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A group of seiyuu made an appearance on popular variety show Waratte Iitomo! on the Jinsei Research Game Sugo★6 segment, with a ‘Popular Anime Seiyuu’ guests theme. The 6 seiyuu that took part were Kusao Takeshi, Sugiyama Kazuko, Koshimizu Ami, Furuya Tohru, Furukawa Toshio and Tanaka Mayumi. Those names might not seem familiar to the younger generation of anime fans, but for old-school types who grew up watching anime through the 80s and 90s they (or their characters, rather) are absolute legends. Read on for a almost-full account of the segment.

After the six seiyuu came up on stage, host Nakai Masahiro (from SMAP) introduced them one by one and they each did a sort of ’signature’ line. Kusao was first up, and he did his line as Sakuragi from Slam Dunk, and was followed by Sugiyama screaming in her Heidi (from the Heidi anime) voice.

Next up was Koshimizu, and it was amusing that was asked to do Ashita no Nadja’s Nadja, a role that I’m guessing few people actually know -_- And Nakai read her profile off a cue card, describing her as ‘an idol seiyuu’, which had me giggling cos Amisuke is SO NOT A SEIYUU IDOL, DAMNIT. The poor girl looked incredibly embarassed throughout the whole thing really. I lol’ed when some of the other guests described Amisuke as ‘kawaii’ and she sat there staring at her shoes or Furuya’s head, anywhere except at the camera.

Furuya is the guy most people already know from his Gundam connections and he obliged the crowd with the infamous 殴ったね！親父にもぶたれたことないのに！ (You hit me! Even my dad doesn’t do that!) by Amuro Ray. That was uber cool ^^

Furukawa Toshio doing Urusei Yatsura’s Ataru and Dragon Ball’s Piccolo was really awesome too, and Tanaka Mayumi’s Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece and Pazu from Laputa was simply…amazing.

It was amusing when Kusao brought a Coco (from Precure) plush toy along and did its squeaky voice ^^ You gotta hand it to these veteran seiyuu, they really are great at what they do. Koshimizu Ami was in really illustrious company indeed, and I think that she was probably the only one who didn’t have a signature role that a non-otaku crowd could truly identify with. She was there to look pretty amongst the oldie crowd!

After the intros it was time for the board game. Basically, the studio regulars & guests are split into two teams (Tamori-san’s team and Hisamoto Masami’s theme) and they would attempt to advance on the board by asking the 6 special guests a question, until they reached the winning point. For example, the first one was: “How many of you actually wanted to be singers?”, and two of them pressed a button indicating YES, so the team would move two spaces forward. There are special squares on the board called ‘Chance Points’ that are more or less games that the teams will have to play if they land on them.

Hilariously, Hisamoto’s first question was ‘How many of you have ever thought Oh, I’ll use this voice to go hit on someone?‘, and two of them said yes. Not surprised by Furuya raising his hand when Nakai-kun asked who the culprits were, but Tanaka Mayumi!?! Shocking.

Some of the other questions were pretty interesting too. One was ‘How many of you have ever voiced a character you actually hated?’ Half of them said yes - again Furuya and Tanaka, as well as Sugiyama this time. Furuya hated his role as bad-guy Andrew Fork in Legend of the Galactic Heroes apparently, heh.

Another question was whether any of the seiyuu had used the wrong voice for a character without realising it - only one person said yes. It was Tanaka Mayumi again, heh. Though she explained that it wasn’t the case of using the wrong voice, but rather that during a recording of One Piece, her character Luffy was talking to Usopp and instead of saying Usopp, she said Luffy instead.

The last question was a bit of a cheat. At first, it was ‘Who is glad that they’re a seiyuu?’ but they changed it to ‘Who has pride in being a seiyuu?’ T_T And of course all six said yes. And that was the end of the game, with Team Tamori winning. Nakai then asked the seiyuu if any of them had ever thought of quitting the business, and Furukawa answered that ‘There have been tough times, like when I have roles that require a lot of shouting and I end up losing my voice!’ Like in Dragon Ball, heh.

It was a pretty fun show, and everyone should go check it out. If only to hear all that Furuya-as-Amuro goodness.

Watch the full video:
Part 1
Part 2

Posted on April 8th, 2008 under seiyuu • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback