13 February 2009

In which I admit to heretofore unspoken levels of geekiness.

I'm a seiyuu fan. Seiyuu is the Japanese word for voice actor, or someone who plays roles in animated series, video games, and radio dramas. (In Japan, this also includes dubbing artists for non-Japanese films.) American fans use seiyuu rather than voice actor to distinguish between the Japanese voices and the NA voices.

Seiyuu fandom can be expensive, since any of their vocal CDs, drama CDs, and that sort of thing is import only, and Japanese shit is expensive. Japanese companies believe in price fixing, so a CD will cost about 3500 yen ($35.) Tack on import duties, shipping, and any fees the import company charges, and you're looking close to $50. For a single CD. Unless your seller is finding them used, in which case you'll spend about half that. eBay can be your friend in this regard, too.

The seiyuu I fangirl are few in number, but they're prolific as hell.


Seki Tomokazu is coming to Animazement this spring. Now I need to figure out what I want to take for him to sign. Do I want to take one of the vocal CDs from Weiss Kreuz? Or an Initial D vocal album? I'm still annoyed that I never found Vocal Battle 2 again (Koyasu vs SekiTomo) after not buying it on a trip to San Francisco. A Fruits Basket DVD? Gankutsuou? Meine Liebe? Last Exile? Genshiken? I wish I had some G Gundam stuff. I'm definitely taking something from Gundam Seed, possibly the voice iDoll of his character, which shouts lines from his character, Yzak Joule, when you press the button.

Another downside of being a seiyuu fan is that you watch some really shitty anime because it's got your favorites in it. Like Weiss Kreuz, which is by any standard TERRIBLE, but it's got Koyasu and SekiTomo in it. And Meine Liebe, based on a dating sim for girls, which is also pretty darn awful, if froufy and fun, but it has Koyasu and both Sekis in it.

The things I do for geek.

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