana-chan mentioned that her mother said she will bring her father’s photo to the show seems to at least suggest that the family has moved on ok.

There’s now a sudden huge increase of exposure for Nana-chan on many different mainstream TV stations right after the Kouhaku announcement – she’s probably now going to start registering on some of the average Joe’s radar. The usual Budoukan, Dome live and Oricon top ranking achievements were brought up, instantly impressing those celebrities whom doesn’t know her (so you can see why those are big deals, even though say, that the Budoukan has less seating than Saitama Areana and that the top ranking Oricon album sales is like 1/10th of what it used to be. But once something gets imprinted it stays there for a long time in Japan, or humans in general). There’s also plenty of mentioning about her enka background to reaffirm her singing abilities. It’s interesting that one of the reports talked about the 2ch death threat made to Nana-chan as an indicator of why she is popular amongst the Akiba circle.

Another point worth pointing out is the Nana-chan is one of only two female artists to make a first appearance on Kouhaku (the other being Kimura Kaera).

This deserves it’s own post. So no more “tentatively” sort of pussy-footing around wording, it is 120% confirmed from multiple official sources.

And 2ch goes from mini-party mode to full on celebration mode.

Yahoo’s headline.

NHK’s official line-up list.

EDIT:
Nana-chan’s message as well as her performing a snippet of “Uta no Chikara”, this year’s theme song.

Go get them Nana-chan! You have, without any doubt, proven that you are the best seiyuu artists we’ve been graced upon since seiyuu started singing, no exaggeration as you’ve done something that none of the previous great names such as Hayashibara Megumi or Shiina Hekiru had done. You are the new leader, leading a new revolution of anisong. As a supporter of you since your debuting album, there’s a bit of proudness inside me (and I’m sure fellow fans would agree) to see that we’ve all seen and recongnise the talent and skill you have before the masses.