j1m0ne's blog

This has been all over internet news and message boards for the past few days – at first I didn’t think much of Kana’s supposedly offensive comments when I heard it on Marunage, but news spreads quickly over the internet & people start making a big fuss. When ’something a seiyuu said’ starts making the mainstream news sites… you know it’s time for a public apology.

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I’ve been listening to Marunage on and off for the last 12 months, but with me slowly working on an Ueda Kana profile I’ve been poking around some more of the material on offer and thought that some of the stuff that follows is just way too silly not to pass on.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these radio-oriented posts. Good way to pick up useless seiyuu trivia though!

Warning: Long post. But first of all, a short intro to Marunage.
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Quick piece of info for Marimite and in particular Inoue Marina fans – the latest episode of Marimite radio is up so go check it out on Animate.tv (press bright orange PLAY button).

The highlight is the second part of the Chocolat & Portrait sidestory (one of the best parts of Marimite methinks) where Shoko & friends steal into Lillian High School and she meets Tsutako for the first time. Rosa Foetida (Eriko) also appears this time, in the ‘chasing Shoko around because there’s a cleaning tag on her uniform’ bit :3

I think Marina’s voice fits Shoko’s character well, I loved the scene with Tsutako where Shoko talks about how she hates having photos taken of herself. “At this rate I’ll never get married, I can’t even take an ‘omiai shashin’!” and “Even if I do get married, I’ll still have to take wedding photographs!”

I hope Chocolat & Portrait get animated, but I won’t keep my hopes up if Marimite 4 turns out to be just 1-cour.

Some of the dialogue between Ueda Kana (K) and the show’s guest Inoue Marina (M):

What would you (like to) do if you were reincarnated as a man?
M: (If) I was reborn as an ‘ikemen’, I want to be ‘popular’ with girls. I want to make them ’serve’ me.
K: But you can do that (make them ’serve’ you) even now you know.
M: I don’t understand. That’s weird…weird eh? (Pause) But yeah, I want to do that even now.
K: What, have girls serve you?
M: Mmm yes (laugh) I want to lead girls on (laugh)
K: But you’re already popular with the girls, you know.
M: What, in my present ‘form’?
K: Yes, in your present ‘form’…and you would be too if you were reincarnated as a guy.

Umm… yay for yuri undertones? So yeah, Inoue Marina wants to build her own harem – form an orderly line please.

What do you look for in a man?
M: Hmm… I’d prefer the conservative type? Someone who doesn’t smoke, since my dad does and I hate it. (Someone who) Doesn’t gamble, and who’s compatible with me food-wise, someone whom I can have a coversation with and so on. Or someone who will tell me that everything I cook tastes good!
K: I’d like someone who does things to the extreme – either they gotta be better at games than me or they don’t like the at all. It’d be awful if he was the ‘in-between’, halfway-house kind of person…
M: So what if the guy really liked games but wasn’t as good at them as you?
K: Well normally guys would be shocked by such things (girls being better at games than them) wouldn’t they?
M: There aren’t many people who are better at games than you are, are there?

All conversations involving Ueda Kana inevitably lead to Video Game Land. I discovered that as much when researching Kana for the profile I’m doing for her (Rejoice, Kana fans )

Words of the Day
omiai shashin: formal matchmaking photos [a portfolio of photos for prospective suitors] (お見合写真)
ikemen: good-looking guy (イケメン)
motetai: want to be popular (モテたい)
haberasetai: want to make [one] serve (侍らせたい)
kyokutan: to the extreme (極端)
chuutohanpa: unfinished, halfway (中途半端)

Another Inside Xbox interview with Ueda Kana, this time focusing on Halo 3. I’m not going to translate it – obviously I’m not into Halo 3 much, and she spends half the time talking about the maps -_- But you do get to see Kana-sama playing the game a little more in the video, including one bit around the 1:14 mark where she’s trying to shoot this guy and someone else helps her out by running him over with a truck, lol.

Anyway, the interview was done about a fortnight ago when Ueda participated in another online session in conjunction with the release of some new maps for Halo 3. Kana said that this time around, there was another Japanese girl who came online to play which surprised her. She also tried to encourage more girls to get online and play (guess she’s drowning in all that testosterone, heh). So if you’ve got an Xbox360 look for Ueda Kana between 11pm-5am Japan time, that’s when she says she’s usually online

I guess I’m gonna make a habit of posting interesting seiyuu videos from now on… this time it’s an interview with Ueda Kana about her Xbox 360 habits.

I’ll probably put up a translation of the interview sometime later today (gotta dash off to work!)

This is NOT a literal translation – I just took the important points and filled in some bits to make it flow better.
Q:What sort of games do you play on the Xbox 360?
A:One of the first few games I played was [eM] -eNCHANT arM-, which I was actually involved in. Lately, I’ve been playing things like Final Fantasy (XI), and of course, Halo (3). Apart from that, there’s Call of Duty 4 and I’m also going to try out Lost Odyssey soon.

Q:So we heard you have friends who also play games?
A:In my friend’s house, there’s an Xbox360 with a 50-inch TV in a room we call Neverland. And there, about 10 of us seiyuu will gather to play – versus battles (通信対戦), I think you call it.

Q:What do you find so special about Halo 3?
A:I think it’s the large variety of weapons and vehicles, plus the story mode’s really intriguing – it provides great mulitplayer fun, and probably the (game’s) unlimited possibilities.

Q:What were your feelings about (your guest appearance on) Xbox Live Park?
A:Man, that was really interesting! When I normally play Xbox Live, there’s not much opportunity to talk to other people so it was pretty amusing when people came in and started saying “Hi!” to me, and also when I said things like “Save me!”, “Get on!” and things like that. It was really fun working together to carry out missions as a team.

Q:Any messages for the users?
A:Halo 3 is a really good game that I’m very much into at the moment, but I’m sure there are lots more good games that will be coming out for the Xbox 360 in the future. Who knows, we might meet online one day if I get the chance – so see you around then!

Remember one of my posts earlier in the month laughing over the fact that Ueda Kana and Nakahara Mai had been anointed as Japan’s sexy defenders of justice by Funtasticus? Well, this week on Ueda & Shimizu Kaori’s Anitama.com standard Marunage radio show (around the 24 minute mark if you’re interested to listen), a listener wrote in to inform Kana of the incident – that “a foreign website had put up pictures of Japan’s ‘beautiful army girls’ Ueda Kana & Nakahara Mai and asked readers which ones were sexy”. The listener also went to suggest that the duo do a cosplay photobook as a Marunage souvenir.

Hilariously, Kana already knew about the whole thing cos of the extra hits her personal website got (about a 1000 more than usual) as a result of the post. She and Shimizu then went over the pictures from the site, declared the girl from Australia as sexy & the one from Portugal as cute though I have a feeling they’re looking at the wrong captions cos Brazil is way sexier and Russia is a 100 times cuter (those pics are directly above the ones Ueda & Shimizu mentioned & I can’t directly link to them apparently, boohoo). They also said it was kinda scary that they were carrying guns but duh, it’s the army after all.

Ueda Kana is pretty tech-savvy with all her Halo exploits so I’m not surprised to learn that she had already learned of the incident beforehand but big <3 to her anyway. Makes me wonder how many seiyuu actually bother to look up the sort of coverage they get on fansites outside of Japan.

Hahahahaha. I laughed when I saw this post over at Funtasticus.com comparing army girls from each country. Well apparently, Japan’s representatives are Ueda Kana and Nakahara Mai. Hahahahahahahaha. The picture above was actually taken nearly two years ago, when the two of them visited a naval ship for a Tactical Roar photoshoot/interview. I remember that well, cos they spent a few episodes of the radio show walking round the ship & talking about naval warfare or something like that, which bored the heck out of me……

Anyway, the thought of two hapless seiyuu defending Japan’s honour is mortifying. The post also has other rather dubious pictures like actress Hoshino Mari apparently being a Vietnamese soldier (I believe it was actually from some mag photoshoot)…. some of them do look pretty cool though – particularly the ones with guns ^^;