Daily Dose of Kawaii - Pikachu Overload

It's a Pikachu paradise!

If you're in Yokohama next month, watch for the Pikachus. They'll be everywhere!

Aftermarket Lover - New Release

My new m/m romance short story Aftermarket Lover has been released by Evernight Publishing.

For more information, click on the following link:

Aftermarket Lover - Evernight Publishing

Seiyuu Appreciation Day - Very Truly Yours

Sometimes an actor will be building a reputation and portfolio of work, gaining fans but not setting the world on fire - until that one role in which they hit it big.

Actors call these "breakout roles." It's the role they become known for.

I think of these as signature roles. It's like the perfect marriage of actor to role - when an actor plays a character that jibes perfectly with: a) their voice; and b) their talent as an interpreter of a character.

Ryota Kise in Kuroko's Basketball is Ryohei Kimura's (the names even have the same initials!) signature role. Before Kise, Kimura played the protagonist in Eden of the East, Kids on the Slope and last year's Valvrave the Liberator, and I literally never remembered him from one starring role to the next.

As Ryota Kise, Kimura is completely unforgettable. Kise is the charmer of the Generation of Miracles, the nicest and most accessible of the five GoM players. Drama queen and flamboyantly emotional one minute, dead serious the next, Kimura as Kise makes you laugh and roll your eyes and then suddenly realize how smart and perceptive he actually is. Ryota Kise is a complex character and Kimura makes him someone you can't take your eyes off of whenever he's on screen.

Kise attaches the end tag "-cchi" to the names of those he respects and changes moods by the second. Here (until Uncle You Tube eventually takes it down, of course) is a clip with Kise talking to Kuroko that shows the many moods of Ryota Kise:



Even Kimura's voice, which never stood out for me in any of his other roles, is highly distinctive as Kise. Kise has a verbal tic in that he frequently ends his sentences with a lispy "-ssu." And in the role of Kise, Kimura seems freed to use every bit of his voice to give us a character that goes all over the place with his thoughts and feelings from moment to moment.

For me anyway, Ryota Kise is Ryohei Kimura's signature role. It's a role that uses everything he has, the full range of his voice and his acting talents, to the extent that you couldn't possibly imagine any other seiyuu playing him.

I've recognized a signature role for another seiyuu recently.

In K - Missing Kings, the Red King appears in a dream sequence. Both times I saw the film I thought the theater's roof would cave in when the fans saw the Red King, there was so much screaming and cheering.

Kenjirou Tsuda labored for years playing Inui in the never-ending Prince of Tennis series, but it's Mikoto Suoh, the badass Red King in K that's clearly his breakout role. His deep voice and deadly delivery made the character unforgettable.

A marker of the signature role is that after that role, the seiyuu starts getting cast in more important parts. I read a few weeks ago that Tsuda will be starring with Junichi Suwabe in an upcoming series. Tsuda has always played supporting roles up to now, so I see the influence of his Red King performance all over this news. ;-)

And finally, the most obvious example of a signature role in recent years:

Jun Fukuyama played side characters like Yumichika in Bleach before hitting it big with his Lelouch role in Code Geass. Fukuyama made an indelible impression as Lelouch and you couldn't imagine anyone else playing that role.

And for the next few years after Code Geass, Fukuyama was everywhere. He was in every anime series. You couldn't watch anime and not hear him.

Only recently has that slowed down. I guess even voice actors can get overexposed. =D

North American Theatrical Premiere of K - Missing Kings

The North American theatrical premiere of K - Missing Kings took place on July 18, at the Downtown Independent theater in Los Angeles.

The special guests were Masukazu Morita, the seiyuu who plays Yukari Mishakuji, the villain in the film, and Go Nakanishi, one of the principals in GORA, the producers of K.

At the door, they handed each ticketholder a kind of program that was also two posters:

The inside of the program was a character guide.

And they also gave out Japanese-style K tissue packs and a postcard.

There were a few cosplayers in the crowd, notably of Rikio Kamamoto, the hefty Red clan character who slims down to the point where Kuroh in the movie doesn't recognize him at first. ;-) There's a Rikio in his white jumpsuit in the middle-left of the photo.

The event staff sold some K merchandise.

My favorite item was the Ichigen Miwa doll that Kuroh has attached to his phone.

And I wasn't sure what this was (a cloth banner? a slipcase for a body pillow?), but it was of Saruhiko Fushimi.

The K movie preview played repeatedly on a three-screen display in the lobby.

I love seeing a "Now Playing" poster for an anime movie. We need to see this every weekend in theaters across America. =D

Masukazu Morita and Go Nakanishi were introduced before the movie.

Before they officially announced that no photos were to be taken, I went as close to the stage as I could and got this shot. That's Morita on the left in the vest and Nakanishi on the right.

I had already seen the movie at Anime Expo two weeks before. If you're a fan of K, you'll love it. It has all the elements you enjoyed in the series: beautiful visuals and character designs, great music and action scenes, moving moments, and unexpected dry humor, especially from Reisi Munakata, the Blue King.

A Q&A session was held afterward. The first thing the audience found out was that Morita had flown in to be at the premiere for a single day, and that he was flying back to Japan that night after the event. He was taken to Santa Monica for three hours earlier in the day, and that apparently was the extent of his L.A. tour this time. ;-)

Nakanishi piped up, saying he was staying an extra day - a whole two days. One can only imagine the jet lag these two men are feeling right now. Morita probably woke up today having no idea which country he was in.

Morita said he hadn't watched the K series before he got the role of Yukari, but he knew it was popular. He'd been on other anime series with all the seiyuu he worked with in K - Missing Kings, so he was comfortable working with the cast.

As at his AX appearance, Morita mentioned that he deliberately played Yukari to sound feminine. I can attest to the fact that you won't hear any Ichigo from Bleach in his portrayal whatsoever. ;-)

Morita was genial and upbeat, as was producer Nakanishi, who wore a pink sports coat and sat through the Q&A with a huge grin on his face the whole time. The theater, while not huge, was nearly sold out, and the audience was super enthusiastic.

In fact, Morita had a question for the audience. He wondered if American audiences always made this much noise, as when dramatic moments happened in the movie and everyone cheered and screamed things at the screen. He said that when a certain event happened in the movie, the Japanese audience was silent, as if taking in the information of the event, while everyone that night at the Downtown Independent went wild. Of course, the audience members shouted out that American fans are always like this. =D

Nakanishi, who had worked on anime series like Mardock Scramble and Love Hina before doing K, said he'd wanted to do "something different" - and so he and the rest of the team that comprises GORA thought up the K universe.

He said that K was a surprise hit outside Japan, particularly in America and Europe. I remembered then that Kenji Tsuda and Yui Horie, the seiyuu for the Red King and Anna, had been guests of honor at Japan Expo in Paris two weeks before at the European premiere of the movie.

I love K, but I'd assumed it was one of those niche animes - as in most fans didn't see it, some did, and a small set were devotees. But it seems the allure of K was and is more widespread than that. I had wondered about the release of the K movie across America. Most times, it's the latest Naruto or Bleach movie that gets that kind of treatment, not a smaller anime like K. I'm glad that K is more popular than I thought, and I hope that the producers' expectations for ticket sales are being met this weekend in its three-day run.

I was determined to get through this post without any spoilers, and I will - but I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that the end of the movie leaves it wide open for at least one or two sequels. The Q&A session got cut off by the next screening, meaning no one got to ask Nakanishi when the next movie would come out. I will certainly be keeping my eye out for any announcements on that.

It was great to be at an anime movie premiere in a theater with special guests and one's fellow anime fans, as anime watching is usually a solitary activity. And next month, there's a new Naruto movie coming out in theaters. Eleven Arts, the event producers, handed out flyers for Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie. It's having a limited theatrical release in August. For more information, visit the Eleven Arts website.

Summer 2014 Watchlist

I wasn't expecting to have so many good choices for my summer 2014 anime viewing, but amazingly there are ten new series I'm going to try out.

I'll begin with the obvious (for me) choices:

Bakumatsu Rock has bishonen samurai in the Shinsengumi trying to keep the shogun in power and Ryoma Sakamoto singing rock music to liberate Japan. You can't get any closer to my interests than that. ;-)

The same for Shonen Hollywood. This time it's bishonen in Harajuku!

I'm continuing my exploration of magical girl stories after good experiences with Zettai Karen Children and Puella Magi Madoka Magica, with Sailor Moon Crystal.

I have a policy of watching any anime that focuses on the manga industry in Japan. Monthly Girls Nowaki-kun features a teenage mangaka and the girl who crushes on him. I watched the first episode today and it's pretty cute.

Terror in Resonance is the serious anime of choice this summer. Shinichiro Watanabe's latest takes place after a terrorist attack in Tokyo and features music by Yoko Kanno.

Space Dandy S2 is here. I'll be watching it again. =D

As well as the second season of those creepy short-short stories, Yamishibai.

The maybes - if I have the time and inclination - are the following.

Argevollen has a Valvrave/Code Geass look to it.

And a schoolboy travels back in time to become a stand-in for the sickly young Nobunaga Oda in Nobunaga Concerto.

Finally, the one that surprised me as a late addition to Crunchyroll's line-up. I'd read at ANN that Love Stage!! was boy's love.

Well... Naturally I'm going to at least take a look. ;-)

Little blond-haired Izumi Sena starred in a TV commercial ten years ago when he was a child. He filled in to play a little girl when the girl actress couldn't make it in time for the shoot.

The little boy who was in the commercial with him is now a major actor. Ryoma Ichijou has always secretly carried a torch for the cute little girl who was in that commercial with him, so when the producers decide to do another commercial featuring the two kids now all grown up, Izumi is roped into putting on a dress again. The thing is - Ryoma still doesn't know he's a guy. ;-D

I watched the first episode today. The character designs are just okay and the plot hasn't really developed yet, but it's funny and - well - it's BL. That is way enough for this fujoshi. Count me in!

Anime Expo 2014 Report

Anime Expo 2014 was held at the L.A. Convention Center from July 3-6.

I had an industry registration pass again this year, though aside from the fact that it was free, it didn't mean very much to be industry at this year's convention. More on that later, though. I did attend an industry party the first night of AX:

I enjoyed meeting and talking with Michelle and Paige, who are starting a new convention in the Antelope Valley just north of Los Angeles. Here's Paige, the chairwoman of the convention.

The convention is called Fandomverse Expo, and they also have a Facebook page if you want to check them out.

There were a few new vendors in the Exhibit Hall this year. Hulu was there:

And so was the NHK:

And Viz was there, of course, along with all of the other anime vendors you see each year.

I took very few cosplay photos this year. With everything that happened at AX, the crowds and confusion, I just didn't feel in the mood...

The Homestuck crowd found a back staircase to gather at, which somehow seemed appropriate ;-)

I only noticed there was a Space Dandy panel when I looked at the schedule on Day 2, so I had to hurry to get there. It featured producer Masahiko Minami and seiyuu Uki Satake who plays QT, the vacuum cleaner robot. No photography was allowed, so the above picture was the only one I was able to take.

Satake said that QT is her first voice acting role, as she comes from the music industry. She talked about how her fellow cast mates, veteran seiyuu Junichi Suwabe and Hiroyuki Yoshino, have helped her in the recording sessions, and how she's met other famous seiyuu as guest actors in the show that she normally never would have met or had access to.

Some fans dancing:

I think one of the guys in the back row could've used a little help. =D

Among other things that went wrong at AX this year, the program schedule was a disaster. Many panels were switched to other rooms without notice, and started late because of line confusion and misdirection from AX volunteer staff.

What this meant in real terms was that one was always arriving late to panels, missing the first ten minutes or so due to slogging one's way through the crowded hallways to try to get to where some volunteer told you he "thought" the new location was.

For example, Eiji Otsuka, a manga professor from Japan, had a two-part workshop on manga that had one session on Friday and another on Saturday. But the panel - like many other listings in the program schedule - had no description and no information on when and where the second session would take place.

Another example of this was a series of panels entitled "Japanese Visual Culture." I managed to attend the last half of one session that was pretty interesting. The panelists focused on doujinshi and the concept of the female gaze, and use of gendered language in Japanese. Unfortunately the program schedule listed no information on the panel, or even that it was part of a series that continued on into the next day.

The Press/Industry Lounge was located on the top floor of the convention center, giving one a bird's-eye perspective on the dining area below:

The South Hall lobby area:

And the Exhibit Hall on the other side:

In the massive gaming hall, there were a few new additions. Some sewing machine vendors set up shop at the back of the hall:

At the front of the hall, there was a new exhibit. A number of background sets were staged so people could photograph cosplayers in various anime-type settings like a park with blooming cherry trees, a classroom, a girl's pink bedroom, etc.

My favorite was the "school rooftop" set. How many animes have we seen where the characters hang out on the school roof? =D

The Drawing Wall was back this year, though you had to hunt for it. They tucked it away as part of the extremely small Art Show exhibit in one corner of the gaming hall:

The gaming hall is too big to be able to photograph effectively, but here's a shot:

Someone really needed to resupply these vending machines. ;-)

Everywhere you looked at the convention, there were random lines.

You'd be walking from here to there and find a line snaking around the building, usually with a red-vested volunteer screaming something incomprehensible at the line every few seconds.

The big event I was looking forward to the most was the K - Missing Kings movie premiere on Saturday.

I waited on a bench in the hallway in front of Petree Hall, one of the largest halls at the convention center, starting an hour before seating began. As with most panels I attended this year, there wasn't any industry early seating, so I had to decide whether to stand in the hot sun outside with the regular line, or take my chances that Petree Hall wouldn't fill up and just join the line at the end.

The line for K - Missing Kings was like a capsule example of the problems at AX convention-wide this year. Disorganization of the lines, volunteers repeatedly screaming instructions at the line and roping off areas for no apparent reason (causing traffic jams in the hallways), people feeling faint after waiting in the hot sun with no water for long periods, and so on. At one point a volunteer yelled that Petree Hall had reached maximum capacity and the line would now be "capped."

From past experience I knew that Petree Hall seats around 2,000 people and so I continued to wait. Sure enough, when I joined the tail end of the line and entered the hall, this is what I saw from my seat, first looking behind me to my left:

And then behind me to my right:

And finally in front of me, on the far right side of the back part of the hall:

I have no doubt that some people left early, thinking they couldn't get in because some volunteer had yelled that the line was "capped." When in actual fact, there were several hundred empty seats left.

It's almost an afterthought to all this, but - the movie was great. If you're a K fan, you'll love K - Missing Kings. It's hard to discuss further without giving away spoilers, so I won't, but if you're a K fan - just see it. =D

This year, Anime Expo simply had too much go wrong, and unfortunately most of what went wrong were the things that have gone wrong in previous years. Poor line management, too many untrained volunteers, and this year, really terrible schedule mismanagement.

I waited in line for 3-1/2 hours on Wednesday to pick up my industry badge. One half-hour of that waiting was completely unnecessary as a volunteer misdirected me into a line where people were applying for industry badges on-site (I was pre-approved and should have been in the faster-moving line that was right next to it).

Here's another example. I went into the "Info Desk" room (so-named) on Saturday afternoon to ask if there would be early seating for industry at the K premiere. This was my conversation with someone who had an "AX Staff" shirt on:

Me: Excuse me. Do you know if there will be early seating for industry for the K premiere?
AX Staff Person: Uh... the K premiere?
Me: Yes. (I point out the K premiere entry in the program schedule in front of him.)
AX Staff Person: Oh... Do you have a badge?
Me: Do I have a badge? (Why is he asking this?) (I show him my industry badge.)
AX Staff Person: Oh... Okay. What are you asking again?
Me: I'm asking if industry people can be seated early at the K movie premiere this afternoon.
AX Staff Person: Oh... I don't know. You could ask a volunteer when you get there, they're wearing red vests.

The worst part about this is that before I left the "Info Desk," I saw two AX staffers standing behind this AX staffer look at each other and smirk as if to say, Wow, he's lame. He's not helping her at all. Funny!

... instead of maybe trying to help me with my question?

When the cynicism even among staff members gets to the level where they're rolling their eyes behind each other's backs, it's beyond hope. It's chaos.

I could go on, but you get my point. AX was beyond the pale disorganized this year and I don't see any reaction from AX management to the waves of criticism they've received in the past few days that reassures me they'll make the necessary changes to next year's convention to make it a better experience.

It didn't used to be this way. When AX first moved to the LACC, the venue worked well for the convention and it was a decently organized and efficient convention in that venue for a few years. But in the past three years, the increase in number of attendees hasn't been matched by an increase in efficiency in handling the crowds, to the point where now some events have actually become dangerous like the stampede that occurred in the Kill la Kill seiyuu autograph line.

It's too bad, because there were good moments this year too, like when these musicians showed up from out of the blue to play Naruto theme songs late at night outside. =D The new cosplay stage sets were a brilliant idea. They changed the set-up of some of the video rooms so that the access point was at the back of the room instead of at the side, so the viewing experience wasn't disrupted. I heard the Kill la Kill special-ticket event was a great success. And there were other events that went smoothly.

There are still things that AX gets right, but they were overwhelmed by too much going wrong this year. On a simple cost-benefit analysis, even with a free industry pass, it feels like a tipping point has been reached for me personally. I stopped going to Comic Con in 2009 because the crowds were too much and I just wasn't enjoying it anymore. AX feels that way to me now.

To be honest, unless AX institutes changes to ensure a safer and better experience for all attendees, I don't see myself attending again.