Winter Break 2014-2015

This blog will be on winter break until the week of January 4th, 2015.

Happy holidays to everyone and see you then!

Seiyuu Appreciation Day - The Dream of Being a Seiyuu

As 2014 draws to a close, I've been thinking about why I'm still so fascinated with Japanese voice actors.

I've been an anime fan going on ten years now. When I think back, I probably started getting into seiyuu with my very first - and still my number one favorite - anime series, Mirage of Blaze. It wasn't just the BL subtheme (astonishing enough to me in an animation series - little did I know then just how many BL/yaoi-themed series there are out there), but Hayami Sho as Naoe and Toshihiko Seki as Takaya that captured my imagination.

In 2005 I hadn't started studying Japanese yet and every word they uttered was completely foreign to me. But I stared at the English subtitles as I listened to their wonderful voices and a new appreciation came alive in me, an appreciation of actors who didn't even speak my language.

Through the years I came to enjoy so many seiyuu and their performances that I started blogging about them. I noticed that someone who frequently commented on seiyuu in the ANN forums wrote a blog about seiyuu, so I interviewed her. My interview with Mew on seiyuu fandom has been one of the most read posts ever on this blog.

It's been years and I'm still half in love with many Japanese voice actors, intrigued by their careers and what it must be like to be a successful seiyuu. As one can read in my interview with Mew, it's not always sweetness and light. After a false rumor went around about Daisuke Ono getting married, one fan felt "betrayed" enough that she broke her collection of his CDs. I think I read on ANN when Mamoru Miyano got married that his new wife received hate mail from his fans.

And when I watch You Tube videos of seiyuu events I'm struck by how the crowd reacts to each seiyuu depending on his/her popularity. It must be painful to be a not-as-popular seiyuu in a production and then have to come out on stage after a Hiroshi Kamiya or a Jun Fukuyama gets introduced to huge cheers from the crowd.

In Shirobako, which is about four college friends who go on to work in various positions in Tokyo's anime industry, red-haired Shizuka Sakaki is a waitress and budding seiyuu. (I had to look up her name at MyAnimeList. In fact, the cast of Shirobako is so huge that I really don't remember any of the characters' names from week to week.)

Shizuka goes on her first audition and is crushed when she doesn't get the part. She is then hired to do "walla," or make crowd sounds in a studio with other actors. She tries to stand out by yelling aggressively (they're playing fans at a sporting event), only to get shot down by the director.

There are a lot of voice acting schools in Tokyo and a great many people who want to be seiyuu. The road ahead for all of them is uncertain. But for the ones who make it big, I can't imagine any other career in Japan that would be more fun as a creative person.

Well... Except being a BL/yaoi author. But that's a subject for another post. ;-)

News Roundup - The Unlimited, Kuroko's Basketball and a Crunchyroll Controversy

It's nearly all great news right now for anime. The four-episode OVA series of Shungiku Nakamura's Hybrid Child continues to be released episode by episode, with the third episode set to be released on December 24.



The final episode is due for release on January 28, 2015.

And I just read some thrilling news today at ANN:

I never thought it would happen - since it's the sequel to Zettai Karen Children which has been out of print/production in the U.S. for years - but my favorite series from 2013, The Unlimited - Hyobu Kyosuke, is being released on DVD by Sentai Filmworks!

The Unlimited is the spinoff that took the villain Kyosuke Hyobu from Zettai Karen Children and continued the ZKC story past where the anime ended (though apparently skipping the manga chapters that should have made for ZKC's next anime season). Sentai has my money for this as soon as it's available for sale. Sometimes the series you don't think will ever be licensed in the U.S. - somehow do get licensed. =D

According to a Charapedia poll, Kuroko's Basketball's upcoming third season is the most anticipated anime of the 2015 winter season. I'm in full agreement with this, of course. XD The first two seasons are at Crunchyroll, so I'm assuming Crunchyroll will acquire the streaming rights to the third season too.

And speaking of Crunchyroll... Recently there was a controversy at the site. In the past few years, Crunchyroll ran what they called their "Black Friday" special on the day after Thanksgiving. You could get an All-Access Membership at Crunchyroll for one year at a discounted price (I think last year it was $69.95).

The All-Access Membership includes access to all simulcast episodes and old cataloged episodes of all the anime series at the site, as well as to the latest translated chapters of popular manga series like Attack on Titan and simulcasts of Japanese and Korean drama series. I purchased the Black Friday special last year and I think the year before that as well.

This year, Crunchyroll announced a day or two before Thanksgiving that the Black Friday special wouldn't be offered again. A huge howl of outrage that went on for pages and pages and pages erupted in the comments section for the announcement (the announcement and all the comments have since been taken down). Basically, fans were incensed that the special wasn't being offered again as they'd come to expect it, and many had their annual memberships due for renewal at that time since they'd always renewed by buying the special. In other words, they felt left high and dry with their memberships expiring and the All-Access Membership only being offered at the regular price of $99.95 instead of the lower price of $69.95 they were expecting.

A lot of anime fans, after all, are young people - teenagers and people in their 20s with not a lot of disposable income, and many had saved for the Black Friday special. At the very least, Crunchyroll failed in not letting people know sooner that the Black Friday special wouldn't be offered again this year. If they'd announced it in early November and given people time to get used to the idea, they wouldn't have gotten half the flak that they did.

My own All-Access subscription was set to expire in early December, so I was faced with the same issue as everyone else. I thought about how I'd barely read any of the manga and hardly watched any of the drama series, and decided just to renew the anime subscription. This subscription gives me access to all anime simulcasts (for example, the latest Naruto Shippuuden episodes one hour after they air in Japan), the entire anime catalog and limited access to certain manga and drama series on the site.

If you've been reading this blog, you know I'm a loyal supporter of Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll is the reason I can watch anime guilt-free, knowing I'm watching licensed anime and helping to support the creators in Japan. The site gets practically every anime series I want to watch each season. They've already announced that they acquired the rights to stream Durarara's second season starting in January. And I have no doubt they'll get Kuroko's Basketball's third season as well.

So yeah, Crunchyroll screwed up on the Black Friday thing. I'm sure they lost money from people getting disgusted and cancelling/not renewing their memberships. They lost $40 from me alone, since I chose not to renew at the full All-Access price ($99.95), opting instead to just renew the anime subscription ($59.95).

Hopefully they'll learn something from this. The fans have been loyal to Crunchyroll and were disappointed when they felt their loyalty wasn't reciprocated. Fans can put up with a lot, but they should never be taken for granted.

Daily Dose of Kawaii - Kuroko's Basketball AMV

This is one of those AMVs from NicoNico with adorable fan art. Enjoy (until You Tube takes it down) "Mukashi Mukashi no Kyou no Boku."

The Legacy of Love - Sailor Moon Crystal

I've been very pleasantly surprised by Sailor Moon Crystal, an anime series I began watching out of curiosity and almost a sense of duty (it's a remake of a classic, after all).

Warning - Spoilers to Episode 10

The old Sailor Moon anime series - based on the manga of the same name - aired in Japan twenty years ago.

Blonde Usagi Tsukino is a klutzy and cheerful teenage girl who makes friends easily. Through a series of events, four other girls come to gather around Usagi and the five form a group of "Sailor Guardians," girls with magical powers.

Appearing every now and then at the fringes of Usagi's everyday life is a mysterious figure, a handsome boy Usagi calls "Tuxedo Mask."

Usagi and her Sailor Guardians keep getting attacked by four young men who have their own magical powers. It takes a number of episodes to get to the back story of Sailor Moon Crystal, but when one finally learns the story, it's a moving one.

It turns out Usagi and Tuxedo Mask knew each other in their past lives.

Once upon a time, the moon was inhabited by a kingdom called Silver Millennium that was ruled by Queen Serenity.

Usagi was the Queen's daughter Princess Serenity and the four girls who are her Sailor Guardians in her present life filled the same role in their former lives, guarding and watching over the young princess.

Princess Serenity often visited earth, and fell in love with Prince Endymion, who we now know as Tuxedo Mask. When an evil entity attacked the earth, Endymion died while defending Serenity. Serenity then took her own life.

Queen Serenity managed to seal Queen Metalia, the evil entity, but Silver Millennium was lost in the process. As the present-day story begins, Queen Metalia is breaking the seal, and through her lieutenant Queen Beryl and those four young men with magical powers is poised to threaten earth once more.

The four young men have their own past lives, however.

Yes, indeed - you have seen Tuxedo Mask somewhere before. The four were formerly the knights who defended Prince Endymion and the kingdom of earth. And what's more - they were in love with Serenity's four Sailor Guardians.

What began as a light and fluffy story that seemed to be going somewhere - though one couldn't tell where and it certainly took a number of episodes to get there - has turned into a wonderful female-centric story that I'm thoroughly enjoying watching.

I confess I wasn't overly impressed by the Sailor Moon remake at first. I had no familiarity with the original story and was only mildly interested in the four Sailor Guardian girls who assembled around Usagi. And I found Usagi shrill and air-headed and not compelling at all. In addition, she seemed the least competent of all the girls and yet she was considered their leader, which made no sense to me.

The one small thing that I liked were the hints of romantic interest between Usagi and Tuxedo Mask. I never suspected that their romance was actually the root of the entire saga.

Watching the past two episodes in which this back story was finally revealed has really hooked me into the series. Sailor Moon Crystal is a girls' adventure story and romance of cosmic proportions, a tale where girls are the heroes and grown women are the villains and the dashing Tuxedo Mask is the gender-switched heroine in distress, the one who must be rescued from Queen Metalia and Queen Beryl.

The art design looks like a 1990s anime, but somehow updated to look, I don't know... smoother or brighter or something. It may be that it's a modern character design with '90s touches here and there. It's both nostalgic and pleasing to the eye.

The animation overall is beautiful. (As it should be - each episode is taking two weeks to produce and release.) Another standout is the music, which sounds like a Hollywood production, and includes choir vocals that heighten the sense of grandness. You feel you're watching something special, something epic, with that kind of musical support.

I've also rethought Usagi and conclude that my earlier reaction to her was misguided. Since she's the reincarnated Princess Serenity it's natural that she's the worst fighter of all of them. She was a princess, not a guardian like the other girls. And her personality is one of her strengths, not a weakness. As was explained in one episode, Usagi's greatest power is her love for others. That love brought the four guardians together and gives Usagi the courage to fight for Tuxedo Mask.

From what I've read, the four young men who were Endymion's knights weren't actually the Sailor Guardians' love interests in the manga and in fact were killed off early on in the story. It's great that they're being allowed to survive in Sailor Moon Crystal because they really add to the general air of romance in the series. Now the Sailor Guardians can have their own romances, too. ^^

I'm so glad I kept watching Sailor Moon Crystal. It took a while, but they have a new fan in me. Like Serenity and Endymion's love story that carried forward to Usagi and Tuxedo Mask, Sailor Moon Crystal is the legacy of the love that countless fans have had for Sailor Moon for decades, and that love shows in this production.

I've been hearing the ending song in my head lately, just as I go about my day. You Tube will take this down shortly I'm sure, so until then, enjoy "Gekkou" by Momoiro Clover Z.

Supporting the Industry - What I Did in November 2014

I feel especially good about the purchases I made in November, because I know the money I spent basically went straight to the creators.

Around this time each year I splurge a little and buy an official licensed anime calendar from Japan for the next year. They're about $25 - usually $30 counting tax, shipping and handling - and they're special in a number of ways.

For one thing, the dates are listed horizontally at the bottom of each calendar page. This makes it essentially useless as a real calendar, i.e., for looking at to see what day it is today, or what day of the week a certain date falls on, but great for its real use - as a source of ready-to-hang posters when each page is done. ;-)

Japanese anime wall calendars are really nothing more than original art posters featuring your favorite anime characters with a negligible calendar part at the bottom that you can cut off. Then you frame the poster (or just hang with tape or whatever).

Because they don't want to give you 12 posters when they can give you 6 and get away with it - each page covers two months (Jan./Feb., Mar./Apr., etc.).

Here's an example from the CD Japan site for the Hakuouki 2015 calendar. Note the small "calendar" part at the bottom of the page:

I double-splurged this November and bought two calendars from Japan, Gintama and Kuroko's Basketball.

The Gintama one (at the top of the post) looks especially interesting, with a kind of ukiyo-e or traditional Japanese aesthetic treatment of the characters. I can't wait to see it.

It cost a fair amount of money, but I will have 12 posters from two of my favorite anime series by the end of 2015. =D

Edited to add: I just noticed that this is my 400th post for this blog. That's a lot of posts... O_O