Winter Hiatus

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

This blog will be on hiatus until the week of January 12th. I'll return with a report on Anime Los Angeles 2014. See you then!

Seiyuu Appreciation Day - The Gentle Men - Hiroyuki Yoshino, Akira Ishida and Nobuo Tobita

Some of my favorite seiyuu are the ones who have gentle voices. Even when they play non-gentle roles their voices are so appealing that I just enjoy listening to them.

One of them is Hiroyuki Yoshino.

He played Firo Prochainezo in Baccano!

And Takumi Nishijou in Chaos;Head.

He was the teenaged Heisuke Todo in Hakuouki...

And my favorite role of his – Allelujah (and Hallelujah) Haptism in Gundam 00.

Recently he was Yajiro, the second son, in Eccentric Family. In flashbacks he looked like this...

... But for most of the series, he was in this shapeshifted form:

In one scene, younger brother Yasaburo brings him a fried chicken leg for Christmas. So you basically see a tanuki shapeshifted from a human form into a frog form, eating a piece of chicken. XD

He was also Hibiki Tokai in Vandread, one of the first anime series I ever watched. More on Vandread next month.

Hiroyuki Yoshino’s voice is so gentle that he's been typecasted as young characters like Hibiki Tokai or Heisuke Todo, but his range is greater than that. I always look forward to hearing him in new roles. And speaking of which...

... He’s playing Meow, a cat alien, in the upcoming much anticipated Space Dandy. XD So we’ll all be watching him in January.

Here’s his character song from Gundam 00:



Akira Ishida has been around for a long time now. One of his first notable roles was Kaworu Nagisa in Evangelion:

But I first noticed him as Hakkai in Saiyuki.

I loved Hakkai – he was one of my first anime crushes. =D

More recently, he’s been the hysterically dense Imperialist rebel Kotaro Katsura in Gintama...

... And an old role that he was unforgettable in:

I keep meaning to rewatch Gundam Seed to hear Ishida as Athrun Zala and Souichiro Hoshi as Kira Yamato again.

Finally, one of Ishida’s most memorable roles, one he continues to play these days in the current arc of Naruto Shippuuden:

Gaara is probably the role most young fans know Ishida from.

I once heard someone describe Akira Ishida as having “the most soothing voice on the planet.” His voice has a unique timbre that I can usually recognize quickly. Ishida was one of my first seiyuu crushes and I still enjoy him, though he doesn’t seem to be doing as many anime roles now as he used to.

Here’s a fun video – You Tube keeps taking this down and people keep uploading it again. XD It’s Akira Ishida doing seven different voices. The first voice is a young man returning home and retrieving a message from his answering machine. The message is from six of his family members, including his grandmother and little sister. Ishida does all the voices. =D



Nobuo Tobita is one of my absolute favorite seiyuus. He’s older and usually plays supporting roles. I first noticed him as Sannan in Hakuouki.

Not only was Sannan a beautiful character design (they’re all beautiful character designs in Hakuouki), but Tobita’s exquisite soft voice captivated me immediately.

I went to look up what else he’d been in, and found his biggest role in anime was a long time ago – almost thirty years ago.

Nobuo Tobita was Kamille Bidan in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. I watched Zeta Gundam after I watched the original Mobile Suit Gundam. I think it’s one of the few Gundam series that never got an English dub, so if you’ve seen it you’ve heard Tobita in the role. Kamille is a typical hot-headed young shonen protagonist and Tobita did a great job, but for some reason he didn’t do many roles like that again.

He has two continuing roles in Naruto. The first you’ll recognize easily.

He’s Zetsu, the Akatsuki member with his head in a Venus fly trap. And he also plays Ebisu, Konohamaru’s pervy sensei.

Nobuo Tobita’s voice is gentle, but also cool and reserved and somewhat... mysterious. He sounds pleasant but also like he's probably hiding something. He was perfect as Sannan in Hakuouki, the scholar-samurai who secretly researches the rasetsu vampires, only to choose to become one himself in order to heal his injured arm.

Here’s an AMV of some of Tobita’s anime roles, with Tobita singing “Kohakuiro no Gogo” from Angelique:



Another lovely song he sings is "Gekkou Yoku," also from Angelique.

Like many seiyuu, Tobita narrates documentaries and does other voice work besides anime and video games. I suppose it’s never too late and he still might, but I wish he'd had more starring roles in anime through the years. His is a voice that I love listening to, could listen to forever.

Rurouni Kenshin Now Available at Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll is on a roll. In the past few months the streaming site has started its own licensed manga service, began streaming One Piece and Toriko and now it's acquired the classic Rurouni Kenshin series in both sub and dub versions.

Rurouni Kenshin is one of those anime series that's been on my want-to-watch list forever. I've read the first few volumes of the manga and also own the live-action movie.

And then there's the prequel, Rurouni Kenshin - Trust and Betrayal.

If you haven't seen it, Trust and Betrayal is beautiful and well worth your time as an anime fan. It's on my personal Top Ten anime list of all time.

I watched the first subbed episode of the series on Crunchyroll today and though I enjoyed it, I'd forgotten one thing - Kenshin is voiced by a female seiyuu. I'd noticed this when I watched Trust and Betrayal but it didn't stand out as odd or take me out of the story there.

But watching the first episode of the series today, wow. Mayo Suzukaze was a member of the famous Takurazuka all-female theatre troupe before she began voicing Kenshin, meaning she'd done male roles as a theatre actor - but her voice as Kenshin is really noticeably a woman's voice. A woman's voice can work for boy-age boy roles like Naruto and Edward Elric but Kenshin Himura is 28 years old. It's a little trippy, but I'll keep an open mind and maybe I'll get more used to it as I continue to watch the series. =D

A First Look at Crunchyroll's Manga Service

I've now tried Crunchyroll's new manga service and it works. Not very elegantly or with a lot of bells and whistles - but it works. Here's a quick first look at the service.

There are only 12 manga series available for reading to start with:

Attack on Titan
A Town Where You Live
As the Gods Will (Second Series)
Coppelion
Fairy Tail
Fort of Apocalypse
Mysterious Girlfriend X
My Wife Is Wagatsuma-san
Space Brothers
The Seven Deadly Sins
U Q Holder!
Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

All of the series are also "simulpubs," Crunchyroll's term for putting each new chapter up as soon as it's "subbed," like with their anime simulcasts.

Here's what the manga looks like. This is a two-page spread from Space Brothers:

I cut off the top part of the screenshot to get in the control panel at the bottom. As you can see, there's a chapter menu on the left and the usual zoom/size controls on the right.

You go from page to page using arrows that appear when you move your cursor over the side of the page. The manga is presented Japanese-style, i.e., reading from right to left (so the commands "Prev" and "Next" took a bit of experimenting with - it's not exactly intuitive, lol).

A few issues to be aware of. First, as to manga volumes that are licensed and published for sale in the U.S., those volumes are not available to read at Crunchyroll. For example, for Attack on Titan, the latest chapters 46-52 are currently available for reading on the site, but manga volumes 1-11 are unavailable. The first 35 volumes of Fairy Tail are similarly unavailable.

But the first 12 volumes of Space Brothers are available, along with the latest chapters 220-223 as current "simulpub" reading. And the first 11 volumes of Coppelion's manga are available. (Again, that's if you have a paid manga subscription or all-access site membership. If you're a free member, you can read the latest chapters but not the prior manga volumes that are available to paid members.) So it's a toss-up as to whether the manga series you're interested in will have its prior manga volumes available for reading or not.

For me, I was disappointed to learn that Attack on Titan's prior volumes were unavailable for reading at the site. I've now read chapter 46, the oldest latest chapter that's up (they currently have up to chapter 52), and there's obviously a gap between where chapter 46 begins and where the anime series left off. I won't give any spoilers, but let's just say that Eren's in the middle of a situation that he wasn't in at the end of the anime. ;-) So if I wanted to bridge the end of the anime series to the beginning of chapter 46, I'd have to purchase that manga volume or volumes in print.

I guess if you were buying the print manga up to now, you'd be fine. Now you could just switch over to reading it digitally on Crunchyroll, so long as you weren't interested in collecting all the print volumes.

Another issue - for some people anyway - is that the viewer is very plain and bargain-basement in feel. If you're expecting a super-smooth, high-tech experience reading manga on Crunchyroll, you're going to have to wait until somebody at the site adds those kinds of features. The text in the dialogue bubbles is readable and the pages turn as you click each arrow, but it's a pretty utilitarian experience.

The other obvious drawback is that they only have 12 manga series up so far. It's a very limited universe at this point. But no one thinks they're going to stop with this number. From here, it can only grow (and it had better grow - 12 series are obviously not enough to tempt the kind of audience they'll need to join to make this financially viable).

So bottom line, it works. The reading experience is okay. The number of series is currently too small. But that will change.

Is is enough for those who want to support the industry by supporting legal manga? It's up to each fan - but it's enough for me.

News Roundup - Madoka Magica 3 Premiere, Space Dandy Preview and Late Fall Doldrums

Some anime industry news... The third Madoka Magica movie premiered in Hollywood last week. ANN had full coverage of the event:

Madoka Magica 3 Premiere Event

And the anticipation for Shinichiro Watanabe's Space Dandy is building. The series starts in January and will be simulcast on Toonami. I hope this doesn't mean Crunchyroll won't get it as well. But since Attack on Titan was streamed by numerous legal sites when it aired, I have a feeling Space Dandy as the next big anticipated hit series will get the same treatment. So it will probably stream on a number of sites in addition to airing on Toonami.

Here's a preview of the series:



Looks good. =D

I have to say I'm experiencing a bit of a slump as an anime fan. This fall season, though I've watched some enjoyable episodes here and there, there haven't been any new series that really excite me. The best series I'm watching are continuing on from last season - Kuroko's Basketball S2 and Valvrave the Liberator S2, along with Naruto Shippuuden as always.

I guess I was spoiled by watching so many great series this past year like The Unlimited, Eccentric Family, Polar Bear's Cafe and of course Attack on Titan, that the fall series seem lackluster by comparison. I got a late start on watching the new shows, and because none of them have set me on fire I'm still lagging in my watching.

But it hasn't been all bad, or just average. Kill la Kill had a great episode that is a standalone gem.

Mako tells Ryuuko that the completely fascist and insane school they attend sets up a killer obstacle course one day each year in an attempt to stop students from getting to class on time. If you're late, you're expelled.

As is typical of the series, the visuals of the nightmarish obstacles are unbelievably over-the-top... and wildly funny and just jaw-dropping to watch. And the last moment of the episode is perfection. =D

Even if Kill la Kill doesn't appeal to you at all - and it barely appeals to me - episode 4 is a classic and a must-see.

Supporting the Industry - What I Did in November 2013

Lots to report this month, starting with Crunchyroll's Black Friday special.

As anticipated, Crunchyroll offered its annual All-Access Premium Pass for $69.99 on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I bought it. I'll now have full access to all of their anime (including simulcasts), manga and live-action drama series. The special also included a $15 credit in Crunchyroll's merchandise store.

My monthly charge turns over each month on the 11th, so Dec. 11 is when my annual all-access membership will begin. I'll post on what reading manga at Crunchyroll is like here on the blog.

But I won't just be reading manga on Crunchyroll, or on my computer for that matter. Because I also bought...

If you're confounded by my blurry picture, it's a Nook HD 16 GB tablet.

Here's Barnes & Noble's picture (much better):

I've been talking about getting a tablet for a long time, weighing buying an iPad against a less expensive tablet. But the Nook tablets were being sold at a fire sale price on Black Friday, so I decided I could at least start out by buying a Nook tablet and still purchase an iPad later if I really wanted to.

I first bought the 8 GB version for $79 early on Friday morning. After thinking it over for a few hours, I returned to the store and exchanged it for a 16 GB version which was only $20 more. Imagine, $99 for a high-definition 16 gig tablet. I've yet to set it up, but when I do the Crunchyroll apps will be the first I'll download - probably followed by the Viz app, Funimation app, Digital Manga's emanga app, etc. ;-) So my anime viewing and manga reading will now be mobile as well as at home.

I pre-ordered the K series DVD box set for $29 from Right Stuf. K is one of my favorite anime series from the past few years, so this is a bargain.

And for ordering so early, I'm getting the following decals as an extra:

I bought two used volumes of X at Bookoff. I previously received four volumes of X in the Mysterious Box of 30 Anime DVDs I got from Crunchyroll a while back. Now after this purchase, I only need the remaining two volumes and I'll have a complete set of X. =D

Finally, I went to Bent-Con last month. The convention centered on American gay comics and media, but there were a few anime fan artists there and I bought some key chains. Here are Kise and Kuroko from Kuroko's Basketball:

And Eren and Levi from Attack on Titan:

I don't know why I bought the last one.

It's a scary thing when you start thinking the skinless human-eating Colossal Titan makes a cute key chain. ;-)