Sunshine Blogger Award
So yeah, I completely missed out on Chikorita’s nomination for me for the Sunshine Blogger Award. Without further ado, answers galore ahead:
1. Have you experience some type of writer’s block during your Anime blogging career?
Just a little, but surprisingly enough, I have less of this problem compared to anyone else. I think with me mostly posting on an extremely relaxed schedule helps a lot, and additionally, my posts are mostly pretty straightforward and most of them don’t require any sort of academic or religious research. There are a few times when I would ran out of ideas, but after having a break for a week or two, I would have new ideas in my head-which I immediately jot down on my WP drafts. So if anyone is having a writer’s block, my advice would be-just take a break and come back to it later.
I think my problem is that even if I have ideas, sometimes, after writing that post, I find I have “prerequisite” posts I want to write just before I submit the former, to build up on the idea. For example, and I might as well use a live example-I actually finish my wallpaper post long BEFORE my otaku identity and masculinity post, but I ended up having to write and submit the latter first since I needed that to build on the former’s idea. I also don’t like submitting multiple relevant posts in a row, so I prefer to have other posts in between.
I guess in the end, I’m just unnecessarily fussy.
2. What is your favorite Japanese voice actors/actresses?
Unfortunately, I haven’t been keeping up with seiyuu much, so my obvious choice would be Rie Kugimiya. I don’t know why but Yui Horie only recently caught my radar with her work on Nepgear (Hyperdimension Neptunia), so she’s also becoming my favorite lately. I also love Asami Imai’s work on Kurisu (Steins;Gate) and Noire (Hyperdimension Neptunia)-she has an extremely distinctive voice even when compared to other similarly tsundere roles. I also like Kana Hanazawa and her soft voice, which is great for soft-spoken, quiet and timid roles, but is still versatile enough to voice other roles beyond her voice’s capability, say for example, the chuunibyou Kobato (Haganai) and the dominant Hana (Prison School), which are roles obviously far from Kana’s comfort zone. Last but not least, Hayami Saori is excellent too with her role as Hatoko (Inou Battle), predominantly, that scene where she literally did it in one take.
As for male voice actors, I find it interesting how Namikawa Daisuke can voice protagonist-esque characters like Narukami Yu (Persona 4), underdog characters like Waver (Fate/Zero), to the crazy, psychotic, and even slightly perverted characters like Hisoka (Hunter X Hunter 2011), and even if his voice is easily distinguishable, he still fit Hisoka’s role excellently. Gintama is also a show with a lot of good male actors, which include the likes of Sugita Tomokazu, Nakai Kazuya, Ishida Akira and so on. I like Kamiya Hiroshi’s work on Akashi (KuroBasu) and Araragi (Monogatari). Also, Miyano Mamoru definitely deserves a mention too, he is literally a real life anime character, and can do the evil laugh like no other.
In Narukami Yu’s voice!
3. Have you ever gone to an Anime convention before? If so, what conventions did you went to?
Nope, except for some minor local events I guess.
4. If you can make a live action production, which Anime/Light Novel/Manga would you choose as the source material?
Live action? I don’t know, actually. Live action always has a high tendency to ruin the original production, and if I were a director, I probably would avoid live action adaptions like the plague. Rather than source materials though, I think I would pick by genres-and I would pick the shoujo romance genre. Extremely stereotypical admittedly, but less chance to screw it up. The anime itself also has to be as less dynamic as possible, because it’s difficult to translate those in real life, so romantic comedies like Hayate no Gotoku would take a back seat since they have a lot of ridiculous jokes (although I think there’s actually a live action adaption by now, never watched it myself).
5. Based on your knowledge on how Anime production works, what is your opinion on how animators are being treated in Japan? What would you do to improve their situation?
I don’t know much about the behind-the-scenes productions but assuming what I see from Shirobako is real, well… they definitely need a break. Other than that, and these improvements can probably be said for just any other stressful working environments too-higher pays, better teamwork, a slightly more relaxed schedule and so on. They also need better food other than just food bought from convenience stores, but with Japanese working culture, this isn’t something which can be easily solved, I think.
They also need to do some aerobics Ema-style, great for relaxation.
6. Do you watch or experience any other forms of media besides Anime?
I go Miku-ing everyday. I had only just been keeping up with movies again, though it doesn’t take long for me to retract to HK action movies once more-my favorite genre when I was an avid moviegoer in the past. With the exception of wrestling, I never watch any TV series though, as it’s very hard to keep up. Also play video games, if that counts.
7. What do you prefer, official subs (e.g. legal streams or home releases) or fan subs?
I’m actually pretty lax about this-whichever is available as long as the quality is not too terrible; like machine translation terrible. Media like anime and manga are fine, but this is actually pretty common with visual novels and light novels.
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That’s it. Feel free to provide your own answers in the comment.
deluscar 
I’m not gonna lie, Rie Kugimiya is my least favorite voice actress because her voice never seems to change between characters. That said, she’s the only one I actually know the name of XD
Kanahana did the voice for Tenshi in Angel Beats :p But yeah, I can certainly get that, even for me, I had to use a lot of MAL-ing to get the names.
As for Rie, I think it’s because she voices a lot of similarly tsundere characters, she voices some interesting roles, even some male characters like Alphonse from FMA, so she’s definitely more versatile than people give her credit for.
Having a look through a list of her roles it seems like I pick the only shows where she plays the Tsundere (or at least sounds similar). I’ll have to listen out for whatever characters she takes on in the future.
Interesting answers. I have to admit that Imai Asami is a very good singer, mostly with the songs she done for The Idolmaster as Chihaya. Aside from the Idolmaster songs, I do own a album and a single (for the Noire spinoff opening song) and they are very good. Also taking a look at Hayami Saori as she finally released a debut cd after so many years of singing mostly Anime songs and I heard she is a good singer.
I admit I never really check out seiyuu’s songs that much, unless she’s extremely phenomenal like Nana Mizuki, lol. But seeing as how I will be playing Neptunia PP soon…