Category Archives: Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

November 25, 2014

Seiyuu Nonsense, And Go Vote Already

By omo

A taste of a year-in-review post here.

Ibuki Kido

So the annual seiyuu award is going on. Or Seiyu Award because, it’s a proper thing. Awards ceremony is usually first thing next year. In past couple years they have a fully EN-language submission form, and now it even claims to count your vote along with the Japanese ones. I wonder which poor sod will actually try to read who voted whom.

You can access the voting form here. I don’t know about the eligibility requirements for newcomer. I think it’s like, 3 or 4 years?

I’m not going to make a blow-by-blow description/speculation like this person but here’s who I’m voting for:

Best Actor: Junichi Suwabe – Space Dandy. Also (it’s a theme) meeting him this year impressed. He looks just like him (in the yankee/bum sort of way), at least in terms of that feeling. This is only a superficial similarity that I am describing. It also probably had to do with his Dandy cosplay…

Best Actress: Eriko Nakamura – IM@S the movie. It’s rather good, in that you get the concert full-feels version of Nakamura. By all means, Nakamura is an above average seiyuu, perhaps not top seiyuu quality, but definitely someone who has been doing it for a while. What makes her shine is the “seibuta” qualities, least to mention that she is the cover girl for my favorite anime thing this year, but also just a well-rounded good entertainment personality. Seeing her in person was p. cool.

Best Supporting Actor: Hiroshi Tsuchida – Samonji from Argevollen. It’s just a great performance that I enjoyed tremendously.

Best Supporting Actress: Saori Hayami – Hatoko from Inou Battle. Her epic performance from last week’s Inou Battle aside, she always make a strong voice acting case every year. It’s all just a matter of if she can land that role that allows her to showboat her skillz. Also saw her this year, and she never fails to impress.

Best Rookie Actor: Hanae Natsuki – Slain from Aldnoah.Zero. I don’t track male seiyuu as far as voice acting roles go, but she really stood out in the handful of shows I saw him in, for better or worse.

Best Rookie Actress: Ibuki Kido – Kana from IM@S the movie. I would also hat-tip KN33S0XXX for the phat rhymes. She’s new enough right? I think her roles up to this point are all really solid, as far as an actress goes. It’s pretty amazing to see her turn it on, so to speak. It’s by no means Fancy Lala but she changes from a teenage girl into an entertainer like a snap.

Best Song: Juri Takita – Kimi ga Erabu Machi from IM@S the movie. I didn’t think there is an outright winner this year, despite having some really sweet tunes this year soundtrack-wise. I mean, KN33S0XXX. Can I nominate Suwa’s beatbox CD because, LOLs. The usual strong performers like Minorin and Sphere still are very strong, but nothing really outstanding. If I had to rep a song outside of IM@S, then probably Spica from StylipS (really sweet harmony that leverages their singing style), or WUG-chan’s Tachiagare, which is the other masterpiece from Kousaki Satoru this year.

Best Personality: Momo Asakura – TryAngle Harmony (Torahamo). It’s squarely in the idol seiyuu category, but Muray second gens are a fun bunch. It’s probably not going to be her–she’s not all together, so to speak, but there’s something special going on. Other radio shows I check out this year that could be cool includes Hayami Saori no Freestyle and Yumi Hara’s solo radio, Hara Yumi no Maru Maru (HaraMaru) Radio.

PS. If you like a seiyuu, go stuff that ballot box.

===

I revisited this blog post after some P bros rediscovered it. Are things any different now? Not really. I just realize a key factor between my last write-up and my present feeling–the community detachment. Since I don’t 2ch I have developed my own theory on voice acting. And in reality doing otaku stuff these days, the voice actors and actresses are attached to a list of other extracurricular activities. The Seiyu Awards acknowledge this via the “best song” and “best personality” categories, among other things.

And in that sense, it’s easier to be in the “jitsuryoku camp” (実力派) if you have some distance. If all your attachment to voice acting is from the work they do–chara songs, anime, games–then how can you be not? I don’t know, actually. As I write this, it also comes to mind that my first times seeing certain seiyuu and the impact that had on me. In that sense, distance may be helpful but if you are not inundated by excessive pushing/pandering, you won’t build that reactive “immune system” that Paranda referred to in his post. It’s like you could be allergic to that koebuta fodder, or maybe you can get sick of it after a while.

The realization, thus, is that I am not 90/10 or even 60/40. I am 100/100. It’s easy to see why I can like (and rank) seiyuu based on their performances in voice acting. It’s also easy to see why I lose it with Mocho or would fly to see the WUG-chans if they land in North America. These are not conflicting interests. So it’s easy to see why some might do a 60/40 matrix if you just want to have a “bucket list” or “priority to apply vacation time” or whatever, or why nobody can guess my list. There is no one right way to like a seiyuu. There are multiple ways to like a seiyuu, too.

After all, it’s no different than those seiyuu who can act AND sing AND dance AND have the looks AND have the personality. The world is not fair.

3 comments | posted in Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

November 18, 2014

Idol Invasion, NYC 2014

By omo

Airi Totoki

Five idol acts attended NYC in the span of about six weeks: Cheeky Parade, Morning Musume 14, Miku, Babymetal and now Perfume. That runs basically the whole gamut of today’s Japanese visible idol scene north of indie. And if some indie JP idols dropped by NYC during the last 6 weeks, I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t know them. I didn’t even make it to Cheeky Parade’s free show at BCGC because *effort*.

And I think this is important. Japanese idols, the post 1999 kind of thing, is a maligned if entirely foreign creature. It’s too easy to liken them to boy or girl groups, because that’s what they are. But that entirely misses what makes idols the engines of Japan’s entertainment industry today. Too many geeks and nerds and “otaku” (US ver.) turn their noses to them. I’m not sure why there’s so much resistance for Americans against Japanese idols, but that’s how it feels.

Continue reading

8 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

October 17, 2014

Shirobako 02 Notes

By omo

I think the plan is I will do this on Jtor, but since I’m still working on the intro post let me jot down some notes here in the form of a blog post.

Couple items worth noting: 2ch tries to map the Musani staff to real life people, and for the most part it works. Then there’s this comment from another fellow seiyuu aficionado: “Hahahahahahaha damn if only the seiyuu were THAT pretty hahahha.”

What’s amusing is that while there’s this direct mapping between characters and real life individuals, when we go into “prpr mode” (for the lack of a better term) I think our way to judge stuff changes. In a nutshell, the anime/manga character style is a form of caricature. As a rule it’s not life-like in details. Shirobako applies already a pretty life-like approach to the character designs (in a way that is reminiscent of a lot of the prior PA Works shows) but I mean, just take a look.

Shirobako S2 via Conflag

Fellow koebutas can agree, I think, that Kayano has that puppy-looking eyes going, and for me they’ve really captured her visage by doing the eyes/bang layout right. Nakahara Mai, on the other hand, is a lot more difficult to capture using the anime/manga style because her distinguishing facial features are more the way her nose and facial bone structure are, giving her that sharp look. It’s hard to portray those things when most anime characters don’t even have a pronounced nose to speak of. On top of that, when you have kind of a late-night moe anime thing going on, Kayanon’s puffy cheeks are easy to reproduce relative to the more mature looks you get from Nakahara and Itou. That said, I think Itou Shizuka’s forehead/hair go a long way to represent her character in the anime, so that one was easy to pick out just at a glance, too.

I wonder if they took that into consideration when selecting the seiyuu they would mimic. I suppose there was a casting call for these three girls who had to voice as themselves and then voicing a character within the anime. If you think CV: Casting Voice is meta, Shirobako is one layer more!

As for the actual comment about pretty, let’s just say even accounting for the “3DPD factor” there are pretty anime characters and not-as-pretty anime characters. I think even in Shirobako you have that range of visual beauty–just look at our 5 protagonists. So no comment here about if not-Kayanon or not-Nakahara is prettier than their real life counterpart (uuuuh).

By the way, what Kayanon demonstrated in episode 2 was a page out of seiyuu school. If you listen to seiyuu radios it can be a treat. Like what Hayami Saori demonstrated at her Otakon panel, for example…

As for the episode proper, I loooove the way how the plan comes together and the way anime uses anime-only powers to demonstrate what it is really meant when Arupin has arrived. I loooove the way how they make Maruyama a bit like the patron saint of struggling TV anime productions. The way they add him during that meeting scene is both lovingly done and funny in the sense that they make clear he doesn’t really contribute in a tangible way. Can we have a Shirobako-type anime but instead produces a movie that takes 7 years to release? LOL.

PS. Onee-chan is Nu. But she doesn’t get an anime character cameo! WTB anime Nunu please (fat chance, I know).

Episode 02

PPS. Speaking of the ED animation (as last week’s ED is actually the OP animation), it’s done by the core team, directed by Mizushima.

2 comments | posted in Seiyuu, Idol, Pop, Shirobako

October 5, 2014

Glow Sticks Are No Big Deal, Except When It Is

By omo

matsuri

It’s much ado about nothing in my opinion, but when the four USA Miku Expo concerts–two nights in LA and two more in NYC–banned electric glow sticks, wotas traveling in and from local have to make do with chemical ones. At the same time, it sort of sets some of them off.

I think it’s not a big deal in that ultimately it’s a concert, and doing calls with glowing hand attachments is thoroughly secondary to the main objective. On the flip side, I recognize that for wotagei culture the “cylume” or what we have generecided the American firm specialized in tactical, emergency and industrial luminescent chemical applications, is actually a major symbol of the thing. It’s kind of like what cosplay is for nerd cons. So imagine if an anime con, for example, banned cosplays of a certain type or the use of a popular cosplay material. People will be up in arms.

The funny thing about the whole affair is that the event will be handing out green sticks to all attendees. I think there might be a specific look to the crowd that they are gunning for. In Japan, that’s no problem because that hive mentality hammers people in and people are considerate about which color lights they are raising up in the air. In the Land of the Free, people do concerts however they wish. As I put it, it’s the freedom of worship. Not to mention it is very difficult to find places that sell these lights. At best you can pick up some 8-hour glowsticks for camping or whatever typical celebrations Americans do; the party-oriented electric gear is still largely unique to Japan and sold only there.

Did you know Aniplex+ USA is going to sell a SAO King Blade or some such? Check it out. I don’t know why the Miku Expo organizers just allow official electric lights, such as the official Miku lights they sell in Japan’s events.

Anyway, it still means you can party at Miku Expo with lights, since the ban applies only to electric ones. And even the somewhat-discerning wota will nitpick the quality of these glowsticks, so if you can ship a box or two from Japan or wherever you are from, it might be really nice.

Or you can participate in the “buy a set for you and a set to give away” thing Zalas is setting up. Also, check out his call guides.

[What would be more nice if someone rolled an English-language port of Twipla.]

Meanwhile, Amazon is selling some of the official Cylume-branded stuff. The 8 or 12-hour greens will suffice, but typically what you want are the high-intensity or ultra-high intensity stuff. One place I’ve shopped from is House of Rave, but their shipping costs are high. Amazon is another place–some 3rd party sellers even have first-generation King Blade X10s on sale. But the options are there if you look around. Or you can ask your friends partying up at IM@S 9th to grab a box or two of Ultra Pink or Ultra Green to bring back…

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

September 24, 2014

Japan Music Sales Blargh

By omo

Lantis Fesst (9/23/2014)

This is the executive summary (by the way of Babymetal)

http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/22/cd-dominates-japan-music-sales/

This is the original article, via the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/business/media/cd-loving-japan-resists-move-to-digital-music-.html?_r=0

Here’s an example of doing it too much that it’s making inaccurate statements. (Also worth reading is that last link to an earlier Verge article which did do some justice to this topic–I guess the guy who wrote it up just didn’t get what the first author was trying to say.)

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/17/6330039/why-are-people-still-going-crazy-for-music-cds-in-japan

Here’s a better one but still a tad off.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2014/09/21/85-percent-of-music-sales-in-japan-are-cds/

The problem of the…problem is that nobody is really wrong-wrong. It’s  more sloppy writing, not really understanding the full picture, not really digging into the core issue. And it’s not like I’m asking for a lot, 10-20 minutes at Google can give you all that is relevant. Also in the mix I find some kind of unsettling presumptions that these tech presses have when they subsequently re-blogged the NYT article. Well, it starts with the NYT.

To sum it up, it’s basically assuming that by not adopting, or adapting fast enough, the services that in 2014 people know well of, such as Rdio or Spotify, Netflix or iTunes Music Store, that Japan is not “embracing the digital.”

That is just the first problem, by the way. Japan is one of the very first to “embrace the digital.” What happened is that because they are early adopters, Japan’s various licensing bodies went to work to protect and monetize its properties. They want a shot at it; they wouldn’t just cough it up to the apparent market winner just because. There is a reason why Sony didn’t license to iTunes until 2012 domestically–it’s because they see iTunes a competitor to their own digital businesses, much like iPods are competitors to Sony’s PMPs over the years. Is it fair to call that protectionist? Maybe. But isn’t it just normal competition, where entities that own the whole stack can leverage rights to benefit the platforms it invested in? Apple doesn’t publish any music, I mean, can you imagine what would happen if that’s the case? Japan’s strange CD-based ecosystem affords Sony (and others) to play hardball with their competitors in the licensing space, where as they couldn’t fold fast enough in other markets.

There are a bunch of other factors behind why JP publishers are reluctant to license to the likes of Spotify. One of it is partly what the NYT article touches on, is that these Japanese businesses are too slow to abandon ship and switch, as execs busily maintain the status quo. The other is the high prices at CD sales, and the great fear that it comes with as new business models subvert, especially coming from foreign companies that are used to a much lower physical price point. If you bought anything off iTunes Japan you would know. These are major incentives for Japanese rightsholders to not cooperate with foreign companies trying to enter the Japanese market. These are what I expect these articles to actually talk about.

What disturbs me is that none of the articles recognizes that they’re all expecting American (and UK for Spotify I guess) brands to march into Japan as if they own the place. OK maybe I shouldn’t expect so much in Verge’s case but I expected more from NYT and Forbes, that they’d at least respect this huge business and cultural gulf between Japan and the rest of the world, just in general, in terms of this industry. But nope, not even a word to recognize this. That’s not even starting to talk about the things they did recognize, such as music rental, or how a hard core physical purchasing culture has been fostered (and along with it a very strong used goods economy–it feels as if none of the above writers has ever sets foot inside a Book-off in Japan), doing streaming digitally ala Spotify and the like may not work at all as a core business.

[On the Book-off note, doesn’t it strike people when Japan’s #1 used media chain can establish international branches? That’s the kind of prestige reserved for very successful brands.]

And it’s not for lack of trying. On the domestic end or abroad. But all too quickly these articles seems to parrot a strange reluctance, and calling it strange, without really trying to actually explore why it is so.

But of course, it’s not such a bad thing–here’s one article that posits an interesting correlation to the strangeness: age.

The whole convo we’ve had on twitter is probably worth a read, if just to act as a sounding board for your own theories.

Between Tsutaya, Book-off, old people who buy old music everywhere, and all the other things that make Japan different, is it really a surprise that what works for Americans and Brits won’t work for Japan? And should it? It’s as preposterous as suggesting that Americans can buy more CDs if there are more idols in the USA.

Or maybe it’s not really that outrageous.

PS. Read some reports from 2012. Government output on study of music demographics, who buys what where, new media use, etc.

PPS. I’ll be hiding at AWA this weekend. Come and say hello. I’ll be wearing around a Myu happi one day and an IM@S 9th happi another day, which are probably the two most distinctive things you’ll find inside my luggage at AWA, I hope.

1 comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture, Popular Culture, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop