Tag: yui horie

School Rumble Live!

I watched on video a certain School Rumble Live Concert, and it was quite good! Seiyuus, singers and some bands sang numerous songs featured in the anime series and also the drama cds as well. Too bad no sign of Yuko Ogura was found, maybe she’s too mainstream to be in such an otaku-filled event. Instead, we get all the girls singing her Otoko no Ko Onna no Ko ending theme.

One performance in particular, School Rumble 4 Ever, was so great! Four of the girls danced and sang that incredibly catchy female rap song.

I enjoyed this one better than the Love Hina live concerts, probably because there are more cute and young seiyuu here. The songs are great too. [Yui Horie->horie-yui] may have stuttered a bit during her Scramble performance, but the live rendition of that School Rumble OP is as catchy as ever. Maybe my only complaint is that there is too much unicorn table, while too less Mamiko Noto.

Anyway sorry that I can’t bring you the songs nor the concert video itself, so I have boring screenshots. Spicing it up a bit is the seiyuu’s respective character that they voiced in School Rumble, and a bit of other anime info.

imageimage
Ami joined Yui also as the Ichijou twins in both Futakoi series.

imageimage
Yui Horie, she’s appearing in so many series these days.

imageimage
She currently plays Kanade-kaichou in Gokujou Seitokai.

imageimage
You would probably know her as the legendary “Lain.”

imageimage
Mamiko, another seiyuu with an unmistakable cliched voice working in many series these days.

imageimage
Nao in My Hime. Different style, eh?

imageimage
You guys would probably know her as Nono in Top wo Nerae 2 but I didn’t watch that.

image
I dunno how she belongs to School Rumble, maybe a minor seiyuu, featured in a drama cd/ost, or maybe a guest. Anyway she is also one of the singers in the Mahoraba OP.

image

image
They have a lot of songs scattered around the drama cds of School Rumble. Because of this, they had the most songs performed in the concert.

To Heart ~Remember my Memories~

To Heart ~Remember my Memories~

I love the [To Heart->] anime. I love that anime so much, that I really wished nothing will get wrong about the new series which is called To Heart ~Remember my Memories~.

Alas, I was wrong.

Being an anime-only fan of To Heart, I can already expect that I may not deserve to say bad things about To Heart ~Remember my Memories~ (hereby named as To Heart R for clarity), clearly because I haven’t even played the entire game nor understood it fully. For the bishoujo game players, To Heart R is a big treat. They get to see the new stories that happen after the original game. To Heart R is not a direct sequel of To Heart, and because of this, I am trying hard to separate them.

Technically, it’s an absolute shame. The art and animation levels are more of a stock market from the first 2/3 of this series. Sometimes good, sometimes horrible. I know that the producers of this anime are trying to make an accurate art rendition of To Heart using the original game’s character designs, and that’s fine with me. However, the massive and radical differences of the designs between each episode really make me sick. The same character in ep. 1 may not ever look the same in other episodes. Thankfully, the latter part of the series have gotten it right, which makes you wonder why they didn’t do it that way from the first time through. Yup, even before Mahou Sensei Negima, anime like To Heart R is already suffering from varying sakuga levels.

The story is, for me, something up for debate. On one hand, it was nice that they had a full forward story approach, as opposed to the filler-ish nature of the first series. On the other hand, one can argue that the series has been too focused on Multi. Multi’s plotlines run deep through every single episode of To Heart R, in that you may think they are really leaving Akari behind, despite her being the main girl. For fans of the iconic HMX-12 robot, To Heart R is a dream come true. For non-fans of Multi, To Heart R became too unfair to the other characters.

The biggest complaint I had with To Heart R is of one character itself, and that’s Hiroyuki. This is really the biggest disappointment that made me want to ask if his attitude is really that way in the original game. To Heart R’s Hiroyuki is the most insensitive, indecisive, and inconsistent bishoujo male lead I’ve ever seen. It’s an extreme reverse to To Heart’s Hiroyuki, the bored but kind male lead. There is a reason for the girls to love Hiroyuki of the original To Heart, because he is really kind and helpful to all of them. To Heart R’s Hiroyuki, yea sure he’s kind too, but I really can’t see it that way. For one, his “cruelty level” to a person is proportional to how close the person is to him. It means that he is somewhat mean to Masashi and Shiho, and to the worst extent, he is really mean to Akari. He is also hot-headed, and shouts a lot, especially when things don’t go his way. He is impolite to the elders he talks to throughout this series.

I really wonder how the To Heart R Hiroyuki made 3 girls in love with him. Yes folks, 3 people confessed to him in this series, as opposed to 0 in the first. And I really hate how he handled their broken hearts. We all know Akari is the main girl, and Hiroyuki is destined to be with Akari. But those 2 other poor girls got the no answer while Hiroyuki is still confused about his priorities, and Akari is being jealous. Therefore, the 2 busted girls didn’t have the chance to to make themselves worthy of Hiroyuki’s affection at all.

I want to say something good this time about To Heart R. Well, the OP and ED are really good. The OP reminds me of classic bishoujo game music, while the ED is a new rendition of a popular To Heart song. There are also multiple cameos of characters from the new bishoujo game To Heart 2, which I liked very much. The voice cast is almost the same as the first series, which is one of the best ingredient of this anime. Back in 1999, many of those seiyuu are already relatively popular. In 2004, the same seiyuu cast made To Heart R one of the most spectacular lineup of voice talents in recent history. I never thought I could see [Yui Horie->horie-yui] and Ayako Kawasumi together in an anime again.

I really want to say many more things about To Heart R, but you may be bored about this absolutely biased rant. Sorry that I am biased towards the original To Heart anime, but that’s my true and honest opinion. To Heart R is actually an ok anime, but because of so many reasons, I can’t find myself to liking it.

image
This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Horie Yui

Well, she’s just one of the few seiyuu I find beautiful, on certain angles and levels of make-up though. It’s undeniable that she is one of the cutest and most popular faces in the industry, and she has that extremely distinct voice that is instantly recognizable. I have already seen a LOT of anime with her voice on it. I like her songs too.


These are some shots from a certain School Rumble Live Concert. She sang Scramble and Feel My Feeling in these two shots, along with other songs. Well, she’s cute here with the gothloli outfits and all, but she didn’t sing well in Scramble. Having her jump around and dancing made her voice a bit skippy at times, but I enjoyed the live rendition of Scramble. In Feel My Feeling, I feel like her voice is a bit off at some notes.


This is from the same School Rumble live, singing School Rumble 4Ever, along with 3 other female seiyuu. I enjoyed this performance! She has a nice outfit here too. The musical notes in her dress… liked it.

Apparently some groups are kind enough to share many anime/jpop promotion video goodies to the public, I’m thankful to them. Please support them as much as you can.

More PVs meant more Yui Horie for me, so here’s some more!


This is a music video called Sakura. Apparently it’s from her first solo album, which is virtually unknown to me surprisingly. Seeing that in that album there is another version of Yakusoku (my all-time favorite Love Hina song), I feel deprived of information. Sakura as a music video… isn’t too good by jpop standards, but oh well, it isn’t aimed at mainstream anyway.


Okiniiri no Jitensha looks like a very refined PV. On the flip side though, dunno why, but I didn’t like her in this one.


All My Life, the OP for Mao-chan, is a simple PV. If you ask me it’s trying to be jpop mainstream but as always anime-related stuff rarely succeed when they do that.


Do I have weird taste? Just tell me. This is Kirari Takaramono, the Love Hina Again OP. And… I liked it. I just like those scenes where she sings in an 80’s microphone and dances around (it’s much like the School Rumble PV). This kind of fun, hectic, and wicked energy is just what anime PVs should be.


Here’s a promotion video for Sister Princess, she sings Love Destiny here. Not bad a music video, not too good either.


She’s in a live concert here, singing again Love Destiny… wearing some sort of school uniform. Kinda in-fashion for that otaku crowd, they like her a lot apparently.


In the Fruits Basket DVDs, she has some sort of omake interview show, where she’s the host and she interviews the three main male seiyuu of Fruits Basket. These are kinda interesting segments.


This is an Ultra Maniac making-of interview. On the left is Kanda Akemi, a bit of a newcomer seiyuu back then.


Another PV, this time from the anime Da Capo. In the anime she plays Shirakawa Kotori, one of my favorite bishoujo game characters. It would have been interesting if she had a PV for Soyokaze no Harmony (a very beautiful song), but this (Pureness) is kinda a consolation.


And another PV, this time from School Rumble. The song is Scramble, a joint with a certain ska group named Unbalance. I have to admit that this is one of the best anime PVs I’ve seen so far because of its style, plus the catchiness of the song itself.

WordPress Appliance - Powered by TurnKey Linux