This week's (late because of me) inquiry is this: May 8th is 'Voice day"! What's your favorite voice type or a person who's "voice you adore"? (TN- I could be here for eternity if I listed all of their roles here, so you'll just have to google these voice actors yourself.)
MAO (Rumiko Takahashi): It's been a while. I always get excited at my own new serializations too. Please cheer me on!
Ponkotsu-chan kenshochu (Tsubasa Fukuchi): Shuuichiro Moriyama-san's acting is my favorite. His performance as the "crimson pig" Porco Rosso is one of my favorites.
Aozakura Bouei Daigakkou Monogatari (Hikaru Nikaido) Hideyuki Hori-san.
Maoujou de Oyasumi (Kagiji Kumanomata): Kenjiro Tsuda-san's voice is amazing!!
Gopun go no Sekai (Hiroshi Fukuda) Koichi Yamadera-san.
Detective Conan (Gosho Aoyama): My former bride's voice.
Amano Megumi ha Suki darake (Nekoguchi): I always look forward to Hakumatsushishi's twin energetic live commentary.
Sokyuu no Ariadne (Nobuhiro Yagi): I prefer Jack Bower's original voice.
Undine kyou mo Koi wo suru ka (Shinya Misu): I had no idea that "voice day" was a thing!! I'd recommend "Jigoku Shoujo's Enma Ai!
Tonikaku Cawaii (Kenjiro Hata): Mito Tsukino-san
Be Blues! (Motoyuki Tanaka): The voice actress Keiko Han-san.
Kimi ha 008 (Syun Matsuena): It might be a bit unsightly but I like Kenichi's VA and everything but if I had a choice I'd choose Iyamasa Kayumi-san.
Anonatsu 1959 (Ashibi Fukui): I really love Toshio Furusawa-san's voice.
Fire Rabbit!! (Aya Hirakawa): I don't have space to really write everything I want here, but I admire those people who can do voices of both genders~~
switch (Atsushi Namikiri): My child's voice.
Komi-san Komyusho desu (Tomohito Oda): I've loved Yui Horie's voice for a long time.
Hoankan Evans no Uso ~Dead or Love~ (Mizuki Kuriyama): Mika Horii-san. Like the characters she plays, she's very charming.
Souboutei Kowasubeshi (Kazuhiro Fujita): I like voices with a lower register! I want a voice like that!! For a while I've loved Takeshi Aono's voice.
Major 2nd. (Takuya Mitsuda): I'm fine with any voice as long as it fits.
Daiku no Hatou (Michiteru Kusaba): The voice inside of the microwave.
Maiko-san chi no Makanai-san (Aiko Koyama): Tamio Okuda-san's voice.
Tantei Xeno to Nanatsu no Satsujin Misshitsu (Kyouichi Nanatsuki) Akio Ootsuka and Houchouu Ootsuka's voices are my favorites.
Chrono Magia: Infinity Gear (Homura Kawamoto): The voice actress Ryouko Shinitani.
RYOKO (Kaito Mitsuhashi): I like voices that pierce one's ears.
Youkai Giga (Satsuki Satou): I like a cat's meowing.
Tokaichi Hitoribocchi (Yuuji Yokoyama): I admire those who speak from their bellies rather than their throats.
I gotta say it's a very "Namikiri" move to randomly drop the fact that he has a kid in the TOC comment. This was the guy who casually revealed he was married a while back, after all. Otherwise there are a lot of VA's here! Which makes sense as one of the biggest honors for a manga artist is to have their works animated --I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them even draw their manga hoping to have their beloved characters voiced by certain voice actors! Though Hata's is actually a youtuber I think, which is also on brand for him, hah. I'm with Misu though --Enma Ai's VA (Mamiko NOto) is one of my favorites too.
Ah, so that's how Fukuchi's going to go at it, huh? Chapter two of Ponkotsu-chan is only 15 pages long which is a big change from Saike which could run almost 30 pages a chapter from time to time. It does seem as if Ponkotsu-chan is going to be a weekly serialization unlike Saike's "one-volume-a pop" pace. I had been kind of worried about Fukuchi since his last proper serial ended after a hiatus stole it's thunder (supposedly), but if this is how Fukuchi is gonna do it, then it should be fine I think. Plus it does feel as if Ponkotsu might be a shorter series overall what with the premise being what it is. Then again so far we've only been introduced to two characters, and a story like this I could see becoming much more complex with more characters added to the mix. It's interesting to me how this continues to be very Fukuchi while also ticking off many of the familiar romcom tropes. I do feel like sooner rather than later it'll have to decide on being a slightly off kilter romcom or embracing it's inner Fukuchi, --sooner since I think the longer it tries to find it's footing the more the initial premise will lose it's charm. Maybe in that way the shorter chapters will help it out? Before one can get tired of it, it's done --kind of like a lot of the short comedies in the magazine. That all said, it's a really cute manga that's befitting of Fukuchi's artwork. Maybe even moreso than the battle manga he's so fond of, haha. I know I haven't talked much about the chapter itself, but it's really because there's not much that happened --it was purely set-up. That might be kinda bad for a second chapter to not advance much of anything, but in Ponkotsu's case I think it's fine as long as it doesn't choose to dawdle for too long.
On that note, we go to Evans which is another series that could be one thing (romcom) but instead settles on being kind of not anything at all. (Wow I guess this week's theme is coming off sounding harsher than I mean to.) No, no, I'm not saying Evans is a waste of time, rather it's just a whole lot of things at once that are hard to really describe with an easy to go to term. Rather than that, it relies on having an easy to describe premise which remains strong even two years later --Single Cowboy looks for mate but is extremely bad at it. It's a good thing Evans is actually good at his job or he'd be a real layabout, haha. I think as well the fact that even his good intentions come off as a means to an end fleshes him out as a character. I mean, in a way it could make him awful, but I feel like Kuriyama knows just how much of that side of him to show and how much to give his noble side a spotlight. Like this week's chapter starts off with Evans and Ted meeting up with a lone woman walking in the wilder lands, and Evans offers to give her a ride on his horse --an obvious effort to pick her up. She declines and then asks if Evans is really a sheriff --at gunpoint. Ted then tries to beef up Evans' reputation by exaggerating which only makes things worse. Then Evans remembers his Dad gave him some (for once?) fairly good advice --actions speak louder than words. So Evans takes this upon himself to find a bear and...yes, a bear. No I'm not kidding. The girl is satisfied he's a good guy --I mean he took out a brigand with a bear so he's gotta be right? So after this she'd clearly ride home with him...
Or the bear. I think what really makes this ending for me is just how accepting (begrudgingly on Evans part) they are with this conclusion. Like "Oh, I guess her choosing the bear over me was the natural conclusion to these events." It's very Takahashi-ish in tone and execution, and with the Queen of Sunday being back in this issue it's kind of fitting, really.
What's a group to do without their savior? I'm probably overstepping my bounds by saying that, but Rokurou did have a pretty big role to play in this showdown clearly why he was taken out before he could do any more to throw a monkey wrench into Sakamaki's plans. This week's chapter doesn't take us out of lurch in the sense of advancement but it does feel like we're arriving at something....somewhere. I hesitate to call it an ending since there's more than enough going on in the world of souboutei to keep us busy for a while, but I do think Fujita is ready for a shift in priorities.
And the reason why I say that is the cast has now gathered in one location --something we haven't seen in quite some time now. I doubt Fujita would go through all of this effort just to split them up again later, but I am by no means a soothsayer, hah. Just someone who's probably read far too much shounen for his own good. Fujita is in full control of this ship, and we're just along for the ride. He's certainly trying to sell us on Rokurou being dead, but I have my doubts. Takoha's lament however does a good job of it though --"Kaerikuro, we've picked a fight with some nasty guys haven't we..." With this the fight begins in earnest, with the sisters struggle against the oldest one for the all seeing eyes. Souboutei's still heading in a direction I can't be sure of, but as always it's exciting to watch it careen forward.
Xeno has gone and gotten involved in a little rebellion. No biggie. It's a direction for the story I wasn't expecting at this point where it feels like it could fairly soon. I wouldn't be surprised if with Nanatsuki's veteran star power that the editorial department is giving the series more time to work with it's ending, but it's still surprising that things are unfolding as slowly as they are. Or well, not really slowly per se, but the mystery is unfolding without any editorial pressure as far as I can tell. Heck, Xeno's even been stripped of his right to investigate thanks to military orders so for this chapter at this week, he's a bystander in his own story.
Though that doesn't last long as yet another body is discovered on the ship, and Xeno is informed. A soldier has died in the locker room without any warning. Xeno takes one look at the body and already knows how this unlucky guy was killed, but more importantly that the very moment he died is an important message for the lot of them. What is this message and how will it change this case? Till next time...!
RYOKO, ....why are you so low in the TOC? This was of course before the blog was a thing, but I feel like I'm living through Fukuchi's series Anagle Mole all over again --A strong-ish beginning marred by a hiatus, which upon the series return ends with a cancellation not long afterward. Anagle had some fantastic highs upon it's return, just for it to run straight into an unsatisfying ending...and now it seems like RYOKO is set to follow suit. Then again it might just be a case where I'm letting my pessimism do too much of my thinking. Let's just enjoy what we have here --since even if this is close to the end of the road, this was an interesting chapter from a narrative point of view. Up until now Kogarashi has been trying very hard to get Ryoko to suffer the way he had since the ingredients had taken over Japan, and while his reasoning for that is still not clear, Mitsuhashi has given him what he wanted by leaving the usually optimistic Ryoko no choice but to cut him down --to use her skills to kill a human. Significant because it had been mentioned in passing that Ryoko never had actually cut anything besides food with her abilities. Even her master specifically says in a flashback that her moves are not meant to kill. So although Kogarashi was more hoping to teach her suffering through defeat, he has instead done so through victory which is...a pretty interesting take on this trope even if it's not exactly unique.
But where does that leave Ryoko? Kogarashi? The series? Ryoko doesn't take kindly to having to cut someone down for the first time in her life, but is that really the end of Kogarashi who was brought back to life just a few weeks ago? All of the signs point to a rushed conclusion, but maybe this is part of Mitsuhashi's wild ride. If I were to take a stab at this, I'd say the next three weeks will really tell us what we need to know about RYOKO's ultimate fate.
This week's Youkai Giga features the "Kosamebo" otherwise known as the "light rain monk". This youkai looks like a Buddhist monk that loiter around on roads at night asking for alms. They're a little frightening but not really harmful to humans. In this week's chapter, a Kosamebo who has become entranced with the sight of humans working but is too timid to interact with them. Yet somehow it finds itself in the presence of a very pretty human girl with a fairly similar problem --she too is lonely but doesn't know how to do reach out to others. She figures the Kosamebo might have an idea of how to deal with this problem but it's more interested in how cute she is and accidentally says this out loud. Though she turns the youkai down, he now at least knows the way to solve her problem --it's always good to just say what's on your mind.
And that's it for this very late edition of the editorial. I hope you're checking out the twitter for more timely updates. There will be plenty of Sunday talk there tomorrow for your viewing pleasure! Until then, take care!
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