UlasanAnime.com – Approximately two years ago, I began following individuals on platforms like Tumblr and Twitter who shared pictures of seiyuu. With the increasing broadcast of radio shows and events via Nico or Ustream, more images have surfaced beyond the typical semi-pin-up scans found in seiyuu magazines and blogs. The proliferation of platforms like Twitter and the iPhone in Japan has also contributed to a greater volume of images being shared. Furthermore, there are now more seiyuu magazines available compared to two years prior.
I’m uncertain about the exact reasons for this trend, but as previously mentioned, seiyuu possess a distinct 2.5D advantage. The recent boom in seiyuu popularity coincides with my efforts to learn the names of all the “popular” voice actresses by following image blogs. Typically, these blogs label the individuals in the photos, and often the names are written in a way that requires careful attention. It presents a good opportunity to learn them.
It was quite a learning process, as recognizing kanji itself isn’t a significant challenge for me. The real difficulty lay in remembering how the names were supposed to be spelled out. Names can be deceptive, as they don’t always phonetically match their written form. I recall that when I first started, I could recognize only about 20% of the people featured. Now?
Here is a list of popular voice actresses that I encountered this morning. It appears to be sorted by the number of roles they had in 2011. I can now recognize all of them! This is a significant development because, although I’ve followed the seiyuu scene from a distance for a long time, it’s only recently that I’ve started recognizing their names in Japanese.
While I might still jest about people learning Japanese through anime, I don’t underestimate its impact. This impact seems to be directly proportional to the effort one invests in learning and engaging with the foreign language. Perhaps this phenomenon is a testament to the power of “mokkori” in an educational context. I believe so.
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