1. Yokoyama Chisa fractured her elbow in a scooter accident, someone opened a stationary car door while she was moving in traffic and it hit her and her scooter. She showed off her injuries on her blog (arm in sling, cut on finger). All should be well in 3 weeks apparently, though she’s still working and attending rehearsals regardless.

2. Tange Sakura is returning permanently to anime voice work! Her last regular role was something like 10 years ago…. First up is this autumn’s Kirumin – the sound director is the same as for Love Plus (which she is in) and production is being done by her agency Aoni Production. You have no idea how excited I am about this, I have been rewatching Card Captor Sakura to celebrate. Altogether now, hoe~~~~~

3. Imai Yuka has been signed up by the Atomic Monkey agency, which is somewhat surprising to me – she’s been freelancing for quite some time since she fell ill and had to give up her roles in Demonbane and Futari wa Precure Splash Star. Guess this means Imai’s ready to get back into the full swing of things, I do welcome that as I like her work as Jinto in the Crest of the Stars series. She joins the likes of Sugita Tomokazu, Seki Tomokazu, Nagasawa Miki and Orikasa Fumiko on Atomic Monkey’s expanding list of seiyuu poached from other companies/snapped up on a free.

4. In a follow up to this piece of Ikezawa Haruna + stalker news I posted some time back, unemployed 27-year old Sasaki Jun has been arrested for stalking and defamation.

5. Similarly creepy news. Another unemployed guy, 26-year old Yamazaki Satoshi, has also been arrested – this time for threatening to kill Kadowaki Mai’s parents. It’s one thing to get fake threats like those (Nana, Minorin) last year, but these guys seem seriously off their rockers.

6. Everyone knows the Kaneda Tomoko thing.

Oh well, it is as much an update for me as it is for you, I’m still busily plowing through Professor Layton in between bouts of (watching) tennis and football matches. And work, yes work!

16-year old wins KADOKAWA×UP-FRONT STYLE Idol☆Seiyuu Audition

16-year old Misawa Sachika (三澤 紗千香) is the grand prize winner in Kadokawa & Up-Front Group’s 2008 Idol Seiyuu Audition, chosen from over 1000 hopefuls. Hailing from a small town in Yamanashi-ken, Misawa spent many nights practising singing at the top of her lungs, inciting the wrath of her mom who told her to shut up. She proclaims herself a Gundam 00 and Haruhi fan and hopes to emulate the success of her heroine Sakamoto Maaya in the future. She is said to be debuting in the upcoming GONZO anime Shangri-la, and will also be performing the ending theme. I suppose I won’t knock all these public seiyuu audition things as such enterprises have unearthed talents like Inoue Marina, Nakajima Megumi, Chihara Minori & Kitamura Eri before so I’ll just wait and see how it turns out.
Source: Yahoo News

New temp super seiyuu group for Basquash!

GONZO’s upcoming spring production Basquash! will see the formation of a temporary idol group called Eclipse (though the official site lists it as ‘eqrips’), made up of Nakajima Megumi, Tomatsu Haruka and Hayami Saori (average age = 18.3). The trio will be singing insert songs within the anime, so I guess the chances for CD releases are pretty high. I’m pleased with the line-up, we should at least be getting some decent singing there but dang, I was hoping they’d go for a more original name like er… Squashed Butts, or Beauty, Cutey and the Beast (don’t kill me), something catchy like that. Instead, I’ll forever associate them with a fansubbing group.

Fukuyama Jun Takes on Makino Yui

Fukuyama Jun mentioned that he bought his first ever PC (he’s 30 years old btw) and Makino Yui somehow ignited a blog war with him after gleefully declaring that she was ‘the winner’ because she had the ‘blind touch’ (ie typing without looking at the keyboard, which Jun is still learning). Fukuyama then indignantly responded ‘How can you compare a person who’s been playing the piano since she was a baby (ie Yui) to a complete amateur like me?’ and threw down the challenge that if he could learn to blind touch by the end of the year, he would win. Yui then responded that the deadline should be the end of the broadcast of SoraKake (on which they’re both working together) instead and Fukuyama agreed, warning that there would be a punishment game for whoever lost the challenge. So er… may the biggest ego win?
Source: Makino Yui’s blog & Fukuyama Jun’s blog

Mistaken identities

Two cases in February: Kaneda Tomoko (35 going on 36) got mistaken for a student on the street, being told to ‘Do your best!’ and getting handed a free stationery set (above) during the recent exam season. And Mizuhara Kaoru (age unknown) got mistaken for a pregnant lady on the train after a particularly heavy all-you-can-eat meal – a young boy offered his seat to her, pointing to her stomach and saying ‘oh you’ve got a baby in there haven’t you?’.
Source: Kaneda Tomoko’s blog and Ga-Rei radio #18

Third volume of Seiran Hyakka series out March 18

Remember those CDs that had a bunch of seiyuu singing anison karaoke style? Well they’re back to torment you – volume 3, both guys & girls versions will be released on March 18. Participating seiyuu:
Girls: Shintani Ryoko, Tanaka Rie, Nagasawa Miki, Orikasa Fumiko, Asakawa Yuu, Asumi Kana, Ohara Sayaka, Sato Rina, Minagawa Junko + Nakamura Eriko (oh god no)
Guys: Ishii Makoto, Okawa Toru, Suzuki Chihiro, Kaji Yuki, Toriumi Kosuke, Kishio Daisuke, Suwabe Junichi, Koyama Tsuyoshi, Namikawa Daisuke
Some amusing song choices include Nagasawa Miki singing crappy Ponyo, Tanaka Rie with Pegasus Fantasy and Suwabe Junichi singing Mahou Tsukai Sally (lol).
Link: Aniplex Hyakka Seiran site (with full tracklisting)

Plume go on ‘hiatus’

Female seiyuu group Plume announced on their radio show that the project would be going ‘into a long, long hibernation’ – I guess that means a permanent break-up? The trio were made up of Endo Aya, Mizuno Manabi & Kawaragi Shiho (left to right above) and released 2 indies singles and 1 major under Lantis during their 3 years of activity. Well I guess I wasn’t expecting that… their major single (Kimi to Yume to Umbrella) was actually pretty decent, and I like the members individually so I’m disappointed that it’s come to an end so quickly.
Source: Plume blog

Furuya Tohru Scotches Rumours of Death
Around Jan 27, rumours of Furuya Tohru’s death started floating around the internet. The source cited was the Pucchi Bacchi mail magazine, and it spiraled out of control (was discussed on mangaka Ishikawa Jun’s site) and Furuya had to issue a statement on his site a few days later. Turns out it was actually his mother who had passed away (at the age of 81), while Furuya + his father are both alive and well.

Fukuhara Kaori Undergoes Surgery
Apparently Fukuhara (Tsukasa in Lucky Star) has had bad hay fever since she was young, and underwent surgery to alleviate the worsening symptoms. In her 29 Jan blog entry she mentions that she had 4 times the normal IgE level in her blood and that house dust, arachnids and Japanese cedar trees were three of the things that she had to avoid. Seems everything went OK with the [cheap, easy] surgery and it won’t affect her schedule too much, and Fukuhara hopes that this will reduce the amount of visits she makes to the doctors’ in the future.

Space Craft are holding auditions for ikemen seiyuu group
Ikemen meaning handsome. So if you know any young, good-looking Japanese guys between ages 14-22 get them to sign up. They’ll be rubbing shoulders with Hirano Aya! Maybe Kajiura Yuki might even write them a few songs [both are signed to Space Craft]. News via Oricon.

Morikubo Showtaro & Asakawa Yuu divorce after 2 years of marriage

‘Personality clashes’ blamed. I’m not surprised I suppose – Morikubo is a bit of a looker and likes his bikes, rock music and the high life while Asakawa didn’t seem like the type of faithful wife who sits at home doing the laundry and cooking meals, so it was probably always destined to end in tears.

Morikawa Toshiyuki starts new band

With musician Nishioka Kazuya, band name is Black Velvet (official site). Morikawa is the one on the far left in the picture above. The group’s first two singles are due March 25 and April 22.

Suzumura Kenichi stars in new ghostnote PV

SuzuKen made an appearance in ghostnote’s PV for Sakuramichi, a track from major label debut album Identity. The rock trio did an ending theme for the Gintama anime and met Suzumura at last year’s Jump Festa, discovered that he used to live in their hometown Okayama and invited him to appear in the PV. You can watch it streamed on the band’s official website.

In other SuzuKen related news, his second solo single Atarashii Neiro is out on 4th February while his musical project with seiyuu Iwata Mitsuo called CONNECT (see official site) will debut with their first album on 24th April.

MAPLUS releases portable navigation device where you can install voices of anime characters
It’s called the iriver CaroNavi M3, and some of the voices include Furuya Tohru in the style of Amuro Ray, Ohtsuka Akio as Battou, Ikeda Shuichi as Char Aznable and Wakamoto Norio as Cell. Basically, they’re telling you earnestly to ‘turn left!’, or ‘you missed the turning!’ etc. Kugimiya Rie (tsundere style), Sawashiro Miyuki and Ochiai Yurika are also involved, samples can be heard on the MAPLUS page.

Chihara Minori Parade tour goods
Some of the goods on sale (see site) – the usual array of posters, penlights, badges, T-shirts, windbreakers, phone straps, towels plus the not so usual wrist watches and a ‘Chihara Minori produced’ perfume called Happiness. Not as weird as an ice tray I suppose. Also, otagei is unsurprisingly banned at all shows after all the trouble she had with crowd control last time out.

Weird 2channel rumour of the month:
That Yoshino Hiroyuki & Ueda Kana got married on a ski trip in Hokkaido with Shimizu Kaori and Kuwatani Natsuko as witnesses… yeah. Basically a series of conspiracy theories involving how they both went to Hokkaido at the same time, took the same photos of the same pot of nabe, how Kana is wearing a ring on her ring finger, why she’s planning to move out of the flat she shares with her sister etc etc. But er… Yoshino always goes skiing in Hokkaido with all 3 girls, so it’s more like a harem situation if anything.

Blogs

Some new seiyuu blogs started up within the last 2 months: Sakai Kanako, MAKO, Ohgame Asuka, Imai Yuka, HAZUKI and Erika, while Kadowaki Maii has moved blogs to Ameblo and Ogiwara Hideki to FC2. Also, Fukuyama Jun has logged 193 posts in the 3 months since he started blogging. I am thinking of putting together a seiyuu blog directory – yay or nay?

Sugita Corner

Yay, return of Sugita Tomokazu image collection corner! I collected this bunch of pics over the last couple of months but I can’t positively ID the blogs =_=

This is from Kuwatani Natsuko’s blog, a picture of the seiyuu (the others are Sakurai Takahiro, Kamiya Hiroshi, Shimoda Asami & Suzumura Kenichi) who took part in a Famitsu Character DX event. The text says ‘we could form a sentai group’. They indulged in a game of Jenga after the show, pictures of which you can see on Asapon’s blog. Sugita appears to only own dark-coloured clothes…