Rising Sun Chit-Chat part V - Lounge Air. Look into it.

[Yilei]

O_________O

AM I FINALLY GOING TO GET TO SEE MORE OF ENISHI?!

D= I only read stuff about the last arc and like got snippits from that one OVA series. Enishi sounded so cool, but he never really got expanded in the anime. A friend of mine told me he ate corpses. XD I wanna see~

[Aoi Kurenai]

Enshi Kenshin is scary. XD Though it was cool to see how he ended up being the mellow dude he is in the present day.

[Yilei]

XD Yeah, but his scariness is what makes him awesome.

Y'know what, I really want L'arc~en~Ciel to do the theme song if all this is for real. I found out about them because of Rurouni Kenshin, so if they did the theme song it'd just be perfect. Like a follow up to "The Fourth Avenue Cafe" and "Niji".

[Miaka975]

XD Yeah, but his scariness is what makes him awesome.

Y'know what, I really want L'arc~en~Ciel to do the theme song if all this is for real. I found out about them because of Rurouni Kenshin, so if they did the theme song it'd just be perfect. Like a follow up to "The Fourth Avenue Cafe" and "Niji".

heehe i was the other way around... i went back one day and was like ..holy crap laruku did THAT song? *o* hahah made me love them all the much more <3

[Blade Dancer]

Wait, what picture- I see nothing Blade...

Sorry, I was singing a Nickleback song. :P

So, um...is Rurouni Kenshin any good? Because Takeru got cast in the live-action (http://www.cyzowoman.com/2010/07/post_2099.html).

:O_O::O_O::O_O::O_O::O_O::O_O::O_O:

whoawhoawhoawhoa.

...

whoa....


WHOA!

Rurouni Kenshin! Live action?! Takeru Satou?! Daaaaamn that's got to be one of the most perfect actor to character matches ever. Maaaaan this has got me excited! Rurouni Kenshin was the first manga series I ever finished and still my favorite and daaaaamn I can't wait for this movie to come out but am going to have to because I don't live in Japan.

...

So, yeah, s'an alright series.

You should totally make a thread about this to spread the word, I'm sure people will love knowing about it.

What he said. I haven't even finished the series, and this still thrills me! Takeru Sato would be a perfect Kenshin!!

Good. I was afraid it was one of those things that is inexplicably popular like DBZ or Naruto. :P

It'll be good to have some anime to spread through my doramas and toku again.

I've been watching it in snippets with a friend of mine, and he keeps having me skip episodes where nothing happens, so I guess it's got at least a little bit of filler, but I love what I've seen of it!

Takeru Satoh as Kenshin would be worlds better than the way the anime portrayed the character, which involved giving the lead a female seiyuu whose voice just never felt right to me even though the actress was talented. I would be extremely interested in seeing a live-action adaptation. I would encourage anyone wanting to brush up on the material prior to the tokusatsu's release to read the manga instead of wasting time on the anime.

Yeah, I never could figure out why they had a female seiyu for his character... :sly: I mean, I know he's not supposed to be an overtly manly guy, but still!

Enshi Kenshin is scary. XD Though it was cool to see how he ended up being the mellow dude he is in the present day.

Wait, Enshi Kenshin? Do you mean Enishi Yukishiro? I haven't gotten to his part yet, but I've heard about the character.

[Yilei]

Kenshin's seiyuu was Mayo Suzukaze who was known previously as an actress in the Takarazuka Revue. They probably picked her partly for her popularity with the Revue and also since like Kenshin's a little ambiguous toward the beginning of the series when he's like not fighting it kind of fits. Her best known role was for Oscar in the Rose of Versailles, which is an ambiguous part as it is since it's a girl raised as a boy and joined the French Royal Guard, so yeah. They probably figured manly woman and womanly man are pretty close. XD

[Aoi Kurenai]

Wait, Enshi Kenshin? Do you mean Enishi Yukishiro? I haven't gotten to his part yet, but I've heard about the character.Haha, nah. I just mean the Kenshin from the Enshi arc, though I suppose my wording was a little wtf.

[Lynxara]

They probably figured manly woman and womanly man are pretty close. XD

I respect Mayo Suzukaze's work, I'm a huge fan of Rose of Versailles. Oscar is a great character and she is rightly reputed as a fantastic Oscar-- but the very fact she could play Oscar meant she had no business being Kenshin, in my opinion. There is no reason, based on the manga, to think Kenshin sounds so much like a girl.

Kenshin isn't a huge macho guy but I got the feeling from the manga that his personality would be conveyed through a soft-spoken but very masculine fashion. I think the character would've been better-served by an actor like Takeru Satoh in the first place. I guess we just had to wait for him to stop being a little kid. :loltongue:

[Yilei]

I respect Mayo Suzukaze's work, I'm a huge fan of Rose of Versailles. Oscar is a great character and she is rightly reputed as a fantastic Oscar-- but the very fact she could play Oscar meant she had no business being Kenshin, in my opinion. There is no reason, based on the manga, to think Kenshin sounds so much like a girl.

Kenshin isn't a huge macho guy but I got the feeling from the manga that his personality would be conveyed through a soft-spoken but very masculine fashion. I think the character would've been better-served by an actor like Takeru Satoh in the first place. I guess we just had to wait for him to stop being a little kid. :loltongue:

I agree that being Oscar doesn't seem like a good reason to cast her as Kenshin, however, I'm just thinking that that was what their train of thought was.

You bring up the option of using a soft-spoken male seiyuu, HOWEVER, during the 90s when the Rurouni Kenshin anime aired, I cannot recall of any male seiyuu at the time that really fits that description let alone in a way that would have really fit Kenshin perfectly. The latest seiyuu boom that brought about a lot of the more soft spoken male seiyuu that we know of today did not even start until after Rurouni Kenshin began airing. During the part of the 90s that the show aired, there were pretty much next to none. Today I've seen a great change where a lot of parts for young boys and and male characters like Kenshin do get cast with male seiyuu, in the early to mid 90s that was incredibly rare. Every young male character I can remember and every soft spoken male character I can think of had a female seiyuu and the male seiyuu I can think of even if they were on the higher range were very "otoko rashii" (Midorikawa Hikaru & Seki Tomokazu for example). I really don't think that another person for the part of Kenshin was even a possibility at the time of the anime's inception, so as a result they went with casting a woman to play the part. I mean, this was an era in which Hayashibara Megumi practically had at least some part in every anime ever created at the time. The talent pool was bigger than it is in the U.S., but it was significantly smaller than it is today and *especially* for guys. Even the most soft spoken guy available that I can think of, Yuuki Hiro, just doesn't fit the role. The only other alternate I probably would think of that could be comparable for the part and was active at that time would have to be be Ogata Megumi, who is another female seiyuu, but she was kind of very very busy, so I wonder if she would have been able to take the part if she was even considered as an option.

It's not that there weren't male seiyuu that had higher voices, but it's just the male seiyuu I can think of at that time that had those higher voices fit Kenshin even less. And really, the popularity and attention made to male seiyuu these days really started to bloom way after Kenshin started airing and it's grown now to some kind of annoying monster that is now affecting my boy #1.

[Lynxara]

Oh boy, seiyuu nerd time! I'll apologize in advance for not using Japanese or English name order consistently, I tend to get in the habit of typing a particular seiyuu's name a particular way and then I can't see it any other way.

You bring up the option of using a soft-spoken male seiyuu, HOWEVER, during the 90s when the Rurouni Kenshin anime aired, I cannot recall of any male seiyuu at the time that really fits that description let alone in a way that would have really fit Kenshin perfectly.

I don't agree, I think you're confusing the 80s and 90s. The 80s didn't produce a lot of interesting seiyuu, but Kenshin was produced during a big ongoing seiyuu boom in the 90s. This boom produced a lot of male seiyuu who proved time and again that they were extremely credible and flexible actors. There were also any number of vintage 70s and even some 80s seiyuu who were still very active at the time and could've been a credible Kenshin.

I won't bore anyone with a list of actors active in lead roles at the time that I think would've been a better Kenshin, but before I deleted it I'd gotten to two dozen names. Even if you had to cast Kenshin female, you could've used Megumi Ogata, who was in her heyday. To this day, I feel she remains unsurpassed in her ability to make a male character sound and feel truly male. Hell, Ogata even played Kenshin in a drama CD prior to the show's production.

Every young male character I can remember and every soft spoken male character I can think of had a female seiyuu and the male seiyuu I can think of even if they were on the higher range were very "otoko rashii" (Midorikawa Hikaru & Seki Tomokazu for example).

Really? What about Yuuki Hiro? He sucks and would be a terrible Kenshin, I freely admit, but he played more passive guys in the 90s than you could shake a stick at. Or, hell, what about Kanemaru Junichi? He specialized in playing very nice well-mannered young men and was a crazy-great actor. (And, uh, Sonic the Hedgehog, for some reason.) I'll throw in Kappei Yamaguchi and the sorely underrated Yasuhiro Takato, too.

I don't know about your characterization of Seki Tomokazu. This guy was Domon Kasshu, sure, but he was also the lead in Gravitation. He was the unremarkable main dude in Earth Girl Arjuna. In the last decade, he was the profoundly soft-spoken Jiro in Kikaider and the not-terribly-manly male lead in both Kanon adaptations. He has a lot more range than some people give him credit for.

As for Hikaru Midorikawa, I always felt like he suffered from typecasting after his turn in Gundam (which happens to a lot of guys). His role in Slayers over time evolved into a parody of his own typecasting, really. Once Japan pretty much forgot about Wing he returned to that, playing comedy one-shot roles in stuff like Keroro Gunsou and playing the sensitive-guy lead in Air. I also recall him being the doofy sensitive American in Marmalade Boy.

I mean, this was an era in which Hayashibara Megumi practically had at least some part in every anime ever created at the time.

Hayashibara didn't explode until the mid-90s, thanks to appearing in a few major roles at around the same time. Himiko in Wataru, Genkai in Yuu Yuu Hakusho, and some recurring character in Detective Conan seem to have turned her into the Mizuki Nana before we had Mizuki Nana.

She wasn't HUGE HUGE HUGE until the second half of the decade, after Evangelion and Slayers and Love Hina. She wasn't in everything even of importance in that decade, let alone absolutely everything. For instance, she's totally absent from Sailor Moon and I think Slam Dunk, and those are two of the top ten biggest shows of the decade.

It's not that there weren't male seiyuu that had higher voices, but it's just the male seiyuu I can think of at that time that had those higher voices fit Kenshin even less.

I don't buy that Kenshin needed a high-pitched voice. I never imagined him speaking that way when I read the manga, I don't recall anything in the manga that indicated he should sound like that. It certainly doesn't make sense to make him sound more like a little boy the way it does with, say, Luffy. Kenshin is a dude with history and I think he should sound like it.

I did imagine him speaking softly, but that is a matter of acting ability, not vocal range. He could've easily been a Sasaki Nozomu or Seki Tomokazu playing "serious" or even a vintage seiyuu like Tohru Furuya or Yamadera Koichi or Nobuo Tobita who made his name playing quiet men with horrible skeletons in their closet. I could see Hikaru Midorikawa pulling it off if he hadn't gotten himself typecast.

And really, the popularity and attention made to male seiyuu these days really started to bloom way after Kenshin started airing and it's grown now to some kind of annoying monster that is now affecting my boy #1.

I don't buy this. I can think of numerous 90s projects roughly concurrent with or predating Kenshin that were aggressively presented as vehicles for popular male seiyuu. What I find the most infamous of all mindless seiyuu vehicles, Weiss Kreuz, was a totally 90s production created specifically by seiyuu Koyasu Takehito to promote himself and his friends.

There were plenty of others, too, less blatant but still drowning in extraneous CD single and radio drama merch pimping the male seiyuu. Fushigi Yuugi, Gundam W, Macross 7, Cyber Formula (especially the OVAs)... hell, between Slam Dunk and Cyber Formula you launch almost all of the biggest male seiyuu of the 90s.

[Blade Dancer]

Wow, that really was seiyuu geek time. :loltongue:

Too bad I didn't recognize too many of the names, seems like an interesting convo. :laugh:

[Yilei]

I don't agree, I think you're confusing the 80s and 90s. The 80s didn't produce a lot of interesting seiyuu, but Kenshin was produced during a big ongoing seiyuu boom in the 90s. This boom produced a lot of male seiyuu who proved time and again that they were extremely credible and flexible actors. There were also any number of vintage 70s and even some 80s seiyuu who were still very active at the time and could've been a credible Kenshin.

No, I'm not. I probably didn't explain myself well since it was quite late, but I recognized that there was a boom in the 90s, but it was still only growing and despite the fact that there were a lot of prominent male seiyuu during that time, the pool of talent I can think of do not fit Kenshin's role and the soft-spoken male persona was only developing at that point in time. The 90s compared today has a much smaller pool and the competition was significantly less fierce than it is today where there is a huge plethora of guys and a lot more that are able to take on softer spoken male roles. Today there is a higher demand for softer spoken guys whereas the 80s and into the first half of the 90s, most of the male roles available were largely more on the masculine side leaving the development of softer roles to begin to grow in the later half. Rurouni Kenshin is a series I mark as one of the series that helped to develop this demand, but it started in '96 toward the beginning of when things were starting to change. The later years of the decade were when things really started to take off and there were many many series with soft spoken male characters.

I won't bore anyone with a list of actors active in lead roles at the time that I think would've been a better Kenshin, but before I deleted it I'd gotten to two dozen names. Even if you had to cast Kenshin female, you could've used Megumi Ogata, who was in her heyday. To this day, I feel she remains unsurpassed in her ability to make a male character sound and feel truly male. Hell, Ogata even played Kenshin in a drama CD prior to the show's production.

I would really like to see this list because quite honestly, out of the guys you listed I don't think any of them really would fit Kenshin well. Ogata Megumi I'm aware would fit, but she had a lot of other roles during the time the series was airing, so I'm thinking she may not have been available due to her time constraints. Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho is very comparable to Kenshin in his own backstory and dynamic of the character. The balance of her abilities would have fit him perfectly, but I really don't think she was available since she was on so many other series at the time. Takayama Minami is another I thought of after I first posted, but she was also pretty busy at the time especially since she got into the crazy good insanity of Meitantei Conan.

Really? What about Yuuki Hiro? He sucks and would be a terrible Kenshin, I freely admit, but he played more passive guys in the 90s than you could shake a stick at. Or, hell, what about Kanemaru Junichi? He specialized in playing very nice well-mannered young men and was a crazy-great actor. (And, uh, Sonic the Hedgehog, for some reason.) I'll throw in Kappei Yamaguchi and the sorely underrated Yasuhiro Takato, too.

I agree that Yuuki Hiro played a lot of passive characters, which is why I mentioned him, but he just wouldn't fit Kenshin.

As for Kanemaru Junichi and others that you've mentioned, I think you're confusing being soft spoken with their acting potential. It's not that I agree with typecasting, but really certain seiyuu are *GOOD* at certain kinds of roles and not so great at other kinds. Kanemaru Junichi is the kind of seiyuu that while is softspoken and fits that criterion for Kenshin's personality, his abilities are best suited for characters that are nice and hold no malice or ill will and it seems to me he would be lacking with Kenshin's killer edge and dark past. A seiyuu selected for Kenshin has to really skillfully do both, and while he's done Sonic, I wouldn't consider Sonic a strong enough example of a character with edge that could passibly even compare to Kenshin's edge.

Yamaguchi Kappei is underrated and I love him, but he doesn't strike me as a good Kenshin either. Yamaguchi Kappei shines more when he gets to be kind of wild and Kenshin would be a role that is too stoic for him at times although I can see him doing well at both some of the calmer, more playful moments and able to get serious and down to business for the fight scenes, as a seiyuu I find that he wouldn't fit because Kenshin is too much like a jar/container for him and his voice doesn't go well with upholding a sense of mystique. It's very upfront.

Takato Yasuhiro is able to handle both the light and dark aspects really well, but I question whether or not his voice is able to convey the mystique. Some voices are more naturally mysterious than others, his version of it strikes me as something that would come out as a "nice guy" with a neurologically psychotic dark side rather than a mysterious and painful one full of guilt and sin. As a result, a lot of his more well-known roles tend to be gag characters or true blue villains.

I don't know about your characterization of Seki Tomokazu. This guy was Domon Kasshu, sure, but he was also the lead in Gravitation. He was the unremarkable main dude in Earth Girl Arjuna. In the last decade, he was the profoundly soft-spoken Jiro in Kikaider and the not-terribly-manly male lead in both Kanon adaptations. He has a lot more range than some people give him credit for.

Seki Tomokazu totally wouldn't fit. He was my favorite for years, and he's really no Kenshin. He can do the soft spoken thing, but...I want to say it's his range, but that's not quite it. He's really good light and comical roles and can do the more dramatic aspects rather well (ex: Kyou from Fruits Basket), but it's something about the actual sound of his voice that just wouldn't work for Kenshin. It's very distinct and it works really well in playful moments, but a lot less well in the kind of dramatic scenes that would have been required of him in Kenshin. I mean, I can see him excelling as the Battousai and even some of the gag scenes with gratuitous oros, but some of the other kinds of serious moments like scenes with Kaoru just don't really seem like would be his forte because his voice just strikes me as something that lacks a sense of subtle reserve, which is a trait that I pretty strongly associate with Kenshin both in personality and just his fighting style. Like he kicks ass, but he's reserved about it because he doesn't kill anymore. The voice that does him needs to be able to embody that also and I don't feel like that's something that's really up Seki's alley.

As for Hikaru Midorikawa, I always felt like he suffered from typecasting after his turn in Gundam (which happens to a lot of guys). His role in Slayers over time evolved into a parody of his own typecasting, really. Once Japan pretty much forgot about Wing he returned to that, playing comedy one-shot roles in stuff like Keroro Gunsou and playing the sensitive-guy lead in Air. I also recall him being the doofy sensitive American in Marmalade Boy.

Midorikawa did suffer from a lot of typecasting, but I really don't know if would have been able to do Kenshin. Time being a factor because he was also kind of an "it" guy during that era so he would've been busy as crap too, but I don't think I've heard enough of his low voice to see if he would fit. I'm remembering how he did the Warrior of Light in Dissidia and I think that could work, but because of his typecasting, I really wonder about how fluidly he can go from the lighter moments to the darker moments in Rurouni Kenshin. Miaka would probably be able to speak more for him since he's her favorite, but I'm not sure if I'm confident he could do the role fluidly.

Hayashibara didn't explode until the mid-90s, thanks to appearing in a few major roles at around the same time. Himiko in Wataru, Genkai in Yuu Yuu Hakusho, and some recurring character in Detective Conan seem to have turned her into the Mizuki Nana before we had Mizuki Nana.

She wasn't HUGE HUGE HUGE until the second half of the decade, after Evangelion and Slayers and Love Hina. She wasn't in everything even of importance in that decade, let alone absolutely everything. For instance, she's totally absent from Sailor Moon and I think Slam Dunk, and those are two of the top ten biggest shows of the decade.

You are VASTLY underestimating Hayashibara Megumi and forgetting a lot of her largest roles from the early 90s and particularly female Ranma from Ranma 1/2, which went from the 80s and into the mid 90s. She was already huge in 1995 when I went to go see her at Anime America when I was 11 and she performed a concert at this bitty convention with a gigantic room of people. She had Sazan Eyes, Bannou Bunka Neko Musume, Minkymomo, Hello Kitty, and a whole slough of roles under her belt already by that time and previewed Slayers to us in that huge room and I had to stand on my freakin' chair to see from behind the large dude in front of me. While she may not have had large roles in every series, she usually had some role in some form in just about every series up until the later few years of the decade when the anime industry started becoming more competitive with more studios cropping up and the studios started making shorter and shorter series. An anime with at least 50-some odd episodes was normal in those days and shorter series like Evangelion where like mini-series. The change in the length and competitiveness in each series grew along side with the change and competitiveness in the seiyuu industry itself with more and more people entering schools to get into it.

Hell the 90s, were the days where the only hot seiyuu were the women. The idea of young attractive guys voicing characters is a characteristic of our times now and is an indication of the growth in the interest in seiyuu and the growth in female fans in anime. It used to be a mostly male focused industry just like video games, but like video games, the industry has changed with more and more females taking an interest.

I don't buy that Kenshin needed a high-pitched voice. I never imagined him speaking that way when I read the manga, I don't recall anything in the manga that indicated he should sound like that. It certainly doesn't make sense to make him sound more like a little boy the way it does with, say, Luffy. Kenshin is a dude with history and I think he should sound like it.

I did imagine him speaking softly, but that is a matter of acting ability, not vocal range. He could've easily been a Sasaki Nozomu or Seki Tomokazu playing "serious" or even a vintage seiyuu like Tohru Furuya or Yamadera Koichi or Nobuo Tobita who made his name playing quiet men with horrible skeletons in their closet. I could see Hikaru Midorikawa pulling it off if he hadn't gotten himself typecast.

I agree that the voice did not have to be particularly high, but because of his kind and sometimes goofy nature in certain scenes in the earlier part of the series and semi-effeminate appearance, in anime this usually translates to having a voice on the higher spectrum. That it should sound like a little boy or not is up to personal opinion, but the characteristics of his appearance in combination with his earlier behavior in non-battle scenes are usually indicative of a person with a higher voice in anime especially at that time. Breaking that idea is something that happened more commonly later.

Seki Tomokazu I already went over, but Sasaki Nozomu I also don't think would fit mostly because the direction he was going in with his career and acting style in the 90s just didn't put him in a position to be able to do Kenshin well. Timing-wise he changed his acting style just in the last decade and with that new acting style he would have been able to pull off Kenshin, but the series was kind of already over. He didn't try with experimenting in the serious/cool until the 2000s. Back in the 90s, he was doing the more bright and active or mischievous punks. He could have been able to do the get down to butt-kicking business type moments, but really serious dramatics wasn't really something that was 90s Sasaki Nozomu and his version of lighter moments aren't very Kenshin-esque in that they weren't very masking a darker secret kind of light moments. If they re-did the series now, I'd nominate Sasaki Nozomu, but not back then.

Furuya Tohru was impossible because he was on a break save for Sailor Moon at the time and didn't really do anything else in 1995 or 1996. That aside, I'm not sure if his voice had the quality to portray all the aspects of Kenshin. It's very guy next door-ish. He's done characters that could fight for sure, but his version of nice and comical doesn't fit Kenshin in his lighter moments and I'm not sure if I could get chills from as Battousai.

Yamadera Koichi was possibly doable, but he got really busy starting in 1995 because he took over most of the roles of another seiyuu who died. When you're trying to fill in for what someone else left behind, it's not exactly a really great time to go out adventuring and getting your own roles. He's crazily able to do a lot of different things, but aside from the timing I don't know if the casting directors would have agreed that he fit Kenshin's multifaceted role.

Tobita Nobuo had roles in Rurouni Kenshin as minor characters in the first season, which makes me think he probably tried out. Evidently the casting directors don't agree with you that he was eligible and fit the role. His range of abilities seem like they would be able to fit the range of scenes that someone playing Kenshin would have to do, but the casting directors probably felt that his voice didn't fit Kenshin's image. I attribute this to what I mentioned earlier about how his effeminate look and certain action of his toward the beginning seeming like they would align better with a higher ranged voice that would only go in a more bass direction during intensely serious moments.

I don't buy this. I can think of numerous 90s projects roughly concurrent with or predating Kenshin that were aggressively presented as vehicles for popular male seiyuu. What I find the most infamous of all mindless seiyuu vehicles, Weiss Kreuz, was a totally 90s production created specifically by seiyuu Koyasu Takehito to promote himself and his friends.

There were plenty of others, too, less blatant but still drowning in extraneous CD single and radio drama merch pimping the male seiyuu. Fushigi Yuugi, Gundam W, Macross 7, Cyber Formula (especially the OVAs)... hell, between Slam Dunk and Cyber Formula you launch almost all of the biggest male seiyuu of the 90s.

Your timeline for anime is pretty screwed up. You have to take into consideration the order in which these things came out because it effects the casting criterion of the times. Not only that, but you have to consider the genre of the series when you're thinking about how much it affected the careers of the cast members in it and the popularity of the series itself. While there were projects that presented themselves as vehicles for male seiyuu, you FAIL to even evaluate how successful they were in that mission.

Weiss Kreuz POSTDATES Rurouni Kenshin. Weiss Kreuz is a vehicle that promoted popular male seiyuu and I do believe it is something that helped to propel the careers of male seiyuu to be what it is today, but these things did not happen until AFTER Rurouni Kenshin. Other things that helped to change the face of the male side of the seiyuu industry include dating sim games for girls such as the Neo Angelique series as well as Sotsugyou M. Weiss Kreuz was crazy popular and I followed that series like baby ducks follow their mother and still have VHS tapes for the series, but seriously that kind of phenomenon did not even become really noticably popular until AFTER Rurouni Kenshin started airing, so none of the effects of those series would have been a factor in the casting selection. It was just not a part of the reality of the times yet, but became a trend in the following years when people started to notice how lucrative it was.

Fushigi Yuugi is another series that DID help, but much of the effects of Fushigi Yuugi did not come out right away. Rurouni Kenshin was in production during the time that Fushigi Yuugi was airing so the full results of a girl aimed cast were not yet realized when the cast would have been settled. After Fushigi Yuugi and other series like it aired, it became clear that such anime were lucrative and so more and more of them were made with different targeting different audiences than previously. Gundam Wing also because it had about the same air dates as Fushigi Yuugi.

Macross 7 is a HORRIBLE example because it's a terrible anime and so many people hate it. It is one of the series in the Macross franchise where every person I've met that likes Macross abhors the fact that it's actually part of the canon timeline. It's good at showing an ability to simply create fan service anime, but it kind of fails miserably at showing it being actually successful when so many people despise it.

Cyber Formula is also not necessarily a good example of launching seiyuu into popularity either, but it survived as long as it did because the industry was not as competitive. The series suffered TERRIBLY from pretty low ratings and horrible toy sales during it's air time. It was SUPPOSED to be slated for 50 episodes and to air for a full year with 4 courses, but after 3, their main sponsor which was Takara Co which is now Takara Tomy dropped them and it became a 37 episode series. It was totally the opposite of lucrative and would not have looked that great on the resumes of the seiyuu that were in it.

Slam Dunk is a pretty good example in that it is an incredibly popular series, but the seiyuu in it is not the reason for it's popularity. The series is popular for its manga and style of storytelling. While I do think it helped the careers a lot of the seiyuu in it, if you were really into seiyuu Slam Dunk was not a series to go to for that and I wouldn't really call it a huge career launching series. If this was the case I would think Canna Nobutoshi would be much more of a megahit than he actually is. He's only a mediocre seiyuu and newbies like Miyano Mamoru and Fukuyama Jun are more popular than him.

And yes, this is incredibly geeky. I'm trying to run the fuck away from anime, but it keeps dragging me back in because I have too many memories and history with it.

[Inui Takumi]

Okay, I'm callin it. This may very well be the longest post I've ever seen in this thread, much less any other thread on here. Good lord. :P

[Aoi Kurenai]

I've seen bigger.

[Inui Takumi]

I've seen bigger.

That's what she said!


HOOOOO-SNAAPP!!!!

wait....did that just backfire?

[Aoi Kurenai]

I want to say that it did but I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Inui Takumi]

Me neither, bro. Me neither...

[Miaka975]

That's what she said!


HOOOOO-SNAAPP!!!!

wait....did that just backfire?

everyone's seen bigger than yours :O

hahahah so i wouldn't be surprised that "she" said that as well :P

[Inui Takumi]

everyone's seen bigger than yours :O

hahahah so i wouldn't be surprised that "she" said that as well :P

That's not what you said last night! HEEYOOOOOOOOHHH!!!

[Miaka975]

That's not what you said last night! HEEYOOOOOOOOHHH!!!

no that wouldn't be..... wait.... i'm pretty sure i said it last nite... lemme go check the logs...........

oh wait no that was just chopping it off XD ... same diff :3

[Inui Takumi]

no that wouldn't be..... wait.... i'm pretty sure i said it last nite... lemme go check the logs...........

oh wait no that was just chopping it off XD ... same diff :3

You just want a reason to get in my pants. :169:

[Miaka975]

pfft for that size? ... or lack thereof?

[Inui Takumi]

I'd still rock yer world, babez. ;)

[Miaka975]

I'd still rock yer world, babez. ;)

you wish :P

[Inui Takumi]

You have NO idea. :P