Seiyuus read Stories of the 12 Signs of the Zodiac

Twenty-four of Japan's top male and female voice actors will read stories of the twelve signs of the zodiac in a pair of new CDs.

DEARS 十二星座物語　Apollon Side and DEARS 十二星座物語　Artemis Side will both come out on January 19. It seems like a good opportunity to hear the voices and styles of some of these top seiyuu all together. Each seiyuu will read a story about the sign they were born under.

The Apollon Side CD features the following male voice actors: Suwabe Junichi (Aries), Toriumi Kousuke (Taurus), Sakurai Takahiro (Gemini), Suyama Akio (Cancer), Taniyama Kishou (Leo), Takahashi Hiroki (Virgo), Sugita Tomokazu (Libra), Ishida Akira (Scorpio), Fukuyama Jun (Sagittarius), Sakihara Tetsuya (Capricorn), Kamiya Hiroshi (Aquarius), Morikubo Shoutarou (Pisces).

The Artemis Side CD features these female seiyuus: Shintani Ryouko (Aries), Satou Rina (Taurus), Kugimiya Rie (Gemini), Saitou Momoko (Cancer), Nabatame Hitomi (Leo), Gotou Yuuko (Virgo), Hirano Aya (Libra), Chihara Minori (Scorpio), Itou Shizuka (Sagittarius), Tanaka Rie (Capricorn), Mizuki Nana (Aquarius), Tamura Yukari (Pisces).

The same company has previously brought out "Tanaka Rie's Hundred Poems," featuring the great RieRie reading the famous Japanese poetry collection "A Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets" 百人一首. The links at the bottom of this page are two samples of her reading poems. Don't miss them.
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Hirano Aya -- Idol Video "Love Letter" DVD

Hirano Aya's idol video Love Letter came out last week on DVD. From my highly biased point of view, I don't know how anyone could watch even a few minutes of it and not come away loving this woman. She comes across as a real and very attractive person, despite the fact that the video is a mixture of undramatic little dramas, interviews, and a probably staged seiyuu audition.




One thing is for sure: she knows how to make love to a camera. Not that there is anything even the least bit pornographic about this video. No bathing suits, not even any decolletage. But in several of the little segments, Aya acts the part of someone on a date with the viewer. She has no trouble at all speaking to and looking directly at the camera, with a limpid gaze that could melt stone.

Some of the best bits are those that give the appearance of not being scripted: they return several times to Aya talking to her manager in September, asking fruitlessly for three days off to rest. Those segments almost seem as if they were shot with a hidden camera, they are so natural.




Some segments show an audition for roles in a drama CD. Aya comes into the room and apologizes for being late. For each role, she is handed a folder with a picture and description of the character, and a short script to read. It is interesting to see her figure out the character in 30 seconds or so, switch on the recorder, then announce her name and agency and read the script in a new voice twice in a row, each time a little differently. Her takes on an irascible 35-year-old woman and then on a 96-year-old man are fascinating.

Her ease and confidence in the situation, and her girlish exuberance and demandingness are very strong. She balks a bit at being asked to try the roles of the middle-aged woman and the old man, but goes ahead. Then when she is given the role of a monster to do, she makes a little performance of refusing to do it and then walks out.




The Aya I see in the "real-life" segments of the DVD is the same Aya I see in her blog: intelligent, knowledgeable, professional -- but girlish, naturally humorous, and somehow naive at the same time. Maybe a bit of an ojou-sama, able to be demanding and selfish, and eager for opportunities to shop, such as at the Okinawa duty-free store. I guess this might put some people off, if they have unrealistic notions of what entertainers are like.

For me, the best part of the whole show is an interview on a hotel balcony in Okinawa (where the outdoor taping was done). Aya seems so real there, mature and straighforward. She talks about her career, how she was not originally a seiyuu and is so thankful to seiyuu work for letting her act out so many different people and situations, but how she wants to seize the opportunity to develop her singing and her idol work, which are where her career began. Once again, she expresses her eagerness to have her own live stage show. And she says she wants seiyuu roles that will help her find new voices in herself. And she wants to keep learning how to act.




The sexiest parts of the DVD are those episodes where she is like the viewer's companion, smiling at the camera in a come-hither way. Just wow. To the extent Love Letter has a plot, it is that Aya returns to her deceased grandmother's house and finds an old love letter she herself wrote to a boy when she was ten, but never delivered. She wonders what would have happened if she had delivered the letter, and what the boy is like now. She goes to look at the old school, then calls the boy. They meet, I think (although you never see him), and go out together around the town.

One can't help thinking this is like an audition for being in a TV drama, but I'm not sure if producers will take the bait. Aya is not called upon to perform a very wide range of emotions in the idol video parts of the DVD: pensive melancholy and girlish genki are about the extent of it. But in the apparently "real" segments that you get a sense of Aya's star quality, and maybe of her acting. The very end of the DVD is intriguing: Aya skips along the street and then comes right up to the camera and says: "Was it all fiction -- or not? Don't know."

As I watched the interviews and heard her very natural-seeming voice, I still thought she may not have a natural voice, but be acting all the time, like many entertainers. Even in the long interview on the balcony, she was playing with her voice at times.

Anyway, if you are an Aya fan, get this DVD. And meanwhile, you can see it in parts on YouTube. Here is part one. There is also a prologue. The region 2 DVD is available from Amazon Japan and from YesAsia, among other places, for US$30-35.

In other Aya news, the short version of the PV of her third single this fall, MonSTAR, is now on YouTube. The single will be released 5 December. Her second new single, Neophilia, ended its first week at #17. That was creditable, considering that it had no special publicity and the PV was not pre-released, but nothing like her October single, Love Gun, which ended its first week at #6. Personally, I thought Neophilia was excellent, her best and most interesting singing work so far.

But wait, there's more. Aya was interviewed on the NHK show Kaitai Shin Show yesterday and a video of part of the show is already on YouTube. She normally does narration for the show, which is a kind of quiz show that explains things about the human body. Aya was interviewed about which strange facts about the body she found most interesting.

Finally, it's only fair for me to congratulate Mizuki Nana on the smash success of her new album, Great Activity, which was #2 on the album charts for its first week, a great achievement for a seiyuu album. It's taking me a long time to learn to appreciate the talented Nana at her worth, but her success gives all seiyuus a good name. j1m0ne has a good feature on the album.
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Koshimizu Ami Joins Production Baobab Agency

Koshimizu Ami has abandoned her free-agent status and joined the big Production Baobab seiyuu agency. She follows her good friend Sanpei Yuuko into that fold. Here is her new profile page on the Baobab site. And here are two recent pics of Ami and one of Pe (Sanpei Yuuko) from their respective blogs.



Rumors are that Ami's personal manager "Naomi-chan" has gone along with her. Such a highly unusual move would show both Ami's star status and Baobab's flexibility.

Here is the 16 November announcement from Ami's blog: "I have decided to register with Production Baobab as of 15 November. Please support me in this change. This is the same agency as my beloved Sanpei-chan. Although we have decided to each follow our own work-paths, from now on with Baobab, Sanpei-chan and I will work together more closely as friends, lovers (lol), and rivals."

Sanpei joined Baobab on November 1, after a short period as a free agent. She left her first agency, Gekidan Wakakusa, in May. Baobab is apparently not as prominent an agency as it once was, but other seiyuu represented by it include such successful names as Fukuyama Jun, Yajima Akiko, Gotou Yuuko, Kawakami Tomoko, Matsuoka Yuki, and Kobayashi Sanae.

Both Ami and Pe have been getting lots of good roles no matter which agency, if any, they have been with. But perhaps Baobab will be able to get Ami some long-running, high-paying roles in kids' shows. I hope she can get more serious roles, too. Both Ami and Pe are among the best young seiyuu in the business.
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Shugo Chara ED #5 on Weekly Chart -- Buono! Interview

Honto no Jibun, the Shugo Chara ED by Buono! sits in fifth place on the chart for its first week, with sales of 29,000 CDs.

Buono! is made up of two members of Berryz Koubou and one of ℃-ute, but Honto no Jibun ended up outselling a ℃-ute song that was released the same week. (Click photos to enlarge.)



In an interview with the Mainichi Shinbun newspaper, Miyabi, Airi, and Momoko talked about the song, about Shugo Chara, and about their own careers. Here is a very loose translation of part of it:

Question: What are your impressions of the song, Honto no Jibun?

Miyabi (pink shirt) -- It has a good tempo, and boils with courage and energy. We felt happy while we were recording it and seemed to convey that to people listening.

Airi (white shirt) -- I read the manga and then when we got the lyrics, they really seemed to fit the heroine Amu-chan's feelings. There's nothing from the script in the lyrics, but they seemed to express Amu-chan's feelings. Especially where we sing "you idiot."

Momoko (red shirt) -- It's a really easy song to sing. My first thought was that we could sing it with little children. It can be a song to support someone in expressing their true self. In hoping others will be happier, you become happier yourself.



Q: Do you express your true selves?

Miyabi -- The heroine Amu is a cool character at school, but inside she is cute and insecure, and that gap worries her. I really understand her feelings. People think I'm a cool character, but I think I have a cute and insecure side. I want to show my more girlish side.

Airi -- I think it's good to have another side. But it's really hard to think of how to break your shell and let it out.

Momoko -- The song's message of putting yourself out there makes me want to express honestly what I feel. That "you idiot" part is something you wouldn't normally say, but it's followed by very gentle feelings. That change of feeling is like a different self.

Q: What are your feelings about the manga.

Miyabi -- I think the drawing is really cute. Especially the clothes Amu-chan wears. I was thinking while I read the manga that I wanted to wear them, too. Besides the clothing, there are the transformation scenes. The story is full of dreams.

Airi -- In the story there are little angel-like beings who are born from eggs and can change you. I enjoyed thinking about what kind of "shugo chara" I would have.

Momoko -- My first thought was how much fun it was to read! I liked Amu's fashion, and envied her having characters that would help her. I liked Suu-chan, who made sweets and wore frilly clothing. She's so girly. I love her.

Q: Would you like to appear in an anime?

All together: Yes!

Q: So you like acting.

Miyabi -- I've done some acting, but the little secrets like how to breathe and how to follow on appropriately when someone misses a line are a lot of fun. I love acting.

Airi -- Hagiwara Mai from ℃-ute has appeared in another anime and said that voice-acting was really hard. It seems like it would be realy hard, but for my future, I'm going to have to try it sometime. [note: Mai, who is 12, appeared in Kirarin Revolution, which stars another idol from the Hello Project factory.]

Momoko -- Acting, pretending you're someone you're not, seems really hard. Just putting forth your natural self, on the other hand.... I've never played someone from the past, but I can imagine that it would be very tough. In anime, I'd like to try playing a fairy.

The group's name Buono! is Italian for "good." The girls and their publicity machine say it means "delicious." They use the Italian hand gesture of screwing your index finger into your cheek. They say it means "delicious," but as far as I know it means "pretty girl." Appropriate enough. Anyway, it seems that we don't just have Engrish now, but Itarian.

Besides the fact that the song and the performance are both good, the success of this song must be connected with the nature of the audience you see at the live event in August at which the photos were taken. There are two complete audiences for the group and the anime: little girls and otaku.

This whole world of the teen idol factory in Japan is amazing. Hirano Aya was a fringe part of it in her mid-teens. But she wasn't part of Hello Project, the biggest producer of idols, and the producer of Buono!, ℃-ute, Berryz Koubou, and of course Morning Musume. Airi has been an idol since she was 9 or so. And like Hirano Aya, these girls probably did commercials even as little children. How many such hothouse flowers must there be in Japan? What sort of half-relationship can they have with their regular classmates? What happens if their careers end before they're 18, and the thing that made them special evaporates overnight?

The way Buono's dance moves improve with each successive video of them makes me realize that these girls have to go to school, too, and don't have time to practice as much as would be needed for perfect performances. These teen idol groups do interesting choreography sometimes, but I've been struck by how not-quite some of the coordination is.

But in any case, these are actual people. Momoko is genki and energetic and moves a bit too much. Airi, at 13, is slightly less coordinated than the other two, who are 15, but seems a rather cocky person and clearly has a big future. And Miyabi is tall and elegant and both sings and dances best of the three, but even from her interview, you know she has an insecure side.

Check my previous post if you'd like more information.
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Neophilia full PV (Hirano Aya's new single)

The CD went on sale Tuesday and the full PV showed up online at the same time. I think Aya's really found her voice. I'm not sure this is the kind of music that will be a popular success for her, but I think it's an artistic success. Does it even have a bit of Shiina Ringo about it? Aya co-wrote the lyrics (and wrote the lyrics for the enjoyable B-side, forget me nots...)

Another fascinating PV, bizarre as it is:



Here it is on the YouTube site.

I've always felt that at its best, Aya's seiyuu voice has a sharp, sinewy strength, a special bright edge. That's what gives her voice something special in this song, I think.

Two more pieces of news: Aya and Paku Romi will do the Japanese dub for two of the main characters in the French animated film Renaissance.

And Aya will do voices for a live-action show called Honjitsu no Neko Jijou, which is about a girl and the humorous lives of five cats. There isn't much information on the official site, but the star girl (Okuwa Maimi) is credited, and Aya is credited as "seiyuu," so I think she will be doing voices for all five cats. She will do the OP, too.

UPDATE: There's now a good divx version of the full PV on stage6.divx.com

UPDATE 2: Neophilia is at #15 for its first day on the charts, significantly lower than Love Gun's #4. The presence of a number of big new releases this week is part of the story; a comparatively lower level of publicity for this release is another. And maybe people who bought Love Gun didn't like it enough to buy Neophilia. We'll see which direction the song heads from here. I think it is an artistic success, but that doesn't mean it will be a commercial success. I have hopes that people who see the PV on TV or hear the song on the radio will start buying it now and it will rise, but we'll see.

UPDATE 3: Started at #15 on the chart, stayed there one more day, now is down to #19. Looks as if the Japanese buying public doesn't agree with me that this is a great song and an entertaining PV. j1m0ne called it "bog standard J-pop," whereas I think of it as inventive and jazzy -- too inventive and jazzy for the buying public. But he knows J-pop better than I.
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Hirano Aya Live Events Last Weekend

With her next single, Neophilia, coming out this week, Aaya was at Nihon University College of Art's school festival last Friday for a talk and a mini-live of six songs.

I don't have photos from the Nihon U. event, but I do have some from an event on Saturday, a live recording in Akihabara for her radio program, Animelo Mix. It's a one-woman show, but she was joined for this event by ubiquitous radio host Washizaki Takeshi. As you can see further below, her performance was so energetic that she dropped the microphone at least once. Click photos to enlarge.




A report from a blogger who was at the Nihon U. event says the performances were good, especially LOVE★GUN, GLITTER, and Neophilia. The whole set was: LOVE★GUN, God knows..., Lost My Music, First Good-Bye, and Neophilia, with GLITTER as an encore (she forgot some of the words).

"Making of" videos were shown for both the LOVE★GUN and Neophilia PVs. The Neophilia PV is dark, strange, and sexy, with Aaya standing bright in the midst of darkness, walking through water (which she said was very cold), and bleeding black blood from the corner of her eye. A minute of the Neophilia PV is on YouTube.

In the college talk, she was asked how to become a seiyuu and answered that she wasn't the person to ask, since she never had real training, but that she did start by doing the voices as she read manga, and spoke the lines from subtitled foreign movies (shades of REC). She said she got the idea she could do deeper voices from hearing how her mother's voice changed when she answered the phone.




She was asked about playing piano and said she started in middle school, and even played organ in high school. I've read that she played for the church services in her Christian-connected high school. Asked if the guitar in the Love Gun PV was hers, she said that it wasn't, that they provided the rhinestone-studded guitar for the PV.

She mentioned Avril Lavigne as one of her favorite singers, but saved her reputation by also mentioning two others: Onitsuka Chihiro and Shiina Ringo. Onitsuka-san is my favorite female singer in the world, as it turns out. And Shiina Ringo is an avant-garde singer-songwriter who seems to me to be Japan's answer to Kate Bush.

Aaya did the voices for Haruhi, Konata, and Garnet, and when asked about Garnet (her role in Dragonaut) said she had never played such a big-breasted character. She said that fighting the dragon and attacking the protagonist were both really something for her.

Asked what had changed for her when she turned 20, she said that she could drink, but she found that it was a problem for her. She got loud and laughed too much, and then just fell asleep, at least from beer. Champagne was okay, though.

I'll just add a few pics from her blog today. They show some of the cast of Eyeshield 21 on Monday doing drawings of Aya "injured." I guess they got the idea from the Neophilia PV, and from her talking about losing a nail during the taping of the Love Gun PV. In any case, Nakagawa Shouko did a drawing of Aya having lost all her nails (which are often fairly gaudy, like Shouko-tan's). Miyano Mamoru did one of her with a nosebleed. Ise Mariya did one of her simply looking cute. And Maeda Takeshi did the fourth. In the photo of the group, it's Maeda, Miyano, Shouko-tan, and Ise-san, left to right.



The photo of the drawings is from Shouko-tan's blog. The blood will please anti-Aya elements on 2channel, who post things like "Aya and Shouko should both die."
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Poll: Chihara Minori Voted Most Attractive Seiyuu

The votes are in. After a week of voting, voters have chosen Chihara Minori 茅原実里　as the most attractive seiyuu. Minorin ended up with 66 votes to Hirano Aya's 55 and Tanaka Rie's 31, out of a total of 305 votes.

That gives Minorin 21% of the votes, Aaya 18%, and Rierie 10%. Any one of those three -- as well as many others -- would have been a worthy choice, in my opinion. There are lots of beautiful seiyuus -- and lots of ways to be beautiful.

Others with ten or more votes were: Noto Mamiko (14), Mizuki Nana (11), and Horie Yui and Kikuchi Mika (10 each).

Next were Tamura Yukari (7 votes) and Momoi Halko (6).

5 votes: Kitamura Eri, Kugimiya Rie, Nonaka Ai, Paku Romi, Shiraishi Ryouko.

4 votes: Fukai Yukari, Fukuhara Kaori.

3 votes: Chiba Saeko, Kawasumi Ayako, Koshimizu Ami, Kudou Haruka (in real life, she's a model), Makino Yui, Sakai Kanako (spending too much time as a TV host, and not enough as a seiyuu), Sakamoto Maaya, Ueda Kana.

2 votes: Bandou Ai, Hanazawa Kana (the second moe-est voice in anime), Kadowaki Maii (name changed from Mai), Katou Emiri, Morinaga Rika (vive la belle laide!), Nabatame Hitomi, Nakahara Mai, Nogawa Sakura, Shimizu Ai, Toyoguchi Megumi.

1 vote: Enomoto Atsuko, Fukuen Misato, Gotou Yuuko, Hasegawa Shizuka, Inoue Kikuko, Kano Yui, Kawaragi Shiho, Kimura Madoka, Kobayashi Yu, Kuwatani Natsuko, Matsuki Miyu, Miyazaki Ui (that's my vote), Nazuka Kaori (the big athlete with a tiny perfect voice), Sasaki Nozomi (my choice for most moe voice), Shiina Hekiru, Shimizu Kaori, Yamamoto Maria, Yukana.

It's striking that the top two vote-getters were both in Suzumiya Haruhi and Lucky Star. Of course, I loved both those shows, so perhaps people who read this blog like them, too. The particular pics I had in my page of pictures of the seiyuu may also have affected the result. I tried to get equally good pictures of everyone. In any case, a bad pic of Minorin is hard to find.

And I suspect that some people may have voted as much on voice as on appearance, but since a seiyuu's voice is part of her attractiveness, that seems okay to me. Appearance is certainly the shallowest parameter I could have suggested, lol. Maybe sometime I'll run a poll on "favorite" or "moe-est" or "best" seiyuu.

In any case, thank you all for voting and commenting -- the poll had the largest number of comments (32) of any post in the two years this blog has existed. I keep trying to do my bit to make seiyuus more recognized outside Japan. I'll keep up the page of pics of seiyuus that I posted as reference material for the poll.

Mouseover photos for captions. Click the last two photos to enlarge.
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