So it’s true after all that Mizuki Nana is going to be in the anime adaptation of Leaf’s 1998 visual novel WHITE ALBUM. With Elements Garden composing the music, I wonder if we’ll get at least an opening or ending theme by Nana. It’s more likely that Hirano Aya, being the voice of the main character’s girlfriend, will get the gig but if it came to that…then they should stick to hiring the usual Aquaplus singers like Suara or Motoda Emi ^^;;

Anyway, Seven Arcs (Nanoha series) are behind this - most of the staff look unfamiliar to me, never heard of the director either. Anime is currently slated to air in January 2009. Someone who’s into eroge might know more about WHITE ALBUM’s premise, which according to wikipedia, is…

…the first bishojo game made by Leaf that has not used the title of “visual novel”, so there are some differences between the system of WHITE ALBUM and the other previous Leaf games. One of the most distinctive features is that the game’s hero already has his girlfriend, so the objective is not to form a new relationship, but to either keep the girlfriend, give up, or act as if nothing happened.

Right. That sounds exactly like the sort of thing I wouldn’t watch! We’ll see if it turns out to be good like true tears or bad like H2O in 6 months time…

Staff
Original work: Aquaplus
Planning: Shimokawa Naoya
Director: Yoshida Taizo (? - 吉田泰三)
Scenario: Sato Hiroaki
Character Design: Yoshinari Kou
Original Character Design: Kawata Hisashi
Art Director: Katahira Shinji
Music: Elements Garden
Sound Director: Shioya Tsubasa
Producer: Mishima Akio
Animation: Seven Arcs
>>Hirano Aya: Morikawa Yuki
>>Mizuki Nana: Ogata Rina
Official site: http://www.whitealbum-tv.com/ (to come)

News via MOONPHASE.

I fear I’m not going to bring anything new to the table if I just rehash the whole ‘otaku are harmless, misunderstood individuals/otaku are the bane of planet earth’ argument so I’ll settle for peering at the otaku world through my own rose-tinted spectacles. What follows is a collection of random thoughts and observations, keep in mind that it’s not meant to be an essay so don’t expect a good introduction, plot or ending.

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Woah, woah, woah. I can’t remember the last time an anime soundtrack ever sold that well on its first day - the power of Macross is truly mind-boggling. Passing the 10000 index number on its first day, that’s almost unheard of nowadays. With a 1.7 multiplier, that’s roughly 17,500 copies sold in the first 24 hours although for anime the multiplier should be larger, so I predict total weekly sales of around 35-40k… oh hang on. Let me explain what index numbers (circled red above) and multipliers are again. There must be some stats geeks like me around somewhere…

Copied and pasted from one of my Nana posts last year:

The index numbers only represent a percentage of the stores around the country - around 2,200 stores report daily sales figures IIRC. There’s two other groups of stores that factor to total weekly sales - one is a smaller group of 800+ stores who fax in their weekly sales totals, and the other group is the online stores. The index numbers are added up over the week (from Tuesday to Monday) and multiplied with a number (let’s call it the multiplier) - around 1.7 or 1.75, to attain a figure which is quite close to real sales totals.

International and anime-related CDs tend to have completely different (usually higher) multipliers, as cheap imports (for the former) and strong online sales (latter) really make a difference. Which is why Mizuki Nana’s SECRET AMBITION ended up at No.2 eventhough it didn’t rank higher than No.4 on the daily charts throughout the whole week. So remember, if you wanna do your bit for your favourite artist, don’t buy from YesAsia but get stuff from HMV, Amazon, JBook or CDJapan instead - sales from YA don’t contribute to the Oricon chart.

Nyan Furo’s probably gonna drop like a stone over the next few days anyway and surely MINMI’s best collection will outsell it (or I’ll beat myself over the head with a stick), but still… crazy stuff. Anyway, putting it into perspective - last year’s best-selling anime-related original album of any kind was Mizuki Nana’s GREAT ACTIVITY and it only managed an index of 8,692 on its first day.

I don’t know what else to compare Macross to since the anime is in essence, all about the music and less the mechs (unlike something such as Gundam). Erm let’s see…the first Geass OST sold 5,000 copies in its first week…uh, the first Gundam SEED OST managed 14k. It’s probably not fair to compare it to the Evangelion and Macross 7 soundtracks from the mid-90s as CD sales have plummeted since then, but for the record:

Release date*Debut chart position**Total weeks on chart**First week sales**Total Sales**Album name
1995/01/21 **6位 *19週 *21,520 228,840　Macross 7 MUSIC SELECTION FROM GALAXY NETWORK CHART
1995/06/07 **4位 *11週 *84,800 229,430　Macross 7 Let’s Fire!!
1995/12/06 *12位 *22週 *49,650 204,070　NEON GENESIS EVANGELION
1996/02/16 **4位 *15週 *81,620 212,070　NEON GENESIS EVANGELION II
1996/05/22 **1位 *11週 117,190 219,070　NEON GENESIS EVANGELION III

There’s a long way to go before Macross F can match any of that… And oh yes, I forgot to mention that I love Nyan Furo. OST of the year (so far)!

Back to regular programming now, starting with a clearing of the Kyoran Kazoku Nikki radio show coverage backlog.

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Greetings from Tamagawa, Setagaya, Japan! Anyway, only got in around 12am-ish after flight delays, a long queue at the immigration counter and a 30-minute taxi ride from Shinjuku station with a friendly taxi driver who seemed incredibly interested in Malaysian perceptions of Japanese things:

Taxi driver (Ushio-san, so his name plate read): So, is natto the No.1 most hated Japanese thing in Malaysia? [in Japanese]
Me: Er well, we don’t get too much natto in Malaysia really… [in terrible gaijin Japanese]
Taxi driver: So do you eat bread or rice in Malaysia? We in Japan, RICE ONLY! (He said RICE ONLY in English)

Ah well, he was pretty cool though and did give us a handful of coffee jelly sweets and told me ‘Girls don’t say UMAI, they say OISHII!’. And he was about to drive off before I shouted ‘Nimotsu!!’ (luggage was in the boot).

Yawn. It’s 9:30am now and Lawson’s ran out of melonpan so I’ll just have a butter roll for breakfast.

But what I really wanted to talk about is the seiyuu guest list for Kyoran Kazoku Nikki. You might already have noticed the appearances of Nakahara Mai (Chieri the travel agent) and Kitamura Eri (Pierre) but there’s loads more to come. The Kyoran blog listed all the future guests so keep your eyes and ears peeled to hear your favourites in upcoming episodes:
Goto Yuko: Hiratsuka Raicho
Nakahara Mai: Sakurai Chieri
Morinaga Rika: Shinigami Sanban
Kitamura Eri: Nishikura Akeru/Pierre
Minagawa Junko: Ryukotsuji Shu (竜骨寺 柊雨)
Shimizu Ai: Ryukotsuji Tsubaki (竜骨寺 椿姫)
Saito Momoko: Odessa Ei (オデッサ=エイ)
Kugimiya Rie: Mujacky (ムジャッキー)
Ishikawa Hideo: Dekamelon (デカメロン)
Inoue Marina: Madara
Shitaya Noriko: Mirukatopi (ミルカトピ)
Hino Satoshi: Katsura Rindo
Kawasumi Ayako: Dr. Hell
Kawada Shinji: Dr. Gebock (Dr.ゲボック)
Mizusawa Fumie: Momokusa Aichi
Igarashi Hiromi: Tsumiki Shizuka
Kotobuki Minako: Yamaguchi Hijiri

Today, I’m probably off to Ueno and (in an abrupt u-turn), Akihabara >_> Hopefully my next post will contain pictures…

Manga’s Synopsis (pinched from MAL):
Sekirei are 108 beautiful girls of unknown origin, who together with their Ashikabi (human partners), must battle with one another in order to determine who will ascend and claim the “prize”. What is the larger purpose of this event? What are the plans of the event’s overseer, the same individual who found these Sekirei and introduced them into society?

Enter Sahashi Minato, 19 years old and approaching his 2nd year as a ronin. He is about to give it all up and return home, when quite literally, Musubi falls into/onto his life. An extremely well endowed, energetic, simple and sweet girl in a short miko outfit. Suddenly he finds himself as an Ashikabi, living with a girl for the first time in his life. And this is just the start of his new crazy life, which at most times is more then the poor Minato can handle.

This extremely ecchi, yet relatively innocent manga geared toward young men was brought to us by an established yaoi mangaka, Gokurakuin Sakurako, no less!

Cast (Via MOONPHASE):
Tachibana Shinnosuke: Sahashi Minato
Hayami Saori: Musubi
Inoue Marina: Tsukiumi
Hanazawa Kana: Kusano
Endo Aya: Matsu
Edit: Rest of the cast has been revealed too.
Ohara Sayaka: Sahama Miya
Konishi Katsuyuki: Seo Kaoru
Kaida Yuki: Homura/Kagari
Kobayashi Yu: Akitsu
Kaida Yuko: Hikari
Neya Michiko: Hibiki
Nabatame Hitomi: Uzume
Asumi Kana: Sahashi Yukari
Yahagi Sayuri: Mitsuha
Ishizuka Sayori: Shiina

As expected, Hayami Saori takes on the role of Musubi. Only Tachibana Shinnosuke is retained from the drama CD version, but I’m quite pleased with their replacements. Marina!! Endo Aya!!! And WTF, Hanazawa Kana again. She’s everything these days…not that I mind, of course. I ♥ her! Apart from Sekirei, Kana will also be in Shina Dark, Kannagi and the Mahou Tsukai yada yada sequel - are Osawa Office turning her into the next Noto Mamiko already?

For the record, the original seiyuu on the drama CD who got replaced are:
Kawasumi Ayako: Musubi
Tanaka Rie: Tsukiumi
Tamura Yukari: Kusano
Matsuoka Yuki: Matsu
That’s one heck of a cast to live up to! Some of the Nanoha team (animation studio, director, music etc) are behind Sekirei, and the anime will probably start airing sometime in July.

While I’m still on the subject of food, I thought I’d show you what the Kyoran seiyuu ate on the radio show last Friday.

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If you’ve watched Moyashimon, you might recall episode 9 where Itsuki-sensei introduced surströmming (fermented herring), allegedly one of the foulest-smelling foods in the world, to the students. Well apparently the show’s producers thought it’d be great fun to make the seiyuu bring a can of the stuff on a picnic and film their reactions to opening and eating it. The four unfortunate guinea pigs/sacrificial lambs selected for the experiment were Sakaguchi Daisuke (Sawaki), Sugiyama Noriaki (Kawahama), Kanda Akemi (Hazuki) and Ohara Sayaka (Hasegawa). I would’ve loved to have seen Noto Mamiko (Muto) trying it out though ;P

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