Category Archives: Seiyuu, Idol, Pop

Upcoming Anime Music Preorders

The goal of this post is to streamline what I want to buy in a post so I can click on it. If you would so kind and suggest in the comments things to add to this list, that would be excellent.

In general, my thoughts on Tari Tari is like this. I’m not gonna lie: the cheesy chorus music appeals to me in some primal way that is probably coded in my DNA. Also, partly what prompted this post.

Music Album: Music album: Utattari, Kanadetari

ED: Shiokaze Harmony

Masami Okui in my Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere season 2? I think the term is “Out of Nowhere.”

Season 2 ED1: Side SunRise: Sora no Uta

By wota idol standards, MomoClo is weapon grade catchy. They renamed themselves for Joshiraku ED and I’m happy to oblige.

ED: Nippon Egao Hyakkei (by Momokuroteiichimon)

I am on the fence, but Kurinoko doing an anison that is more like a power ballad is a good thing. Multiple editions to gorge your money, that Muv-luv Alternative: Total Eclipse anime…

ED: signs - Sakutsuki Hitoyo [CD/DVD Artist version]

ED: signs - Sakutsuki Hitoyo [CD/DVD Anime version LE]

My first foray into iM@S music will probably be the delayed Namassuka special #1. Yes, of course.

ANIM@TION MASTER Namassuka SPECIAL 01

Well that’s it for now. Any other suggestions? AFA is getting Sphere? Great, good for them. Just don’t drink their water now.


Earth Girls Are Easy – Third Planet Ver.

With Natsuiro Kiseki over for the time being, the summer of Sphere continues this week with their third album, titled Third Planet. Unfortunately the cheeky astronomical title didn’t help because I was listening to Red Planet all day long, resulting in a strong urge to make a Cowboy Bebop joke. It’s a jarring dissonance when you mash calming yet spine-tingling shrills from one of the best who’s touched an anime, against the popular yet generic idol pop that we have now come to know as Sphere’s music.

I think it’s safe to say that Sphere is a relatively inoffensive music operation, and by inoffensive as in if you don’t snob idol music per se. Simply put, that’s not their primary function. If easy-to-sing-to and easy-to-dance-to tunes can carry their image to the heart of their fans and uphold those wota calls and dances, as we have here, then that’s what Sphere will sound like. It’s not so much a testament of some extreme sense of savvy or some underrated skills the members of Sphere or their management are holding back on us, but simply solid, wise choices. To put it in perspective, I have heard better and worse.

In my Mars state of mind, however, I cannot quite fathom why anyone would take this particular, well, Earth-ly product,  so seriously. Ever since their ATMOSPHERE debut Sphere has been pretty much that one thing we expected them to be: seiyuu idols. Their slow rise in popularity merely confirms their solid play and planning, not to mention simply being hard at work. It’s like opening up to that page of a particular monthly seiyuu mag and it said “MINAKO Good Job!” I had to agree.

The simple, artificial feeling I get from Third Planet comes across best when I put on, say, “Feathering me, Y/N?” Because they’re a quartet and their music necessarily need to reflect this, the arrangements often feel kind of constrained. Only a couple of the songs play to the strength of the 4-woman format…actually, other than “Hazy,” I don’t really think any of the songs did a good job at this. Musically, Third Planet is marginally and incrementally better than Spring Is Here, a year ago; unfortunately that means very little. Perhaps nothing, even, if you can’t get over “Now Loading… Sky!” like many of us.

So why do I keep buying this stuff? I don’t know. It’s kind of like how I keep buying, say, Coca-cola. It’s just a common man’s drink, you know? It’s nothing special, but just pumped enough of sugar to make it inoffensive enough. It’s a known quality and a known quantity, in that you know what you’re getting.

Well, that’s pretty much just for plebs like myself. The rest of you can either move on or just look at the unboxing of the super-limited version of this album.


You Know You’re [Insert Age Group Descriptor] When…

…seiyuu around your age are tying the knot. First it was Maaya now RieRie? Actually that one isn’t so surprising; if anything I expected it to happen earlier. The exceptions like Michiko Neya are, well, exceptions. But who will rise to be the next cool single seiyuu Onee-san? More amusingly, where’s those pictures of torn copies of her photobooks? Or will I be able to find them in Book-off now? Joking aside, I don’t really want to see the depth of Rie Tanaka fandom surfacing; it’s probably safe to say that once she gets to be as old as she is, getting married is a good thing. I don’t think far majority of us really mind that.

Now some of us might be scratch our heads about something else. Actually this post is more like, my reaction-face equivalent. Yea, Kouichi Yamadera is pretty smooth but wow. Who saw this coming? I don’t even mind the 17-yo gap between the two but it’s definitely quite amusing and that makes a couple that seems just a tad unlikely in the beginning. I hope Yama-chan is good at Monster Hunter. At any rate, they have my best wishes.

If I have another chance to give her flowers, I still would. Just different kinds of flowers!


Pretty & Cute, Seiyuu Edition

I took a look at that Biglobe article about the prettiest seiyuu (and why am I linking to it I don’t know but) here and I’m like, wait, what is this then?

What is the difference between cute and pretty? I guess I understand it innatively, but maybe we can use the poll results as a way to describe things. For this post I’m just going to use the list as a qualifier, not so much talk about how random Biglobe polls are random and gamed and are not a representative sample based on momentary popularity and memes. Or actually, I’m just going to ramble down the two lists and talk about random things.

Continue reading


A Week of Many Cons and Ds

Just another post of random notes.

That “Girls und Panzer” anime so reminds me of this:

What a surprise! Takaaki Suzuki is behind this thing. By surprise I mean OMG OPPOSITE MEANING. The man is a bro though, so I’d like to support his efforts.

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Sayonara Ponytail is the weird kind of band with a weird presence. Weird because they were an indie cartoon band and now a major-label cartoon band. It’s just three girls, but it seems one of them is responsible for most of the creative direction of the group.  They debuted for the major label last year, but I read about it back when j1m0ne was just starting to post about indie stuff she found. You can hear them cover Spitz’s Sora mo Taberu Hazu in Tsuritama at the usual places. (Scroll to the bottom of the tag listing to see j1m0ne’s post lol.) Well, if she found it in Tower Record, just how indie was it??

Anyway, you know me and 2.5D, and Sayonara Ponytail are very much so. Think of it as the pickup of the week, as their Tsuritama single comes out this week. There are three versions of this crap:

The double-sided poster that comes with the single features the Tsuritama boys on one side and the witches on the other. The LE version and the Anime version come with a bonus CD. But I guess you might have to shop elsewhere to get that poster as CDJ is out of it.

Actually I have sort of an opinion on Sayonara Ponytail, and it’s mostly made of ambivalence. That said I haven’t listened to their album from last year, which probably means my opinion doesn’t count. I sure don’t count it myself. Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff to be unsure about, but you can read about some of that here.

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In the US, Memorial Day Weekend marks not only the start of Anime Con season, but also of Summer vacationing among people who have PTOs, rather than mandatory school closures (though the period largely overlap). This year’s lineup are the three usual familiars: Anime North (most notable for English-language-tweeting Asakawa Yuu along with Sasanuma, also a p. cool DJ), FanimeCon (Aizawa Mai, the usual Yamaga crew, Kia Asamiya, Koyama Shigeto), and Animazement.

I’m going to Animazement. See you there? And if I make it to Kotoko’s concert alive that would make her one of my most-attended Anison artists at 3 concerts! Well, not counting Yoko Kanno. The three big Memorial Day weekend cons have pretty good guests as usual, but I think Fanime had some problems this year so all their announcements were pretty late. On the other hand Animazement called it out, well, when Mr. Ishiguro was still with us. Besides that, the usual old crew of voice actors and directors and producers will be there, specifically Itano (the circus man), Nagahama (director of Mushishi), Orikasa Fumiko, Kaikan Phrase mangaka, and lots of others.

I wonder if any of the cons are going to move their dates next year… Please peruse the links to the respective sites for the detail guest list!

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There’s that anime power ranking thing and I guess I’m suppose to vote for shows every week–makes sense if/when I am able to watch that week’s anime that week–just wanted to point out Tsuritama was great this past week. It’s a good week for the show too this week come to think of it…

I thought Sencolle, too, was quality this week. Tho I’m a sucker.

What’s more I didn’t even vote this week, because I was too busy partying! Perhaps fortunately this non-voting doesn’t happen all the time (translation: it happens way too often). If I had my way with Kevo, I’d retool it with a lag period–you rank the shows from Saturday to Friday, but make the ballot due like, Monday or something. Also if he’s good with spreadsheets, explore the wonders of Google Docs to automate polling and results? A resounding yes.