j1m0ne's blog

A warm welcome to the latest seiyuu to join the blog bandwagon – it’s Ito Shizuka.

The blog is aptly named:

静◇呑んだくれ日記 [Shizuka◇A Drunkard’s Diary]

with the URL: http://ameblo.jp/beerlover-shizuka

She’s been updating everyday so far, I wonder how long it’ll last before she gets bored.

I had wanted to save this news piece for my monthly recap, but trust Watch!Seiyuu-san to foil my plans as usual, getting ahead of me in the news stakes…

So, a condensed version of Shizuka’s blog entries so far. Emoticons mostly left in for effect:
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I knew I couldn’t resist the urge to download the single, despite having heard both songs in almost-full versions already. Not much changes from my intial impression of either REALIZE or BE NAKED though KitaEri sounds like she’s singing through her nose on the latter. She probably wasn’t focused on it at all, given that it was recorded on the same day as Mizuki Nana’s s LIVE FIGHTER BLUE SIDE which she badly wanted to be at.

My copy of REALIZE, along with a belated purchase of her Seto no Hanayome character CD, is stuck in the post office cos there was no one at home to sign for the package today *weep*sob*sniff* Oh well. At least I won’t have to open the packaging for either CD now.

More coherent thoughts on this tomorrow.

I vaguely read about Mizuki Nana being involved in some sort of kart racing event a few months back but didn’t really bother to find out the details until now.

So, details: A bunch of seiyuu will be spending the 3rd of August in a 7-hour endurance 4-stroke kart race on Twin Ring Motegi in Tochigi. Looking at the entry list on the Motegi KART Taikyu Festival “K-TAI” website, there are four teams featuring various seiyuu and anime staffers. Funnily enough, all teams have Pokemon-related names – Robot Racing (RR) Sheimi, RR Rocket-dan; RR Pikachu and RR Regigigas.

The Pokemon anime sound director Mima Masafumi is in Team Robot Racing Rocket-dan, along with seiyuu Namikawa Daisuke & Miki Shinichiro as well as HALF H.P soundman Hirano Nobuhira, all involved in Pokemon in one way or the other.

I took a look at the girls’ team – Robot Racing Sheimi features the following people:

川上倫子 (Kawakami Tomoko’s name in kanji, she was in Pokemon)
間取美帆 (Matori Miho, an OLM staffer)
豊口めぐみ (Toyoguchi Megumi, was in Pokemon)
近藤奈々 (Kondo Nana, Mizuki Nana’s real name)

A little digging into the other Pokemon-themed teams reveals a bunch of amateur karters and OLM staff. OLM as in the animation studio Oriental Light and Magic, responsible for Pokemon and a bunch of other anime (Utawarerumono, Steel Angel Kurumi etc). That still didn’t solve the question of why Mizuki Nana is involved since I can’t recall her being related with Pokemon or OLM in any way…

A bit more digging reveals the full details – it’s Techno Sound-sponsored Pokemon-named karts! Mima Masafumi’s the president of Techno Sound, a sound production company that is involved with anime such as Gundam 00, Macross Frontier and World Destruction. Not to mention the NHK anime Allison & Lilia, which Mima happens to be sound-supervising – and who’s the lead seiyuu in Allison & Lillia? Yeah, Mizuki Nana. Turns out Mima heard that Nana was interested in cars/driving and invited her to take part. And she agreed, so that completed the girls’ team.

So we get pics of Nana (and the others) in racing gear, wooh. Turns out various members of the teams have been training for the event, most notably Miki-san, who is known to be a big racing fan.

This is the second year Techno Sound are participating in the K-TAI event (which started in 2000) – Namikawa and Miki were also involved last year. There’s also a special radio show featuring Mima, Toyoguchi, Kawakami and Miki where they talk about how they got into karting.

So there you are. The dirty details about why Mizuki Nana will be stuck in a kart for many hours on a hot Sunday on the 3rd August – probably not 7 hours in a row, I’m sure that as a team they’ll have to take turns or something. Hopefully she won’t suffocate in her helmet…

I’m actually more amused by the fact that they had to register the participants under their real names, which is why we ended up with Kondo Nana on the list ^^;

Due to that fantastic little thing called Real Life, I find I hardly have less time to do all the things I like to do these days. It’s been catch-up time for me over the weekend, and I’ve got yuri on my mind…

Candy boy radio

There’s a Candy boy radio show! But sadly it’s not a yuri-yuri sister combi ;_; Instead we get the crazy stalker Saku-chan (Kato Emiri) + the easily bribed Yuki-chan (Yuzuki Ryoka). Anyway, the first episode was kinda…stiff on Kato’s parts, but of course Yuzu-nee provided her usual array of interesting titbits:
1. She wears jeans to bed (WTF)
2. She is the middle of 3 sisters and the youngest one once told her that ‘If there was a kingdom of idiots (アホの国) you’d be the king’.
3. She’s forever 16-years old. One up on Inoue Kikuko!

There was also one silly Jeopardy-like corner called Souzou shite kudasai (Please imagine it) where either one of them answers a reader sent-in question without mentioning the question itself. So Kato Emiri gave this answer:
A: Today’s is white dots on a black background, with a bit of frill too.
…Yuzu-nee then proceeded to ask “Can you show it to me?” & “Can I touch it?” >_> Emiri said she usually buys “black or purple ones”…so I’m pretty sure they’re referring to socks and not underpants.

Yuzuki’s was
A: Can I do it? I wonder… I don’t think I’d even last half a day (without it)… because I love doing it!
…Eh? I’m sure the question is something like “Can you last a whole day without [insert activity name]?” but I haven’t the foggiest what they’re referring to. Kato said “I used to do it every day in middle and high school” and that gives me. Absolutely. No. Clue. Suggestions on niconico range from ‘playing games’ to ‘eating candy’ to ‘going to the toilet’ to ’showering’ and of course, the answer is surely not ’sex’.

Shojo Sect seiyuu

It’s a week from the Shojo Sect 1st OVA release! The PV above is the non-H one, but needless to say… I prefer watching the H-one, heh. There’s a censored version of it on Youtube with no sound and blacked-out screen but… that’s no fun. I’m sure most people will have seen it already anyway ^^

I just wanted to point out for anyone that didn’t already know that the seiyuu for our main raburabu pair of Momoko and Shinobu are Kawaragi Shiho (Sekai in School Days) and Hitomi (Primula from Shuffle!) respectively. Obviously they’re using their eroge alter-ego names Yuzuki Kaname and Hokuto Minami instead ^^; Some of the other seiyuu in Shojo Sect include Hyosei, Okajima Tae and Rikimaru Noriko.

First of all, kudos to Lantis for having the foresight to release RIOT GIRL in a very, very shit week when even the Macross Frontier OST would have hit No.1 with little trouble. RG debuted at No.2 today, behind TUBE and in front of Kimaguren but with a very average index figure of 4,333. As a comparison, Macross F OST got 10,304 and Mizuki Nana’s GREAT ACTIVITY hit 8,692.

Anyway, this is an honest review of RIOT GIRL purely from a musical point of view. I shall put my OMIGOD HIRANO IS THE SUXX00RS!! goggles aside for a minute and go through the album.
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I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry (or both), but Yukarin’s first single in more than a year will be called Bambino Bambina (バンビーノ・バンビーナ). The single will also include the August ending theme song for an NTV variety show called Friday TV Labo and the new opening theme for her Itazura Kuro Usagi radio show.

Bambino Bambina apparently means ‘Little boy, Little girl’ in Italian. But that’s no fun so I went Googling to see what else I could come up with.

-I know Bambino! is the name of a J-drama starring Arashi’s Matsumoto Jun.
-Bambino Bambina is apparently the name of some online shop that sells…Korean clothes or something.
-Bambino is a brand of adult diapers, apparently targeted at ‘Adult Babies and Diaper Lovers’! ie people who ’suffer’ from infantilism. So er… if you have a diaper fetish, go ahead and buy some Bambinos. Rattles unfortunately not included.
-Bambino is some kind of seedless watermelon that was declared by Time magazine as one of the top 100 inventions of 2004.
-Bambina is a brand of ballerina hairbow holders.
-Bambina is a brand of fake nails for 3-year old Japanese girls.
-Bambina is the name of a Japanese aromatherapy school.
-Bambina is the name of a Hotei Tomoyasu song.
+ it’s a popular infant-related merchandise name, as well as being used quite a lot for Italian restaurants.

Yukarin’s Bambino Bambina hits 27th August and comes in DVD edition and regular flavours.

What on earth are Lantis smoking? So they’re running out of cute female idols to sign, are they? They’ve already got a couple of male seiyuu on their books such as Taniyama Kisyo, Suzuki Tatsuhisa and Ono Daisuke whilst rivals King Records/STARCHILD have er…Miyano Mamoru. However, King/STAR beat Lantis to a pulp in the female seiyuu idol stakes with the four currently biggest sellers – Mizuki Nana, Hayashibara Megumi, Horie Yui and Tamura Yukari, on their books. Lantis have Hirano Aya, Chihara Minori and er… Shintani Ryoko?

Anyway, Suzumura’s still untitled debut single hits 8th of October. There’ll be three songs on it, and SuzuKen’s apparently writing the lyrics for them. He sounds just about OK on record, but live…you can hear for yourself in the video above. Painful stuff, and I’d say that him getting a record contract is painful news too :/ Is Sakurai Takahiro next?

Oh, and I should mention that Suzumura is a grand old 33 years of age.