After making regular posts about Japanese voice actors for nearly a month during @Abstormal’s Christmas Advent Calendar 2021, I realized I really wanted a space to post about Japanese voice actors (声優) more permanently.
I wanted a space where everyone can share anything about voice actors: interviews with them, videos of live voice acting, blogs, Youtube channels, twitterposts, anything really - and to generally just gush about Japanese seiyuu!
I hope there are more than me that wanna share in this joy of Japanese voice acting and wanna post whatever they like about them!
#1DON’T POST SPOILERS Since, seiyuu will voice act scenes live of great scenes in anime and that’s fabulous, do share! But also, warn people that might not have watched that series yet. Show respect and blur before posting. Some Youtube-videos are spoilerish by the thumbnail they use or wording in their title, do think about those factors as well. It’s easy to unblurr stuff, hard to unsee anything!
How to hide spoilers on WaniKani’s forums: BLURRED SPOILERblurred HIDE DETAILS
This is a great video of the Lupin III cast appearing before children in the 80s (anyone knows if this is true, 70s??) and the audience trying to point out who’s who in the anime Lupin III, after just watching a short sketch of them in completely different roles!
I think this video is a true gem of both the audience of the time to appreciate Lupin III and how voice acting was perceived at the time (at least among kids!) - something very mysterious!.
(I doubt that is true today with how much more visual in Japanese society seiyuu has become since Lupin III, it’s a profession that has seen immense changes, while retaining many of the same things!
And the matching voice with character thing is hard as a kid! It just is. I doubt I’d do much better.
Basically, what I think here is that these voice actors are actually a bit reproducing “voice expectations” for their time (70s? 80s? at this point) and that means there and “affect” to their speaking habits, as there is today to seiyuu’s “acting habits”. Or that’s my thoughts about is.
I might be wrong for sure, but there is a generation of seiyuu with speaking habits/ patterns/ ?? that are clearly a sign of their time, and I always wondered what that was about?
I love so many of them, but also, dislike some of them for their “theatricality” - and a connection I sense ( I don’t know anything really) is that they have theatrical experience on theatrical stages before going into voice acting.
I do think that was a thing in the past for some actors, and I’ve already posted about the sense of condecention you got for going into voice acting, compared to just a (“normal job + waiting for the next role in “real” acting”), read more about this in the Advents thread, but is still bothers me that both Yamadera-san and Akio-san were talking about this as normal to see stage acting in one light and seiyuu work as low-level work you don’t bother with! - that’s just sad! : (
One of my favorite seiyuus is Ono Daisuke. He’s a dork in the best way possible and I love the enthusiasm he seems to take with him everywhere. My first time appreciating him was when he voiced Erwin Smith form Shingeki no Kyojin.
Here are a couple of fun singing videos I found because of that connection
He also sings as himself and has some music videos even.
Nowadays, I really appreciate him in his role as Jotaro from JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken, which he continues to reprise with excellence. I also appreciate his dedication to JoJo itself as it’s rumored that he buys all the merch
It’s fitting in a way. That fight was crazy good. Probably the best fight in BNHA. It had great music, riveting action and an unbelievable emotional impact on the story.
I totally agree. That studio director knew what he was doing when asking Miyake-san to bring even more into the scene! (and he ended up giving all he could!!)
Both actors are amazing and this made this fight special, imo! ^^
Video of Junichi Suwabe and Tomoaki Maeno (rising star seiyuu! ) make tin sake cups together!
I have no idea why they’re doing this, but it’s fun listening to their conversation and interactions! <3
Edit:
wait this is part of a series of sorts?? More confusion. Which anime did they work together on?? XD
them sketching, and then making drinking classes with glass blowing techniques! (with pro help of course as in the previous vid, but still, they’ve got some nice ideas here!)
Yuuki Kaji also has a goldmine of a YouTube channel, it’s so good! I’m particularly loving his current playthrough of ときめきメモリアルGS4 - he voices the protagonist but also does the voices of other characters (as the rest have voice acting in the game) where there are messages from them or anything like that. Looks like as well as game streams he also has some recording of short stories/novellas etc as well.
Here’s the first ときめき stream:
Oddly enough I just stumbled across it looking for a ときめき let’s play and didn’t realise for a while that he voices a bunch of my favourite characters including the one from my WK avatar lol.
and Tomoaki Maeno (rising star seiyuu! 
) make tin sake cups together!
(with pro help of course as in the previous vid, but still, they’ve got some nice ideas here!)
