j1m0ne's blog

First of all, plugging 茅原実里 funsite, the first Chihara Minori English-language fansite run by a couple of personal acquaintances of mine.

It’s a little unfinished at the moment which is not surprising, given that (my source informed me that) the site design and content was created in the space of 8 days. The emphasis is apparently on content and not appearance - you’ve got your usual things like voice-o-graphy (which looks pretty complete to me), profile, discog etc. I am told that the gallery, interview translations and DVD pages, as well as other random (undefined) goodies will come eventually.

The meat of the site is undoubtedly the blog translation section, which if updated on a regular basis will do wonders to eliminate the possibility of Fujioka getting stuck in the middle of Minorin’s stomach, motherfcukers.

Her blog reads like a badly-written soap opera where everything that can possibly go wrong does go wrong. Nobody else in the world is capable of happily going to dinner without checking to see if she has any money in her purse, stumbling upon turtles in pots in backstreet alleys behind restaurants she shouldn’t be at as well as her all famous mishaps like melted kettles, dying fridges and lost remotes. As such it makes for a wildly entertaining read and you can now follow her escapades without having to feed the broken blog through an even more broken Google Translate.

But yes, pay the site a visit. It will make all the little ghost emoticons happy

Looking at the site I am reminded of how sad English speaking seiyuu fandom is in terms of mobilising the fanbase and producing decent memorials/shrines to their idols. Most of the fangirl fandom is driven to Livejournal, with haphazard and depressingly hard-to-navigate communities dedicated to everyone from Ishida Akira to Konishi Katsuyuki to Yoshino Hiroyushi. Not a lot of substance there, just a bucketload of fangasming (KYAAAA!!!!).

Proper sites (in English) are few and far between. Obviously you have this problem of a language barrier, not a whole lot of people can read moonrunes and would probably find relevant, interesting and unique material/content hard to come by. Also dedication - just how much do you love that one seiyuu that you’d want to torture yourself building and upkeeping a website.

There are sites/pages for Seki Tomokazu, Suwabe Junichi, Miyano Mamoru, Yamaguchi Kappei and that’s pretty much all I can dig out for the guys.

And what do we have for the female seiyuu?
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Failed ventures!

Well not entirely, there are a few sites floating around the interwebs.

Very basic site (more like random pages) for Mizuki Nana which has stuff you already know.

There’s Embassy of Ohara Sayaka which wins points for being a site dedicated to somebody not a whole lot of people know about and also having its own nifty/silly logo. Awsm. The menu however is kinda confusing thanks to its ‘Embassy’ theme (huh foreign affairs what), there’s not much content and Saya’s teeth are disturbing. Also seems to have not been updated since the turn of the year…

One of the better ones I’ve seen is Shiina Hekiru’s fansite which would be totally lovely except for the minor problem of me not liking Hekiru at all. Also cos it hasn’t updated since 2002 8D

Here’s one dedicated to Momoi Halko which looks very nice and is updated frequently but again I’m no Momoist so it’s lost on me…

Hirano Aya fansite…. or fanblog I suppose. It’s a bit bland and doesn’t really contain much info I don’t already know or can’t easily find by looking at wiki.

Sakamoto Maaya.net is one of the first sites I remember visiting when I started getting interested in seiyuu, it’s very very basic and has lots of gaps yet to be plugged, if ever.

You might have more luck if you can read Chinese (I can’t), though Chinese/HK fans prefer BBSes. Mizuki Nana site or BBS, Chihara Minori BBS, Horie Yui BBS, Nonaka Ai BBS, Tamura Yukari fansite and probably more, I am lazy to dig through stuff that I can’t understand.

Let’s not talk about Japanese fansites, which are good content-wise as well as being updated frequently but often look like the site design fell out of a fifth-grader’s nostril (more due to fear of being sued for copyright infringement). Plus the fact that nobody but Elevens and Smart Ppl Who Learnt Japanese Inc. can read them.

On the whole, I think the Minorin Funsite compares favourably to the already existing ones and I do look forward to more good stuff coming from it. Bookmark the site, ppl!