j1m0ne's blog

Probably means nothing to most people out there, but Tamura Yukari’s switch of agency from Artsvision to I’m Enterprise(in effect from 1st January 2007) has taken me (and most of her fans) by surprise. I guess her ‘I was recording a voice sample’ on her 26th December blog entry was a mighty big hint. Alas, Yukarin’s no longer in the company of frequent collaborators Horie Yui and Asano Masumi but she does join an agency with some of the best young seiyuu around (Chiwa Saito, Nakahara Mai, Ueda Kana, Takahashi Mikako etc). Oh well, I guess Tomari did end up with Hazumu after all, leaving Yasuna in the dust ;P

Oh, and Kadowaki Mai’s disappearance from Production Baobab’s profile list sometime in the last coupla days left me scratching my head. No mention of it on either her site or the Baobab site, so I guess we’ll have to wait til next year to see what’s going on with Maita.

Edit:
http://www.klsp.jp/blog2/index.php?e=97
Well, that certainly solves the puzzle. Turns out Kitamura Eri (who pops up occasionally in Maita’s blog) is also making the move to Kaleidoscope. Nomura Katsuhito (Tetsu in Asatte no Houkou) also takes up residency there, he’d left KeKKe a few months ago. Kaleidoscope are a relatively new agency, less than 10 years old and their talent pool is quite small; though I recognise about half of them (mostly from playing bit parts in various anime…. you know, Man A, Girl B etc), I think Mizuno Manabi was the biggest name on their books. Well, not anymore since KitaEri and Maita both have sizeable followings.

Edit 2: Goto Saori’s made a move as well, but unlike Kadowaki/Kitamura, she’s moved to one of the big guns, 81produce from g-stella. What’s up with all these agency moves?

Oh well, it’s not always bad to be a big fish in a small pond. Wakakusa normally deal with theatre stuff but they are home to a couple of big name seiyuu, namely (the currently popular) Koshimizu Ami, Sanpei Yuko (Renton in Eureka 7) and Iizuka Mayumi. Similarly, Atomic Monkey don’t have a huge pool of seiyuu either, but they do have major players Seki Tomokazu and Sugita Tomokazu on their books.

Then there’s the freelance seiyuu like Kaida Yuki (Shusuke in TeniPuri), Nazuka Kaori and Shimizu Kaori who aren’t doing too bad for themselves.

I must be bored to be reading this kind of stuff 2 hours to 2007.

新年明けましておめでとうございます!

Last week saw a flurry of releases in time for the yuletide season, and it’s much quieter this week with only a handful of releases. Mostly anime related as well. Oh, and sucks to the 3,957 people who bought copies of Scoop!. What the hell were they doing wasting their ￥1500. Congrats to Yukarin for making no.6 with 17,134 copies of Princess Rose sold, though it falls short of Douwa Meikyuu’s 19,432 (no.13, and 33,319 copies in total sold so far) it’s her highest charting single yet. The competition wasn’t great though, the no.1 single by Tegomass only sold some 88,160 copies (compared to Kanjani8’s 264,183 the week before).

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It’s time to take a look at what was hot and what wasn’t in Animeland this year. I don’t think 2006 was quite as good as 2005, but perhaps that’s because a lot of the shows I’m enjoying are still running.

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…part 2. This week sees a boatload of releases in time for Christmas, so I’ll be brief in my coverage of each.

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Top 10 Anime Related Singles (in no particular order)
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First of all, I’d like to say that Football Manager is evil, pure evil. I’ve lost years of my life to that blasted game. Moving on…..

Now that the Oricon year is over, time to post one of those boring best ofs. I had been keeping similar lists for the last 9-10 years (on paper) but seem to have misplaced them. Aargh.

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I doubt many people would be familiar with the name Kobayashi Yu (outside of seiyuu fanatics. Like me) but I’m sure at least some would know a few of the characters she’s played. The fan-favourite Sakurazaki Setsuna in the Negima series and Lala Gonzalez in School Rumble should ring some bells.

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