j1m0ne’s blog

Not quite sure why I’m still watching Moetan, but a lot of it is down to cuteness and my general affection for bad English. The latter is why I enjoy the radio show more than the anime itself, where humour comes in fits and spurts and the Engrish puns seem more of a sideshow than the main event. Ooh, and DVD1 comes with a Listening Radio CD~~ Anyway, more on the radio show - I know few people listen to radio shows because of an inability to comprehend Japanese, but hey; half of the Moetan show is in English! Albeit very, very bad and very, very broken English.

Intro to the two seiyuu hosting Moetan Listening Radio:

Tomatsu Haruka (voice of Kuroi Sumi)

DoB: 4th February 1990
Hometown: Nagoya, Aichi
Agency: Music Ray’n (under Sony Music Entertainment)

Fresh faced, 17 years old etc etc - Tomatsu was in my list of newcomer seiyuu list thingy and I remained pretty impressed after hearing her in Moetan as Ink’s stupid rival Sumi. Still not a huge deal is known about her apart from titbits picked up from radio shows; she used to be a fan of Morning Musume (Tsuji), she doesn’t like school at all (her favourite subject is P.E.) and uh….she’s cute. Yeap.

Being a newcomer to this whole seiyuu lark and not a fan of anime, Haruka still struggles with the otaku stuff. Which is maybe why she was put on the radio show, so that Morinaga can corrupt her brain, teaching her what stuff like fujoushi (腐女子) and kita (キタ───(ﾟ∀ﾟ)───!!!!) means ^^; Incidentally, on one of the episodes Morinaga mentions how Americans/gaijin use XD to kind of substitute for the Japanese wwww (where w = warai, so I think lolololol is more appropriate really).

So Morinaga has her job cut out to try to convert the greenhorn Tomatsu into an anime nerd. I really don’t think she’ll succeed…………
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Morinaga Rika (voice of Ruriko)

DoB: 25th April 1980
Hometown: Tokyo
Agency: Freelance

Cosplay-loving, goth inspired Morinaga recently became a free agent having confirmed her split from I’m Enterprise, one of the agencies involved in the Matsuda Sakumi scandal (he was the head of the firm). The reason given was that Morinaga wanted more freedom to pursue her musical aspirations - apparently the move already had been agreed at the beginning of the year.

Prior to this decision Rika had actually done very little voice acting work in the 4 years since she entered the industry, with mostly support characters filling up her CV - Souseiseki from Rozen Maiden (Suiseiseki’s docile sister) is still perhaps her most well-known role.

Thanks to her older sister’s influence, Morinaga developed a huge interest in cosplay when she was a teenager. Regularly cosplaying at Comic Market, Rika was scouted out and ended up working as a cosplay model for magazines. Details are sketcy, but her road to becoming a seiyuu was when she participated in a contest(?) on a radio show hosted by Hiyama Nobuyuki & Kurata Masayo back in 2001. Morinaga’s debut as a seiyuu came when she was grouped with fellow I’m newbies Nakahara Mai, Ueda Kana & Saito Chiwa to form MixJUICE for the Wandaba Style anime. She still claims that she was proud of that project, but I’m not quite so sure given the terrible cheesiness of it all ^^;;;

More about her musical project - she’s lead vocal in a group called function code(); whose Carillon single topped the Tower Record indie charts (Check out their Myspace page). Uhhhhh….. their brand of music holds no appeal for me, but they’ve now got a major label’s backing (Universal) so I’ll be keeping tabs on their progress.

Strangely, since Morinaga decided to freelance the number of anime roles she’s gotten have increased - the police chief’s daughter Omawari-san in Seto no Hanayome, wonderkid Ren in Kaze no Stigma & currently Sumi’s sadistic maid in Moetan. She’ll also have a supporting role in autumn anime Minami-ke, an adaptation of Kyou no 5 no 2 mangaka’s Sakuraba Coharu’s series.

A little OT, but Minami-ke which is the story of 3 oddball sisters, features some seriously good seiyuu talent - the main ones are Satou Rina, Inoue Marina and Chihara Minori, but also includes Kakihara Tetsuya, Mizuki Nana & Ono Daisuke. I think all of them have been mentioned on this blog more than once ^_^ Keep an eye out for this, starts airing in October!

Official website: morinagarika.com
Blog: Rika’s Blog
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Moetan Listening Radio
Morinaga & Tomatsu start off each show by talking about the previous week’s Moetan anime episode, then read a couple of mails from listeners. The two main corners are Kojin Lesson - Oshiete Rika-sensei!, where they ‘learn’ otaku-related phrases, and Easy Conversation, where they bring in a 17-year old girl from the Philippines called Patora-chan (below) who DOESN’T UNDERSTAND JAPANESE. Wooooh.

Chaos ensues as the the trio try (and often fail) to communicate, with Rika & Haruka struggling to formulate simple sentences leaving poor Patora-chan completely confused.

Example of a typical conversation:
Tomatsu: Hello, I’m….my name is Haruka Toemats! I’m voice actor. Mmm…I’m very powerful!! Nice to meet you!
Morinaga: Hi! My name is Rika Molinyaga. Eto….I’m voice actress….Mmmm….very cute!! Uh….hobby, oshiete! Boyfriend iru? Are you more interested in 3D than 2D? Moetan shiteru?
Patora-chan: I don’t understand Japanese >_>

…..I hope Patora-chan’s well paid.

Episode #3
Oshiete, Rika-sensei!
1. Ink is my wife.
いんくはオレの嫁。(Ink wa ore no yome.)
-Tomatsu ponders ‘This phrase is only appropriate for guys isn’t it?’ Morinaga then replies that she often says ‘Koike Teppei wa ore no yome’. LOL.

2. Death has returned from hell.
死神が地獄から舞戻ってきたぜ。(Shinigami ga jigoku kara maimodotte kitaze.)
-Line by Duo Maxwell from Gundam Wing. Tomatsu knows zip about the Gundam series, and doesn’t even know that each one is a standalone series. So Morinaga goes on to explain stuff about each of the main characters to Tomatsu & also goes off on a tangent about fujoushi (she likes the Heero and Trowa pairing ^^;)

Easy Conversation
Theme - What are you doing for the summer?
Tomatsu: Where will you go to summer vacation?
Patora: I think on the beach?
Morinaga/Tomatsu: Mizugi!! Er… swimsuit….? Donna…what colour?
Patora: Pink.
Morinaga: Sore wa…cute. Sore wa…キタ───(ﾟ∀ﾟ)───!!!! Patora wa ore no yome.
……..they then go on to talk about where they live and Morinaga invites Patora to her home (near Saitama).
Morinaga: My cat welcomes you. Miaooww.
Patora: Er ok…..
Morinaga: Do you know Comiket? (Comic Market)
Patora: Is that the cat’s name?
Morinaga/Tomatsu: NOOOO.

Episode #4
Oshiete, Rika-sensei!
1. Don’t you understand the beauty of absolute domain?
あなたは絶対領域の素晴らしさが分からないのか？ (Anata wa zettai ryouiki no subarashisa ga wakaranai no ka?)
-Tohsaka Rin fans need no introduction to the meaning of this phrase I suppose, though it’s more commonly translated as ‘Absolute Territory’. It’s the area between the skirt and kneesocks as modeled by Pastel Ink below.

Tomatsu laughed out loud when she heard the translation for this.

Morinaga: Do you know what zettai ryouiki refers to?
Tomatsu: Of course. Because….. that’s what I am now.
Morinaga: (Looks down). So you are! Today, Haruka-tan is zettai ryouiki!

They went on to have a 10-minute conversation about underwear, socks and schoolgirls. Ooh~~

2. A miracle will happen. I’ll make it happen!
奇跡は起きます。起こして見せます！(Kiseki wa okimasu. Okoshite misemasu!)
-Line from Gainax’s Top o Nerae! (aka Gunbuster), which was made before Tomatsu was even born.

Easy Conversation
They play a silly game - Kokon Tozai (古今東西) which Tomatsu attempted to translate as ‘Old Now East West’. It’s a word game where a player picks a topic & all of them have to think of something related to it. (i.e. Topic: Countries - each player has to name a country). Patora-chan had the best English obviously and despite dubious answers from the others (Something red? Morinaga answered Red Ranger), she managed to jointly win the game. The last topic they picked was ‘Something cool’ which produced some pretty bizarre answers - Michael Jackson! Spiderman! You! Jack Sparrow! Voice actors’ voice! My Chemical Romance! Rob Zombie! Samurai!

Episode #5
Oshiete, Rika-sensei!
1. Listen! Could you hear the sound of the flag being triggered?
耳をすませ！フラグの立つ音は聞こえただろう？(Mimi o sumase! FLAG no tatsu oto wa kikoeta darou?)
-Tomatsu doesn’t understand what FLAG means (i.e the yuri/death flag is raised!), so Morinaga explains it to her.

2. Oh mountains! Oh galaxies! Listen to my song!
山よ！銀河よ！俺の歌を聞けえぇー！ (Yama yo! Ginga yo! Ore no uta o kike!)
-A line by Nekki Basara from Macross 7. And Haruka is so amused by his name (熱気, Nekki - literally hot air or passion) and the way Morinaga describes him that she really wants to watch it. Maybe.

Easy Conversation

A listener wanted to know what Patora-chan looks like, so Morinaga and Tomatsu’s task is to give instructions to Patora so that they can take photos of her. Haruka’s pic (the one way above somewhere) is of Patora holding a toy cow on top of her head (It goes Moo when you squish it ^_^). Rika’s is of her running/dancing around with a mask over her head and a daruma in her hand as seen above (see the full video at the Bandai site).

Newest episodes can be heard on Lantis, Dot Anime or Bandai. And I’m sure I’ve seen torrents of older shows on TT.

Posted on August 7th, 2007 under moetan, radio, seiyuu • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback