Over at Riuva there has been some commotion about a recent Aya fiasco concerning the “creative” use of the bikini, the original source being located here.

Just add water

↩[LWC 61]

Given the state of anime fandom in Japan, it’s interesting to consider the “idol status” imbued upon the voice actors of our favorite animated characters. There’s a distinct difference between, say, celebrities in America (even the word difference) that are featured in the flesh. There’s the disparity in entertainment technology and medium choice there – live action versus animation; one needs real actors, the other, only their voices. But that’s the striking thing – how the entire person comes to fame from what is originally only the employment of their voice. How does someone like Hirano, whose anime “discography” heavily outweighs television appearances, come to such heightened levels of fame? Despite the fact that she’s a 21 year old model – dare we say “super model”? – compare it to American voice actors (or relative lack thereof): a middle aged Dan Castellaneta would not receive the same hypted-treatment as Hirano (would you want to see him in a bikini?) but he does not reach similar pinnacles of David Carradine-esque popularlity.

Inversely, there may be a retrograde effect when – insofar as only anime is viewed in an premature cross-section – American actors play voice roles, like Cameron Diaz in Shrek. One has to wonder if, due to the epitome of unmerited faggotry that is social networking in the USA, Shrek got Diaz because it’s Shrek, or if Diaz got Shrek because she’s Diaz (wiki’s 11^th reference lightly speaks for the latter).

There’s also the difference in intertextuality – or we can call it blatant commercializing – apparent in anime that isn’t so visible in the same way as more generalized American animation (all South Park aside) is. ‘Casual’ fans of anime speak of Kyoani, Key, Sunrise, Taniguchi, etc.; ‘casual’ fans of American animation speak perhaps more directly of characters, Peter, Homer, Cartman, Bender, etc. There isn’t as much of a directive continuum behind the “fanthropology” of American animation. Fans of anime direct attention just as much to archetypal characters in typical, rearticulated anime (Key works et. al) as they do to the creative forces that invent these cultural artifacts. Thus it’s more intriguing to take note of the Kyon Continuum which features a similar signifier (nearly identical, coming from an artless person) that fights for a slightly less similar signified, hence the lesser-Kyon. In anime it may be more of a semiotic warfare that contests for one character design to appropriate the breadth of the archetype.

The Hare Hare Yukai is more or less fascinating in itself, but there’s some special allure to seeing people actually dance it. What was primarily invented within the animated medium finds its way into reality and as such is concretized from the utopian imaginary community. There’s several things at work here:

(1) the effect of viewing depends on the audience – a Western (non-Japanese) will find this different (how so would be impossible to determine) than a native;

(2) the seiyuu themselves performing this cultural ritual brings the essence of the fictive anime closer to the audience as non-fiction, adhering us tightly into the social and cultural web of anime (and fandom thereof) as an increasingly global, and, as the internet may subtly suggest, a transnational phenomenon;

(3) real actors may talk of “becoming the character”, though here it is reversed as the anime character becomes the seiyuu. With non-adaptive film (as in the movie isn’t a reworking of an animation) the channeling of persona and identity flows into the product and is altered by the setting because the actors as “blank” signifiers must take on the nature of the character. With this reversal of live-action – the physical appearance of the voice only – comes all the connotation of the animation from which the seiyuu has performed. A special case is Hirano, Konata and Haruhi as Lucky Star could be viewed entirely within a lens of very critical Haruhism. To that extent Haruhi and subsequent Haruhism establish a Haruhi-bias similar to a Kyon-bias when viewing Kanon 2006 after no Yuutsu.

With connotative seiyuu continuums abound in anime we’re helpless to stop making unwarranted connections. There are those spiritual predecessors and harbingers that elicit classic responses (i.e. “I’ve seen this before”), but, nevertheless, the cultural actors and artifacts present in each work are autonomous though kinetic, traveling through a very turbulent ether of fan-based perception, attitude and reception that is subject to give one work a cold-shoulder and a welcoming hug only months apart from one another…depending on whether or not Lawson blogs it.