#They said Joutarou in the anime

[ella390-the-potato]

I'm a sucker for sports anime, so I drove straight into this without really knowing what to expect.

The characters are interesting, and there was plenty of silly laughs. I honestly didn't expect it to be that heavy on the comedy. I'm willing to give it a chance, so we'll see how this progresses.

But I do question that bird.

[rainstormfes]

Anime Expo Lite Day 1 Experience!

Program: Warner Bros. Japan Presents "Stay connected with Anime"

This whole program made me so frickin happy, SEIYUU AND JAPANESE GUESTS EVERYWHEREEEE WHILE TALKING ABT ANIME YESS (note: i typed most of this while the event was going on so pls bear with all my keyboard smashes and small comments lolol i just rly wanted to make a review for this event since i knew tons of seiyuu and anime that i love would be there and talked about. Also also i am not allowed to share any screenshots or recordings of it so just fyi 👍🏻)

It started out with talking about DanMachi 3 with guests Matsuoka Yoshitsugu (voiced Bell Cranel) , Minase Inori (voiced Hestia) , Osawa Nobuhiro (from EGG FIRM), and Matsukura Yuji (producer from J.C. Staff)

They answered many questions like how the author was inspired by the voice acting from the two guests specifically, talking about specific scenes

MINASE-SAN PERFORMED A SMALL LINE WHICH WAS SO FRICKIN CUTE

one of the producers was asked about production for DanMachi and he was like ‘brUH the volumes got thicker and thicker as they kept getting released like DANG’

They prepared a teaser image for the third season and for the big reveal Matsuoka had to tear a curtain off of a huge posterboard but the curtain got caught and made it almost fall xDD (very cute and awkward moment, Matsuoka never change pls omg youre too precious)

Matsuoka was asked if there was any difficulties when recording s3 and he just talked about how Bell went through lots of growth and that he had to think about how to properly act out just how mature Bell got, considering he’s now a leader of his group

Minase-san answered the same question. She talked about how she made sure to try and keep in mind how close all of the characters are and Hestia’s mental and social growth

Iguchi Yuka (voiced Chigusa) sent in a vid message since she sings the opening!! And it was announced that sajou no hana would be performing the ending song! Both vid messages were very nice and cute and both artists just talked about how they were looking forward to everyone’s reactions to their songs and to look forward to the anime

Airing of DanMachi 3 will begin in October woop woop!🎉🎉

OML WHEN MATSUOKA-SAN DID HIS ENDING REMARKS he pointed to the posterboard and was like ‘thIS NEW CHARACTER IS CUTE’ and said ‘whO TF IS THIS’ (pointing to new characters on the posterboard lol)

The next anime that they talked about was Shokugeki no Soma: The Fifth Plate with guests: Matsuoka Yoshitsugu (voiced Yukihira Soma) (MY GOSH HES SO AWK AND CUTE OMLLLLL he was like ‘can i speak now’ cause there was that kind of awkwardness in the first segment too 😅) and Yonetani Yoshitomo (animation director)

Yonetani-san was asked how he felt abt the anime. He talked about how he wanted to express how amazing the cooking/food was as well as wanted to excite (oh b o y 😳) the audience

Matsuoka-san was asked the same thing. He talked about how he’s been following Soma since day one and thinks a lot abt his growth in Totsuki. He talked about how he kinda thinks about his own high school days (comment from director lol that he might just cry during his final recording session which i feel, its been 5 years since the first season was aired)

THEY RECORDED AN IRL SHOKUGEKI?!??!?! OMGGGG. FUKUYAMA JUN (voiced Saiba Asahi) AND TAKAHASHI MINAMI (voiced Tadokoro Megumi) WERE THERE (yall can i just- JUN LOOKS SO MF GOOD OML). 

bruh matsuoka’s mixture for a sauce for tonkatsu was frickin WACK he put strawberry jam, cream, waSABI???, KETCHUP?!?!?!, along with SOY SAUCE, there was more but that combo i put alone looks so frickin wack. 

Jun’s sauce oMG HE STARTED W NUTELLA AND PEANUT BUTTER WTF OMG THIS MISCHIEVOUS MAN I CANTTT 😂😂. He put in LOTS of mayo uhm... he crushed sesame seeds and dried fish together OMLLL HE WAS LIKE SHE NEEDS HER CALCIUM W THE FISH HES SO CHAOTIC and since he ran out of time he couldnt crush the fish properly so there were just HUGE CHUNKS OF FISH IN THE BOWL. omg when he was mixing it..... ew. the takamina was like E W. the way he was selling it was pure g o l d OMG HE PUT IN MF SQUID JUST NOW I CANTTTT HE IS IRL SOMA XDDD poor takamina she was fake crying, girl saME (she’s the judge)

Takamina surprisingly enjoyed matsuoka’s sauce (she was like the ingredients somehow WORKED xD) “it feels like i had a nice meal” (GIRL HOW??? XD)

as for Jun’s sauce review: FDSAFD TAKAMINA SAID THAT THE SQUID WAS STARING AT HER I CANTTT. she described it as a theme park which is perfect. tons of flavors were trying to be the main thing. The squid leg works with tonkatsu so it was ok in the end

matsuoka’s sauce won bc the squid in jun’s was kinda unnecessary but in the end she liked both (kinda surprising lol)

ADSJFKSFJ YONETANI-SAN DID THE ‘bursting’ thing ONCE THE SHOKUGEKI VID WAS DONE, SHOWING A SHIRT W MEGUMI AND TENTACLES OMG

Matsuoka’s comments on the shokugeki: he enjoyed doing it w jun since he was very good at talking (especially when he was making the sauce). Both their sauces were “okay” lol

Yonetani-san’s comments: he talked about how he struggled to cook when he was a child but even through the small irl shokugeki they did he learned smth lolol

Matsuoka was asked which lines were more memorable for him (other than soma’s lol): he talked about how the explanations for the dishes (the monologues when theyre being made and when theyre being presented) were difficult and whenever he recorded those kinds of lines, it was kind of difficult to record since it would be hard to express a good portrayal of soma’s energy if he didn’t even know what he was talking about (so on the side he had to keep using wiki to understand what soma was even talking abt lol)

Question abt the production of the anime: Yonetani-san talked abt how there were lots of complicated words; there were lots of cuts in certain scenes made to try and portray the energy that they wanted in the anime

“If you could try any of your character’s dishes which one would you choose?” Matsuoka: he wanted to try the chicken wing dumplings and a recipe book was released before so he tried it... and it turned out BAD XDD

Someone asked abt where the producers get ideas about the ending theme sequences: Yonetani-san’s used the songs as inspiration for the backgrounds used for the ending themes, also trying to relate to the cooking and the theme of high schoolers just going through life etc

OH SCHIZ THERE WAS A SPECIAL MANGA RELEASED. A small part of it was voiced by matsuoka, jun, and takamina it was vvv cute (the full would be released on Shounen Jump at a later date)

Ending remarks: FASDFDSA THIS ACTUALLY WILL BE THE LAST SEASON OF SHOKUGEKI OMG 😭😭. OMG MATSUOKA IS SO FRICKIN CUTE AND AWKWARDDDDD he was doing a small clap at the end hes so adorable someone protect him pls :(((

The next and last anime talked about was JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, where there was a behind the scenes vid made:

Ono Kensho (voiced Giorno Giorvanna) was there ofc along w two producers from David Pro (Kasama) and Warner Bros Japan (Omori Hiroyuki)

OMG FIRST THEY TALKED ABT THE STAND CRIES YESSS. DSFDSAF THEY ACTUALLY COUNTED HOW MANY MUDA’S ONOKEN HAD TO SAY that is so amazing i love the dedication. onoken mentioned how he talked to koyasu (voiced Dio Brando) abt counting the muda’s but he was like ‘ehhhh i never did that lol’. overall, everyone from all seasons tried to match the scenes but koyasu was basically the odd one out not rly needing??? to follow it lol

FDSAFDSA BRUH THERES 17 RERO RERO’S hirakawa-san practiced in the BATH the dedication is INSANE i love this

lolol onoken scrunches up his face when he says his mudas lol vvv cute (so thats a good tip for anyone wanting to say it properly)

one of the reasons they chose onoken in the first place to voice giorno was the fact that his muda’s were strong, thats frickin awesome (and he asked for a redo so that just shows great dedication, smth that staffs would want in their seiyuu)

next they talked abt the anime-only scene of giorno giving gelato to a kid. they wanted to show how kind giorno was despite eventually becoming a gang-star. its personal to kasama-san since he had actually went to italy and had experienced intense heat there and went to a gelato stand so he wanted to preserve that memory in film

they moved on to talk abt how the hitman team was first introduced in ep 10. they decided to enhance the anime by showing the many teams of passione in their own meeting places, trying to emphasize how close everyone was in their respective teams

THEY MENTIONED HOW THEY PURPOSELY PUT CHARACTERS THAT ARE LATER INTRODUCED IN THE ANIME WITHIN FRAMES JUST TO TEASE omg i love

next they talked about how the second theme for golden wind was kinda hard to make (the animation and song IS amazing which i personally appreciate). considering that they needed to kind of match up with “Fighting Gold” (the first op), it was hard to produce something for it. And they had already decided to make an alternate version of it as well, animation wise. For a while they were stuck but eventually they managed to create smth which ofc ended up as the second op for Golden Wind (and also mentioned how that also happened for Stardust Crusaders, with changing the op’s animation to showcase everyone’s stands and also the small interaction between joutarou and dio)

AHHHHHH THEY MENTIONED THE FAMOUS DIO POSE THAT GIORNO DID AHH YESSSS THANK YOU DAVID PRO FOR DOING THAT, they said that they felt that they needed to live up to fans’ expectations so considering how dedicated of a fanbase we are, they decided to put that little nod toward dio’s pose with giorno doing it too

Ending remarks: lolol kasama-san was like ‘watch jojo in these difficult times to brighten up your day’ and honestly i just might :D

Omori-san was also a guest for the live broadcast too! Plus, Kanno Yugo who’s in charge of the music for Golden Wind!!! (a frickin king providing giorno’s iconic asf theme)

OMG THE THEME LETS GO HE TALKED ABT IT: considering his experience with parts 3 and 4 for the themes, he felt he needed to try and one up himself lol; he’s grateful that his music is loved by the fandom and hopes to meets everyone’s expectations (my king you’ve done amazing work)

He talked about how making music for jojo feels like competing in the olympics (cant blame him lol its a pretty difficult job to one up yourself every time theres a new season. since he started working with jojo at stardust crusaders and considering how iconic joutarou’s and josuke’s themes are, needing to make smth as amazing as those themes mustve been tough but he def delivered in the end)

OMG KANNO-SAN PERFORMED LIVE AHHHHHH and ofc its Il vento d’oro :)) THAT WAS SO FRICKIN AMAZING OMG ugh that made me so happy

Ending remarks: both guests were very wholesome, saying to stay safe during this situation. Omori-san stayed behind to say a small message on behalf of warner bros japan, saying to continue to support them and thank you for supporting the anime :))

Overall an amazing experience 😊

I loved everything that happened. It was nice to finally see some of my fave seiyuu at an event despite what’s going on in the world right now, it definitely brightened up my day :D

[natsthinkitythinkthinkthonk]

Happy Birthday Daisuke Ono (May 4)

Happy 41st birthday to the talented seiyuu, narrator, radio personality, and singer. Here’s his full biography.

There was a request to not use heavy gifs. Keep in mind that these aren’t my gifs. If the gifs are a little heavy, I’m more than willing to just use images (pictures) instead. If you can, let me know your thoughts on that!

He was just cast in Bungou Stray Dogs to play Ace! I’m so excited! My reaction: “SAY ‘YARE YARE DAZE’ OH! AND ‘I’M ONE HELL OF A BUTLER’”

The following video has quite a few of his roles. Not all of them had gifs so they weren’t included below. 

Notable Roles:

Sebastian Michaelis - Black Butler

Daikoku - Noragami

[He’s the one throwing something]

Shizuo Heiwajima - Durarara

[IZAYA!!!]

Sinbad - Magi

[They pronounce his name “Shindobaddo” (シンドバッド). It takes a while to get used to]

Riki Nendou - Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan

He also voices the mom of Riki.

Subaru Asahina - Brothers Conflict

Mitsuya Maeno - Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Kyouma Mabuchi - Dimension W

Shintarou Midorima - Kuroko no Basuke

Killer T Saibou - Hataraku Saibou

[The blond guy]

Kaoru Hanase - Tamako Market

Jun Satou - Working!!

[I LAUGH EVERY TIME HE GETS FRIEND ZONED. HE’S TRYING HIS BEST]

Joutarou Kuujou - Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

[ORAORAORAORA YARE YARE DAZE]

Erwin Smith - Attack on Titan

[SUSUME!]

Fafnir - Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon

Kurou Yatogami - K

Kazuma Yagami - Kaze no Stigma

Zenji Banba - Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens

Kokkuri-san - Gugure! Kokkuri-san

Itsuki Koizumi - Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu

Jyushimatsu - Osomatsu-san

[Episode 9B of the first season of Osomatsu was the pique of the whole series. He meets a girl and stuff happened.]

Sei Handa - Barakamon

[One of my favourite anime]

Videos:

*I recommend checking out the subbed Durarara events! Those are quite fun, and there are some subbed videos out there if you look around for them!

Here’s a full playlist of his stuff from Anokoe  (WARNING: THE LIST ISN’T IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. PROCEED WITH CAUTION)

I recommend watching episode 23 when they die eating durian (start at the 8-minute mark)! “THIS STINKS! // I’m trying not to breathe // *incomprehensible noises* // *runs and pukes in the bushes*”

He screams and yells for a lot of his roles. It’s like he has two drastic modes: screaming and yelling + smooth-talking charisma.

The Haikyuu cast are a bunch of idiots. We all know that.

Sugita has said for the record that he hated doing the dance. He said it on a radio show with the Gintama cast. Daisuke Ono slays it and tries his best though.

This was probably on Daisuke Ono and Hiroshi Kamiya’s radio show called “Dear Girl Stories”. Hiroshi Kamiya is the one laughing in the background.

Music:

I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of his singing, so I just linked a few videos...

Daisuke Ono - Song Compilation Roles

[Official Video] Ono Daisuke - Kinmokusei - キンモクセイ 小野大輔

[Official Video] Ono Daisuke - DELIGHT - 小野大輔

Daisuke Ono - Lunar Maria | 小野大輔 - Lunar Maria

[skyhopedango]

2020 fall season part 2

And here are the ones that I stuck with pretty much because there was nothing else going on those days. 

Magatsu Wahrheit Zuerst: Well, this was certainly... an anime. I guess. I really liked the first few episodes, but then it kind of went downhill really fast with some plot & character choices, and not enough focus on either Inu or Leo. It ended up being one of those shows that are not bad, per se, but they’re just bland. Bland characters, bland acting, bland visuals, bland story... yeah. Not much to care about. I think this is going to be one of those shows where I just completely lose interest in watching the last episode.

Also, I’m just really, really tired of Tsuda Kenjirou’s bad guy drawl shtick. It used to be impressive when he was still putting some effort into it, then it turned into “eh, at least it’s amusing”, listening to him chewing the scenery... but by now it’s gotten stale, one-note and irritating. Bleh.

Taisou zamurai: Riiiight, so... WTF? I really don’t understand this show, and why some people seem to find it so impressive. 

Getting the animation aspect out of the way first - I’m not impressed. I mean, wow, they rotoscoped/traced real people doing gymnastics. Yay. But thing is, when athletes do impressive sports stuff it’s impressive to me because it’s real people doing stuff that’s exaggerated and unreal by normal person standards. It’s kind of like dance: movements you would never do IRL, you can see the effort going into the motions, and yet the athlete still moves fluidly and gracefully (if they do it right, anyway). That’s why it’s impressive. But animation is not “real”, and anime in particular is already an exaggerated version of reality, what with the character designs, the exaggerated reactions, emotional expressions, stories, etc. So translating physically impressive stuff like gymnastics into animation by just slavishly copying reality is missing the entire point if you ask me - it just ends up missing the “wow” factor you get when you see the same thing in reality. It’s missing the dynamism, the energy, the effort - which could be achieved simply by applying the exaggerations that animation allows for. So yeah, the gymnastics part of the show - I’m not impressed whatsoever.

And the rest is kind of like “let’s do Yuuri on Ice but with gymnastics and less homoeroticism” and it’s just not working (and again, I say this as someone who didn’t even like Yuuri on Ice). There’s so many things about this show that don’t work (for me, anyway) that I’ll just make a list.

1. Just the whole premise of “veteran athlete decides not to retire, wins championship, because YOU CAN DO IT IF YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF”... okay, look. Look. Aside of the fact that there’s a very good reason why IRL athletes, especially gymnasts, tend to retire after a while, that has nothing to do with believing in yourself and everything to do with the perfectly natural limitations of the human body... even this aside, the story is just so, so trite. You know what could have been an interesting story? Former athlete tries to find a new purpose in his life after retirement. Veteran athlete realizes that his time is up, decides to gracefully bow out and give way to the new generation. Veteran athlete realizes that he’d been neglecting his daughter all these years and tries to mend their relationship. And so on. There could have been so many ways to turn this premise into an interesting story, but no, they just had to go with the weakest, blandest idea.

2. The characters. What are even these characters. There’s the bland, uninteresting protagonist. Then there’s the Manic Pixie Dream Anime Dude who is just every Manic Pixie Dream Anime Character stereotype without any interesting aspects or dimensions to him. (Because “he’s actually a genius dancer who can’t handle the pressure” and then leaving it at that is just not interesting to me whatsoever.) Then you have the side cast made of one-note characters with bafflingly outdated quirks/stereotypes, like the “manly-looking onee who tries to be feminine but keeps slipping into dude mode” (isn’t that kind of offensive in the year of our lord 2020?) or the ganguro girl and the hip-hop guy who are technically “historically correct” but they’re so OTT it’s just cringy. The least said of Kaji Yuuki’s character the better - or no, actually, I’ll just say that even his story could have had potential, but then they just decided not to do anything with it, to the point where I don’t even understand why he’s in the story, so little effect he has on everything going on. The only vaguely interesting character was Rei, but then she just ended up being the Spunky Little Girl Who Orders Adults Around.

3. It’s painfully unfunny and uncute. Most jarringly: Leo’s ninja shtick is supposed to be endearing, but all I see and hear is a completely infantile guy being disconcertingly childish, while Ono Kenshou is spouting insipid lines in a completely false-ringing, cutesy voice. There is a way that Leo could have worked as an endearing character - but they took his quirkiness so far, and added so little grounding to him, that he just doesn’t work as a character. He’s a concept on legs. I guess Big Bird encapsulates this aspect of the show perfectly: he’s meant to be a cute and funny mascot, but he’s not cute, he’s not funny, and he keeps ruining scenes.

4. Plot and character development - or rather, the lack thereof. Instead of organically developing characters and having them drive the plot, we’re just expected to accept stuff happening because we’re told so. Jou ends up trusting his daughter with an infantile, ninja-LARPing stranger they picked up at a theme park because... that’s what the writers wrote. Kaji Yuuki’s character is a total dick and nobody ever asks him “dude, what’s your problem exactly?” so we could get a glimpse into what he’s thinking - we should just accept that he had all that inner turmoil going on all this time, from that one line in the last episode. All throughout the last episode Rei & Co. are scrambling to retrieve Leo because they realized he was an important motivation for Joutarou, and all the while I’m wondering “really? since when?” because they barely even interacted, and when they did it was so bland that I never bought them having an emotional bond thing going on (even though it was obviously what the writers wanted us to think, what with the whole “PLEASE SHIP THEM” pandering - it didn’t work). And so on.

Anyway, I stuck with this show mostly out of a morbid curiosity - and I’m not going to miss it. There could have been so much they could have done with the premise and the characters... and they did exactly none of it.

Continued (eventually) in part 3 with the one show that I expected the least out of, and ended up loving...