Late Blog Updates and Seiyuu Rants

I’m pretty sure I’m one of the few bloggers that changes their layout almost seasonal, constantly confusing his ever declining number of readers as they get re-adjusted to the new layout of the season. All I can say to my readers is sorry but I am a man of random taste and that change is good… even if it cost a few readers, SEO, ranking, and a few hours of my life ^^;;

Anyway this time around I went with the wordpress theme Autofocus which is more towards photo bloggers but I loved the simple design that I had to use it! Minus the fact the blog will look like crap in IE 6/7 (works fine in IE 8 and FF), overall I think it came out pretty good considering I had to hack a few lines of code to customize it to my taste. Plus I love seeing random images more than my crappy writing any day! For my more vocal readers, let me know what you think since I don’t think I’ve see this theme (or similar ones) used much in the anime blogging community. And just an FYI for you seiyuu fans, I currently have about 30 images for the “banner” image you see when reading a post. I plan to add more in the future but I’m trying to balance out not using the 28409 images of Nana Mizuki I have (1/2 of ‘em from like danie and j1m0ne I think). If anyone has some good seiyuu image sites, please do tell!

Speaking about seiyuus and the blog, I think I’ll be re-focusing what I’ll be blogging about from now on. I swear I remember writing about this before but anyways, I plan (well really have already) to lean towards seiyuu related news, general merchandise purchases, and the occasional anime convention as my main focus. Really just putting that on the table but as I mentioned, I’ve already been doing so for months… whenever I do actually blog, that is ^^;; At least by putting it out there, I can hopefully focus to actually updating this darn blog more than once a month plus won’t need to stress about what I can write about just for the sake of it.

And with renewed energy, I may as well recap on some recent seiyuu news that all of two people probably don’t already know about. The biggest news would easily have to be Nana Mizuki’s upcoming 7th album, titled ULTIMATE DIAMOND (see danie). Slated for release May 20th, the real treat for Nana-chan fans comes with the LE edition which includes her October 2008 live performance “Nana Mizuki Oini Utau”. I believe this is the one where she called on some seiyuu friends to help stage act; I know I have some news bits in one of my seiyuu magazines but can’t remember which. I assume any Nana-chan fan has already pre-ordered their copies, but if not they’re still up at CDJapan RE/LE. And before I forget, when I heard what the title of her 7th album was my first thought was if that was some Final Fantasy summons she fancied or something LOL

Continuing on with the Nana Mizuki news, one of the songs for the upcoming album has been leaked as well! Once again, check danie’s for more information, but to hear the song streamed either check her site or niconico (need account). Tittled “Gimmick Game”, still not sure what to make of it… I’m not loving it but nor am I hating it either… hopefully a few more hundred listens will clear this up for me

Moving on to the other seiyuu I spend all my money on, Minori Chihara has some great stuff planned in the upcoming months (once again see danie). Biggest news for us oversea fans has to be her Parade Tour will be released in Bluray awesomeness! Can’t wait for that! Also the concert only pamphlet book for the tour will be sold as well! Guess that means I’ll be buying two copies given my recent trend in Minorin related purchases ^^;; I would follow the Konata Way of Life 3′s but don’t know if I can afford that. Then again it seems so much harder to get good Minorin related goods I may do so if the pamphlet is worth it!

Before I forget since talking about Minorin reminded me, I highly recommend checking out the last two episode of Minami-ke radio (13 & 14). 13 if I remember correctly has the girls trying to sing a completed(?) Curry Fairy song one of the listeners sent them while 14 had love letters for each of the girls sent in by listeners. Good stuff although the butchering of engrish is abound in episode 13.

… and I just remembered, also check out the 100th episode of radio minorhythm if ‘ya can. The whole episode she read off listener mail and then called them up to chit-chat. I found it funny how unlike in the US where most folks would freak out if they won something or their favorite celebrity called them, everyone Minorin called were pretty polite and felt like normal conversations. I guess it has to do how the Japanese are raised huh?

I think someone already mentioned this on their blogs, but Minorin also has an upcoming single out June 3rd. If I didn’t read it from the usual english speaking/writing seiyuu bloggers, then probably the girl herself mentioned it either on her radio show, Minami-ke’s, or Ga-Rei Zero’s. Yes not an exact source but hey, at least it’s up for preorders already!

… and dang, this post really turned into linking danie’s various posts instead of anything worthwhile or “original”. Er… I guess I can mention I should have a few merchandise posts up in the coming week as I’m expecting another decent sized order of seiyuu-related magazines? Plus I have to review or at least write some blur about May’n's recent DVD and the Aquaplus Live/Festa 2008 Bluray I got as well… so stay tuned? O_o