Hey, everybody! I (along with friend) have arrived in Baltimore, Maryland for Otakon. Flight was quite uneventful -- no point in having a window seat when it's cloudy the whole way ＿|￣|○ Anyways, I'll be making my way to the convention center shortly to have fun waiting in line to get my badge. Whenever I can find internet access again I'll post an update (and maybe photos... if my friend has a digital camera). July 21, 12:22am: Well, I'm exhausted after all that walking and going up and down stairs (most of the escalators at the convention center were blocked, and couldn't use elevators), but that's only 'cause I've been lazy :P Anyways, had a good time today meeting up with the people from Japanator and Destructoid -- pretty cool folks. I attended the Mamiko Noto Q&A session (actually got to ask a question) and will be posting a report on it on Japanator (and here) sometime... not tonight since I'm tired as I said. Got her autograph, too. Yay, even though I forgot to bring Ichigo Mashimaro or something for her to sign :) After that and attending the ADV panel (not much to report there) I went to the dealers' room.. and promptly spent a good bit on manga at Kinokuniya's booth. Bought Lucky Star 1-4, Shugo Chara 1, POP's Akazukin picture book, and the first Moetan book... somehow, I think I'll probably end up getting more stuff tomorrow (^^;;) Tomorrow I'll probably attend more industry panels (Media Blasters, Bandai, Geneon, I think), then I'll be going to see a screening of Makoto Shinkai's 5cm (35mm... should be veeeery pretty).. and after that, who knows. Anyways, going to watch Potemayo then get some sleep. Good night, y'all :) 1:13am: What!? Funimation licensed Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club and I was stupid enough to not go to their panel (right after the ADV one)... that's a big surprise there. I wonder how many others who were there had watched or even heard of the show. But what's this about only licensing the first season now? The story is only halfway done at the end of the "first season", so it would be rather mean to leave people hanging. I'll see if I can find a Funimation person today and get a better explanation.
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Just a note, but if you’ve passed on watching Potemayo due to its appearance… well, you might be missing out. It’s been awhile since a show had me laughing so hard I could cry. Again and again. I think I’ve watched the above scene a hundred times by now. It also has Kawasumi [...]
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First subbed show of the current season to totally blow me away (to the point of making me feel like posting about it). It’s by no means EPIC or DORAMATIC or W00T BUDGET WIN - instead it’s just WRONG on so many levels (without being ECCHI even, no BEAUTIFUL RAPE BOOK either xD) that I’m [...]
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This show has a higher concentration of urine jokes than anything else I’ve ever seen.
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Quietly, quietly, the talents of 20-year-old voice actress Yahagi Sayuri 矢作紗友里 are being recognized. Not by 2channel, the Japanese otaku forum, where she is still on only her second thread. But directors are giving her constant work. After her debut as Karin in Karin in the fall of 2005, she had eight roles in seven shows in 2006, including Otogijushi Akazukin (Gretel and Kewpie), School Rumble 2 (Tennouji Mio), Tokimeki Memorial (Yuka), and Busou Renkin (Hanaka). In 2007, she has already had eleven roles in just over half a year, including the starring role of Kuu in Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora, as well as kiddy tech genius Amano in Gigantic Formula and Izumi in Hayate, classmate Chisato in sola, Kaho in Over Drive, and guest appearances in Venus Versus Virus and Gurren-Lagann, as well as a role in recent episodes of the long-running Kirarin Revolution, as Myuu-tan, and a minor role in the new show Potemayo. Below is a series of photos of Yahagi Sayuri over the past couple of years. As I have said before, no-one will ever mistake her for an idol. She is a lovely, plain girl with a great voice. Like Kawasumi Ayako, she will have to make her way on talent and personality -- of which she fortunately has lots -- rather than glamorous looks. She and male seiyuu Fujita Yoshinori (Masumi in Nodame Cantabile) are the 19th generation of hosts of the web radio show Voice Crew, a job given to top young seiyuu from the I"m Entertainment/Arts Vision stable. Previous hosts include Horie Yui, Saitou Chiwa, Morikawa Toshiyuki, Kuwatani Natsuko, Yamamoto Maria, Nakahara Mai, Ueda Kana, Kugimiya Rie, Hoshi Souichirou, Morinaga Rika, Asakawa Yuu, Takahashi Mikako, etc., etc.Here is an audio sample of their work on the show. For a video sample, click here or click the screencap below to view it on YouTube:She has even acquired a nickname. She apparently once told Inokuchi Yuka, her sister Anju in Karin, that she wished she had one, and Yuka, Nabatame Hitomi and Shitaya Noriko came up with "oHagi" (ぉはぎ), which she is now known as on radio and on 2channel. It's a nice nickname, and has puns in it that might refer to her being small, to a sweet rice-ball, and to a bush of long poetic significance in Japan that bears discreet purple flowers through the summer.Two things make oHagi great. First, she has a strong, mobile, liquid voice. Second, she has an intense professionalism that allows her to pick up tone and technique like a sponge. In Karin and Kyoushirou she shows what a unique and identifiable voice she has, but at first in Otogijushi, I didn't recognize her at all. She was clearly able to give the sound director exactly what he wanted, irrespective of her own natural timbre. Playing alongside Tamura Yukari, Kugimiya Rie, and Sawashiro Miyuki, among other top pros, that show was like her post-graduate training. She may still be a voice rather than a real actress, but she's getting there. Her mad weeping scene in Kyoushirou was a triumph. She seems to be a comparatively unassuming and conservative person, but friendly and popular with her fellow seiyuus. Her co-host on the Gigantic Formula radio show, Satou Rina, kept calling her an "old-man little-girl" (オヤジ小学生). When Karin came out, I translated an interview with her in which she explained how she came to be a seiyuu. Her classmates made fun of her high, little-girl voice and one day, watching anime, she realized that she could possibly turn that voice into her greatest asset. And she has.More leading roles are to come, but oHagi has become one of the more active young seiyuus, building a career in voice-acting. She works with the I"m Enterprise agency, which was the agency involved in the recent scandal over sexual harassment of a young seiyuu by its boss. We'll have to see if she stays with them. It's a big agency that can give its performers a lot of help, but the scandal has recently lost it some of its seiyuu -- including Morinaga Rika and possibly Horie Yui.Here are links to more info about oHagi:Hashihime Seiyuu GalleryAnime News NetworkWikipedia Japan
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Opening Sequence: OP: “Katamichi Catchball” by MOSAIC.WAV
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A lot of the new anime this season don't really seem to interest me, and the ones that do aren't subbed yet, so I'll probably wait on them. Potemayo was one of the anime I really wanted to see, and luckily for me, it's pretty easy to understand raw, so here's my first impressions on this very weird anime.
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Sky Girls Wow, this one could have turned out a lot worse. The blatant fanservice that plagued the OVA is almost entirely gone now, and some actual time has been dedicated to fleshing out the characters properly. To be honest, I didn’t see this coming, and expected the same moe-bait that was the OVA. Still, I [...]
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I’m really not certain what I just watched.
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"A picture says more than a thousand words" is the only description that works for Potemayo (ぽてまよ), a new comedy airing Fridays at 25:30 JST. Yes, I'm telling you to look at the screenshots.
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