I’m sure the whole world and his monkey will have heard by now, but seiyuu Morikubo Shoutarou (Shikamaru in Naruto, Ginji in Getbackers, Orphen in Orphen) and Asakawa Yuu (Sakaki in Azumanga, Rider in Fate/stay, Motoko in Love Hina) tied the knot on 22nd February. Congrats to the happy couple!

Mark 3rd March on your calendars, that’s the date of the first Seiyuu Awards jointly organised by Tokyo Anicentre, Avex Entertainment, Amusement Media and a bunch of other companies. hashihime had a post on the full list of nominees (I’m too lazy to type them myself 8D). I don’t know if the results will be out any earlier that day, but Anispa will be having a special awards program featuring appearances by the winners of the best male and female lead. Who wants to bet $0.50 that it’ll be Sugita Tomokazu (Kyon) and Hirano Aya (Haruhi)? I really hope it’s not them though…. a copy/paste of one my posts about my picks over at Animesuki forums.

Best male lead: Koyama Rikiya - Hakuoro (Utaware)
Best female lead: Tanaka Rie - Hiro (Hataraki Man)
Best male support: Suwabe Junichi - Archer (Fate/Stay)
Best female support: Goto Yuko - Mikuru (Haruhi)
Best new male: Miyano Mamoru - Light (Death Note)
Best new female: Kobayashi Yu - Setsuna (Negima)
Best singer: Mizuki Nana - Justice to Believe
Best personality: Yuzuki Ryoka (Utawarerumono Radio)

Now, just watch as I get all of them spectacularly wrong….. so remember to tune in to Anispa (JOQR Radio, via peercast unless you’re lucky enough to be living in Japan) on Saturday at 1200 GMT or 2100 Japanese time!

New Anime Radio Shows
Fate/stay Tune
Personalities: Kawasumi Ayako(Saber) & Ueda Kana(Tohsaka Rin)

The mind boggles. Why on earth are they starting a radio show something like half a year after the anime ended? To make sure nobody forgets about Fate/stay apparently (though I’d rather not remember most of it, thanks very much)…… The DVDs are already all out, and only a bunch of character CDs and PS2/PSP games coming I think.

About Fate/stay tune itself; er…. only one episode so far which consisted of Ueda and Kawasumi introducing the various corners that will be featured on the show. The corner Reijuu ni Shitagae!! (令呪に従え！！ - Reijuu are those command mantras that the masters use to control the servants) sounds particularly interesting to me; basically listeners (masters) send in their commands for Kana and Ayako (servants) who have to carry out these orders no matter what. This time it was “Do a self-introduction in an eroppoi voice for 30 seconds“. Which was rather stupid, at least we learnt that Ayako likes chawanmushi (I think it’s vile) and tomatoes but hates cockroaches and can’t sleep if there are any around. Kana just sounded weirrrddd.

There’s also a short news corner called Tiger Dojo that features Itou Miki(Fuji-nee) and Kadowaki Mai(Ilya) which was quite funny. Anyway, it airs every Thursday on Animate radio so if you’re a fan of the series or the seiyuu give it a go.

Saint October: Goth Loli Shoujo Tanteidan - Radio Nisshi
Personalities: Kataoka Azusa, Fukui Yukari & Kobayashi Yu

Good lord, I hope Kataoka (green loli) has a witty personality cos she’s going to have to carry the damn thing by herself. Fukui (yellow) and Kobayashi (red) are both complete airheads ^^; Yukarin’s Japanese wiki makes for interesting reading - I’m starting to think she’s from Mars. Perpetually late for work, has a tendency to fluff up her lines, regularly substitutes words that she can’t remember with gibberish and she also claims that she can talk to trees. Oh dear.

Similarly, Kobayashi hasn’t got too much upstairs either. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of shambolic show we’re in for. Or maybe they’ll bore us all to tears. The Goth Lolis assault the (virtual) airwaves starting 6th March, Tuesdays on Onsen Radio.

Other radio shows started/slated to start:
Koshimizu Ami no AIKa Active Adventures (Fortnightly, started 23 February)
Gurren Lagann Radio (Hosted by Inoue Marina, Konishi Katsuki & Kakihara Tetsuya, starts 5th March)
Mana & Ucchi’s Gigantic4U (Gigantic Formula Radio hosted by Satou Rina & Yahagi Sayuri, started 6th Feb)

And something random, Kawasumi Ayako is supposed to appear in Getsumen to Heiki Mina. Keep your ears open!

Annoy your neighbours, your mother and yourself - here’s the Oniichan CD.

Get the torrent

There’s nobody famous on this, and listening to the first 10 seconds is enough to drive me up the wall. I guess I’m not the intended audience for this sort of thing, I’m no Oniichan… well, I’m not even a guy XD As they say, whatever floats your boat……

Sola (pronounced Sora, unsurprisingly), one of the upcoming spring season anime. Animated by Nomad (Rozen Maiden), series composition by Hanada Jukki (Popotan, Rozen Maiden, the upcoming Idolmaster Xenoglosssia) and music by Fujima Hitoshi (wai~~~, he’s part of Elements Garden and is also the brother-in-law of Agematsu Noriyasu - he’s married to his sister Agematsu Mika).

The prologue of sola mini drama CD was sold at Winter Comic Market 71, and features a drama track and a lovely image song called Binkan no Fuukei performed by Ceui (Kyoshiro ED) and written by Hata Aki & Okubo Kaoru. Surprisingly it was subbed by Doremi (not a lot of drama CDs get subbed, though I guess sola was because there was a Chinese sub available).

The drama track itself doesn’t actually tell you very much about the premise of the show, but rather serves as an introduction to some of the main characters. I also want to point out that it’s this month’s featured program on CharaRadio, all four episodes are up now, and hosted alternately by Noto Mamiko and Nakahara Mai.

Character designs - bleh. I think I preferred the ones that were in the prologue CD - are they from the manga?

Seiyuu (L to R): Okamoto Nobuhiko, Noto Mamiko, Nakahara Mai

Honda Youko, Shimizu Ai, Fujiwara Keiji

Kaneda Tomoko

Kaneda’s character looks like a Rozen Maiden reject >_> But for once, I’m actually looking forward to hearing her in an anime! She’s not playing one of her usual annoying gyagya/waiwai/urusai! hypergenki chibis. In fact, she almosts sounds like Sawashiro Miyuki in the mini drama CD. Mayuko appears to be one of those deadpan, sarcastic characters who’s always ready with a comeback for whatever you throw at them. O-tanoshimi!

The rest of the seiyuu? Noto Mamiko sounds like well…. Noto Mamiko. Fujiwara Keiji sounds like….. Fujiwara Keiji. Okamoto Nobuhiko is a new seiyuu - his only major role so far is John Brown in Ghost Hunt. Erm…. just take away John’s Kansai-ben and that’s how Yorito sounds. Shimizu Ai is playing another imouto role @_@ Nakahara Mai voices a slightly different character to the happy-go-lucky, energetic teenage girls she usually does; Aono seems to be icy cool - she’s supposed to be Yorito’s older sister but the hair colours ?_?. Haven’t heard too much from Honda Youko apart from Ichika in Utakata so not much to say about her; but Mana (her character) sounds pretty much like a normal oneechan type.

Koshimizu Ami, Yahagi Sayuri and Ono Ryoko are also supposed to be in the anime but their characters didn’t appear in the drama CD and I have no idea what they even look like, so it’s not possible to comment on them yet.

Sometime last month I posted about the Mousou Voice series. Anyway, I direct you over to DarkMirage’s blog post about this CD for more info. Shizuka-sama’s track is the best anyway. Should I up Vol.1, the Oniichan CD? It’s abominably bad. There’s one track on that CD called Oniichan Remix that has 11 moe-voiced seiyuu simultaneously repeating oniichan over and over again for 3 minutes and 47 seconds. Scarrrrryyyy. And damn annoying.

Torrent

21 February 2007
Aaaaaahhhhh why are there so many releases this week? Tough competition in the charts…. My 300GB Maxtor external HD keeps running out of space ;_;

Read more »

So unless Shamisen and Kunikida get their own albums; the series is (virtually) complete. The biggest selling one so far is Vol. 2 - Nagato Yuki. Maybe cos it’s Chihara Minori? Here’s a little review of the newest volumes - finally Itsuki and Kyon get to sing Harehare Yukai!

Read more »

I talk ever so often about anime/seiyuu radio shows, but I wonder how many ppl out there listen to them…. I guess it’s pointless if your comprehension of the Japanese language doesn’t extend beyond baka, tsundere and moe. Anyhow I’ve built up a small collection of these shows (though I usually perform a mass deletion every 3 months or so) that I’ve either downloaded from the web or recorded off Peercast. Obviously the quality of the latter isn’t too hot but hey, that’s AM radio for you. I haven’t actually gotten round to sorting most of them out yet; they’re all cryptically named (ie radio23×3y77.wma) but I hope to upload stuff in the future that I find interesting.

For now, I’ve only got the Busou Renkin radio show that featured Hirano Aya and Chihara Minori’s Makenai Radio (last week’s episode) that had Toyoguchi Megumi on as a guest. Click the button below to go listen/download them.

First of all, 恭喜發財! If you can’t read that, it’s probably not meant for you.

It’s just about halfway through the traditionally dull winter anime season; and fast approaching the traditionally brisk spring season - now’s the time to scour BBSes for the latest seiyuu cast news. I’m an ANN encyclopedia staff member though I can’t say I contribute much apart from inputting lots and lots of staff and cast info, and poring through all those dreaded error reports.

Read more »