Behind The Nihon Review

Kurosaki Maon propelled into stardom (or am I a bit premature in saying this?) relatively recently with the anime Highschool of the Dead and To Aru Majutsu no Index. A lovely young lady who seems to be getting used to her sudden shift from the smaller club venue of Dearstage to events as big as [...]

Seeing Nirgilis live was wonderful, not only because of the popularity of some of their songs, but also due to the fact that they have quite the good evaluation on the Japanese music scene. Their eclectic, mish-mash style is extremely unique for a band that does anime songs. In fact, anime has for such a [...]

Part 1 of covering this panel took so long that I decided to make this into a two part post. Please forgive for the massive Youtube video dumping! I’ve added the producers’ Twitter and Website links, so don’t hesitate to show them your support, even if you don’t know any Japanese.

Although I enjoyed last year’s panel, this year’s Mirai no Neiro was an entirely different beast. Three hours long, the entire presentation was divided into roughly two halves: the first introduced never before seen promotion videos and messages from their creators, and the second involved presentations by creators who had come from Japan and Kenmochi [...]

What exactly does it mean to be a virtual diva? Before we can truly understand Hatsune Miku’s popularity, it’s perhaps best to identify what exactly she is. Surprisingly though, this is quite tricky: Clearly, in the most simple terms, she’s the character designed as the face of Fujita Saki’s recorded and digitalized voice for a [...]