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Omonomono Newsletter, 2021-03-25

pic.twitter.com/YivGhEmYK0

— AP?? (@AP__bar) March 18, 2021

This Past Week

Thursday I saw this news going around about Japan’s Coca-Cola pass and I’m like, the US have them too, even if it’s different that it is a loyalty program and not a subscription. Of course, since Kotaku is unfamiliar with both Japanese vending machines and Coca-Cola vending passes, a number of mistakes has been made.

WEP episode 10 has a bunch of sakugabros online working on it. Kind of neat. Also the whole transsexual spectrum thing they did with Momoe is quite nice–really stretches the viewers’ notion of what it means to be trans and the definition and ideas that boxed even trans people’s notion of what being trans is. WEP 11 is also a great twist and I hope the series concludes with both feet on the ground.

This was news actually a bit before the article, but Bushiroad did buy out Frontwing. Nothing unsurprising here if you ask me. VN conglomerates have a lot of great IP and as that sector continues to dry up, it present some opportunities. Bushiroad is commercially opportunistic, but as an IP generator I think they are still a step or two behind the actual giants in the industry. So the match makes sense as Bushi continue to fortify on the male-interest side.

Why English Shiny Colors？？ oh right government funding.

Love Live jumps into home console F2P and this is all so vintage 2014 consolem@s for me. Including all the expensive DLCs.

On that note, Shiny Colors announced a new unit over the weekend and released the seiyuu on Tuesday, as it has done the last 2 years. Also a month+ of free rolls plus other 3rd anniversary bonuses. The new “other” character Luca Ikaruga isn’t in the new unit but her CV, an Aoni talent, shares a name with a Stardust talent. Just something to know.

On the Mind

The new Shiny Colors unit–one of the two characters is the sister of Hazuki, the assistant/staff of the production office. This is a weird development but also exciting because you don’t know where this is suppose to go. In old times the assistant herself is the idol (or ex-idol in Kotori’s case) but this is a good development generally. The Nanakusa name also seems to suggest we won’t have more than 7 units?

Horses, work, and Shiny Colors feels right. It’s been a busy week trying to do all that, on top of Priconne (in EN does everyone just get their Kyouka for free or what?) and ARMooo grind in Theater Days.

Also–I’ve been using MailChimp but I want to simplify more for this newsletter thing, so I’m trying a few different things. Hopefully nothing different will happen for the readers and handful subscribers out there.

Events

Chokaigi 2021 lineup kinda listed here. Pivoting into pay-to-view more so now. Scheduled for the last weekend in April.

Anime Japan is this weekend. You have to pay to watch it, but they have an English language stream where streamers will speak in English as they watch the other streams.

Anisong idols Aå¿œP final live was today, if you missed it you can timeshift it. It’s on Stagecrowd so oversea-friendly.

Also, i☆Ris member Azuki Shibuya is graduating at this Sunday and you can watch their last 6-people live here.

A bit out of scope but I’m trying to get the code to watch this Non Non Biyori event. You just need to buy the OP single and the code is inside. There’s some Million Live release event this weekend as well that were postponed from last year, now online–too bad they’re limited to Animate lottery winners.

Personal Note

I stayed up to watch both Shiny Colors 2nd live shows last weekend and am still suffering for it. If I get more tired than I do on the weekdays, on the weekend, it just makes the coming week all the rougher. The problem is even if I sleep in (and I did on Saturday), the following day just gets screwed up due to the time lag. The only option is to wake up “early” on Sunday and suck it up, but invariably I sleep too late to make a full recovery Monday. Anyways, this just means I am almost sure that I’m only releasing this post later in the week so I can make up sleep.

Baked oats–anyone into these? I’m not but am curious… Since the corona lockdown I’ve been cooking a lot, as said, so often time I would google up recipes. Naturally now my Android phone’s google feed thing recommends me weird food trends inspired by the attention economy.

On that note, those Sharp high-end rice cookers are now customized for IDOLM@STER and on sale. They are really expensive, 1 liter capacity, IOT…things. I want one lol. It even has auto-stir feature which means you can cook curry or other stew-y things in it without burning the bottom? Not a pressure cooker though.

Long Reads

Ooops, I knew I forgot something.

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Omonomono Newsletter, 2021-03-16

https://twitter.com/Abalisah/status/1369854577701437441

This Past Week

Masami Okui had another birthday (I never count these anymore I guess) but it coincides with the release of her latest album. You can find it at the usual places.

In other news about things from my younger days, the last and latest Evangelion movie finally got its day in the sun in Japan. Needless to say it shattered some records, but given it released on a Monday, it’s unorthodox to say the least. It’s weird that out of everything from it, I’m more excited about the vinyl covers for the Hikki theme.

If you want to celebrate rebels as statutes, maybe try this one.

March 11 is a special day in Japan and 2021 marks the 10th year of the Tohoku disaster. Have some coffee holders.

Starlit Season has been pushed back from May to October. Funny thing is literally just before the news came out I went and created a new Steam account to allow for purchasing Japanese games, and preordered it. Such is life.

Vtubers for AirAsia. I flew them once on the way into Indonesia, they are pretty okay for a LCC.

Two Moms!

On the Mind

I didn’t list it in the last news letter, but Suzufes and Nano.ripe (plus Healer Girls) on Nissin were two shows I wanted to watch and forgot about. Guess the archives are still there until later this week.

I stayed up to watch Reina Ueda’s first live. She debuted as an artist back in 2016 and while she has performed a couple times in some special events, this is her first full blown concert. It was short and, uh, thematic I guess, but also very comfortable and enjoyable in ways that you might not experience seiyuu events elsewhere. The archive is until this Saturday (Sunday JST) so I definitely recommend it, assuming navigating eplus is not an issue for you.

I also neglected to mention last update, but the reading drama with a bunch of 81Produce seiyuu was all week last week and I caught one session on Sunday. It’s by the same author as the wifi-hacking one I watched last winter in Japan. This one is about identity fraud.

Kung Fu Tea is an older, American-based Asian drink chain taking after the Taiwanese craze since the 00s. Voila.

Events

We announced Kurocon volume 3 in July!

Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayers film in US theaters soon?

As for this weekend, it’s even more packed than last week.

Mai Fuchigami has a live Friday!

This coming weekend is IDOLM@STER Shiny Colors 2nd LIVE. It is both a physical event (or two events, both days) and it will be streamed online live. What’s more, the teaser for next week’s announcement stream seem to hint at a new unit. All details here.

Garnidelia also have two shows this weekend!

Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is having a two-day festival this weekend also, and you can even use the EN version of eplus and pia to watch it. Good thing these things have timeshift, eh. Livers might want to also catch the Songs of Tokyo special on Sunday.

Yuri Komagata has a concert on the 20th! Should be a blast!

Machico, our favorite hotdog lady, is doing a show on the 20th as well. Hype!

May’n 15th Montly Concert series continues in March with “Rock” on also the 20th.

Anisong daddy Hironobu Kageyama is doing a solo thing on Nissin Power Plant on the 20th.

On Sunday, you can be a beater online in this SAO event with some anisong singers.

Mikuni Shimokawa has a birthday show on Sunday the 21st.

Last one for this post is Asca acoustic live on Sunday.

Personal Note

It’s horses all day and Priconne JP and EN in the gaps. Not a lot other than trying to find time to catch up on snooze, some piled up work, and thinking I should clean my place and very, very slowly getting to it.

During the quarantine months I cooked a lot more–to be sure, I normally cook my own food. But thanks to not going anywhere I ended up cooking the things I was craving for due to inability of travel. Turns out most of the time I just want to eat tebasaki in japan. I suppose a lot of the things I can half-ass get here. Kit ramens go a long way if you get the right ones. I can get sushi grade fish and cut them on my own. Other noodles dishes aren’t too hard to make either. Karaage isn’t hard, just a bit annoying to deal with the oil. I even made hitsumabushi this week but lacking a lot of the picked vegetables didn’t help. Still came out good I think. A bit of green onion goes a really long way. Or a dab of wasabi.

Long Reads

I have a couple long reads in the back burner but probably off-topic for this article. Instead, check out Chihhi doing an acoustic studio cover of her hit song from 22 years ago. Goddamn 22 years ago is a long time ago but worse, it doesn’t feel that way to me. (On the bright side, 25 years does.)

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Omonomono Newsletter, 2021-03-02

The experiment continues for the third time.

I had to tear myself away from Umamusume to do anything related to proper life-based responsibilities, yet I still don’t have enough time logged for a game that I spent so much time thinking about.

This Past Week

I am not much of a Nintendo person but Project Triangle Strategy is the kind of game that tickles my pickles. The demo is out on Switch so give that a try.

The new trailer for Dragon Maid S is sublime. That’s what the S stands for. Seiyuu hip-hop rhymes I can get 足りない！There was also an announcement stream. Anyways, July season looking good!

Netflix you crazy.

Otakon can pay its bills.

Couple items I left out from last week – Nanasis movie preview, Netflix being less crazy – WIT animation academy.

Hmm. Yes, Kurocon activities are afoot.

AEG LMAO – they’re going to branch into concert promos in JP?

Rieri , or Rie Takahashi, launches solo music brand.

On the Mind

Horses. Lots of horses.

There are horses on my phone. The pre-launch live stream has a lot of good overview of the gameplay. It still retains the Dire1 soul, making this the most IM@S game outside of IM@S. Only if Shiny Color could be like this…

I have written the primer on my end. That and all the links should get you started assuming you know how to install/play Japanese app games.

Do you remember Kurt Schilling? Really should take a page from Masahiro Tanaka all day everyday man.

Less horse, but I hope the best for Ogata.

I watched the Zombieland Saga live stream. It was a lot of fun–in a musical kind of way. If anything I think that is the best format for anime-oriented seiyuu unit content, but it’s asking a lot of them. Traditionally anyways. There were some news that came of it, and they performed the upcoming OP and ED during the show too.

On the IDOLM@STER front, Lisani Live had some of the best musical performances from both CG and ML. Rock the Beat Harmonics was chillingly solid and showed off Kiyono Yasuno’s voice really well. Rock arrangements of Dear and Airu were mind blowing. The timeshift for the show lasts till Friday, on Nico, Stagecrowd (recommended), and Streaming+.

Datte Anata wa Princess dropped for Popmas, well… Not that I have any time to play this game with Horses all day everyday.

Mushoku Tensei finally got started, although, dang, underage kids trying to do sex things can be a bit iffy. In retrospect it was done as much class as it could have been. I mean, is this a PG-13 series or what? R? Rating it R would be safe.

Events

Kadokawa Light Novel Expo…I guess starts Friday and runs for a while.

milet has a live stream for her concert on Saturday, will be good I hope.

Show By Rock has its big festival on Sunday.

Personal Note

Get your COVID vaccine! I got my first shot.

Where I live, we got a ton of snow during February–this Feb is one for the record books. I’m glad we’re done with snow this year, or about to be anyways.

Singaporean MC-personality and my friend Ash landed a gig for AnimeJapan this year, cheers for that! Look forward to it at the end of the month.

Long Reads

If you haven’t, this documentary short from 2016 details Haru Urara’s story. (I guess Masa is a fan of her). ESPN 30 for 30 does some cool stuff. I guess it’s more like a short watch than a long read.

For a real read, check out Megumi Hayashibara’s new book. It’s in English as a simul-pub in JP from Yen Press. Probably a must-read for seiyuu types like myself…after the horses are done running… Here’s a promo message she recorded for us.

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Omonomono Newsletter, 2021-02-22

The experiment continues.

RIP Daft Punk? But the Clock of the Cinderella never stops ticking.

The real joke is RIP Daft Punk vinyl prices. Ye gads.

This Past Week

I talked about D4DJ First Mix in general but finally, Waipa talks about his work in the anime! It’s in this week’s D4DJ presents Peaky P-key no SaichoutenMix. Miyu and DJ Wildparty have met from way back, and it’s rare that these DJ gets the backstory spilled out this way. The full thing is available free: here (need VPN or region-bypass plugin for Radiko), or check it out on Spotify, Amazon or Apple podcast.

I was able to catch some of Bloom, the Hololive idol concert thing. Really not that bad, but this is at the same level where I can see how some other groups (namely: well-stocked Chinese companies and vtubers) can do just as good if not better of a job. But it’s evaluating the situation backwards to think that, I think. At some level this is the way a properly postmodern regurgitation would feel like. It’s easy to look at the output and say how it would be written as a SQL statement, but the management and creation of the database is magnitude harder. That said, I am not really familiar or vested in the the characters (and maybe not even the performers) so it really is not that appealing. But then again…this is its own thing that will appeal to certain folks.

Hosoda’s new film gets a sneak peek here.

Hironobu Kageyama’s birthday was 2/18! More over, check out this video talking about JAM Project 20th anniversary and their new docufilm. For some reason they got Angela’s Atsuko and Masayoshi Oishi as MC–anisong’s biggest shittalkers. Sure is weird. Also this article IN ENGLISH!

Checking out on Zaiko was the eufonius anniversary concert stream and it was pretty chill and got all the hits. A bit short but also pretty spot on. That falsetto sure is something.

On the Mind

I had a lot of good memories surrounding the Crest series–Crest of the Stars, and then the Banner of the Stars. They are a series of SF novels from Hiroyuki Morioka. If you copied the form of LOGH and made it more superficially interesting in line with modern popular SF, this will be what you get kinda. It’s infrastructural, it’s a bit 40k in space, it’s about relationships that otaku will care about. While the anime adaptations have come and went for over 20 years (goddamn it has been that long?) the light novels recently have been rebooted by EN localizers J-Novel Club. In fact they have been retranslated and it has made past volume 3 of Banner, which IIRC was how far the original official EN translation went. Volume 5 just recently came out, with part 1 of volume 6 in prepub.

Sunday nights anime watching has becoming a bit of an experience this season, between Attack on Titan Season 4 and Mushoku Tensei. While I never did the GoT thing on Sundays, I get that same vibe with these two. I just don’t get the “water-cooler” talk for these shows. It’s like you either get smug light novel/manga types or very, very deep and wide pool of plebs like myself enjoying the ride. Unfortunately many don’t watch the shows right as they come out.

Lots of event backlogs this week, despite being more of a light weekend for most. Going to churn through that…maybe catch the 8bitstory BAC show?

Was there supposed to be a Kurocon announcement? LOL.

Coming up in a couple days is the launch of the long-awaited Umamusme mobile game (which will be on iOS, Android, and DMM/PC). Watch the launch live stream?

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— ???????????????? (@uma_musu) January 22, 2021

Events

Zombieland Saga streaming event on 2/27. Then they have a stage at Anime Japan, which is all virtual, at end of March.

The big show this weekend is LisAni Live 2021. I probably will try my best to watch it all real time, but we’ll see. Unlike Animax Musix, anyone can watch these, no geo restrictions. Of course, CG and ML are representing so that makes it a no-brainer.

May’n is celebrating her 15th anniversary this year and she is doing 5 monthly concert streams. Saturday is her 2nd one.

Taketatsu Ayana is doing 3 showings on Sunday. It’s an online concert but, well, it’s Ayachi style.

Asaka and Yurucamp is a winning combination this weekend, too.

Personal Note

The extremely cold temps hitting Texas (cold for Texas) causing power outages affected me also indirectly, because of friends and family out there in the cold. Learning about the details of this is just extremely sad. Say what you will about how authoritarian governments and communism can make countries ineffective internationally because so much energies and overhead spent on dealing with polity, there’s something to be said when unregulated rampant greed dressed as capitalistic policy undermines a nation’s fundamentals. The money it cost to fortify the Texan power grid against cold is a tiny fraction of costs inflicted on blackouts of numerous factories and interruptions of businesses. Worse, almost the exact same thing happened 10 years ago. If the government isn’t willing to fairly referee and revise the rule book for the best net outcome, it is it still even capitalism? This is literally the case of spending a big fortune to make a small one, just backwards. [BTW, that’s a saying I learned from Everquest (any Enchanters…), thanks Log Horizon.]

The scary thing is how a certain philosophy of greed has really taken hold the momentum for change in the US government. It’s one thing for Texas to struggle with this, but the fear is it will merely be a reflection of other crises the country have to deal with in advance, that nothing happens even after those bad events happen.

In a lighter note, Priconne Fest came and went–it’s the first in-person type festival the series has had. Too bad the live concert segment was postponed? Bummer. This past week was pretty crazy for me on PriconneR just because of the EN new level cap, event, and the festivities in JP. Now there’ll be horses on the plate… Ugh

Long Reads

Budding sensation of the Hanshin Tigers talks about it in English. Jerry Sands plays the outfield and the fans enjoy this emotional guy on the field (for NPB standards), aside from his raking. Anyways, this NC native kind of made the meme circuit in 2020. Like many hitting prospects of the modern era, they’re kinda, uh, chonk.

And then, there’s this short one.

Somewhat more on topic, here is the TL for Noriko Hidaka’s Famitsu interview having reaching 40 years in the biz as of 2020. There are 2 parts, and the same person is translating the interview for Kouhei Tanaka also in the same issue (and also 40yrs).