This month, Kio mostly talks about Elden Ring. But we also get to see a high-quality version of one of the best covers he ever drew (no bias from me, clearly).
Even after 100 hours, Kio is having trouble in Elden Ring. In many places, he feels that he would never have been able to figure things out without strategy guides. (Forgive me for not translating this in greater detail.)
Kio keeps seeing figures and illustrations from Elden Ring but for the most part has no idea who anyone is, seeing as he’s only played 16% of the game.
Reflecting on his time with a much older FromSoftware game, King’s Field II, Kio recalls his experience. Despite the fact that it wasn’t really “open world,” finding out how one area of the game connects to another was very exciting.
There was a remix of AKIRA music playing at the gallery, and Kio wondered where it came from. Turns out that it was new arrangements done for the gallery. Kio wants a CD of it.
High-quality version of the cover to Genshiken Volume 6, as well as just the art of Ogiue. Needless to say, I love this cover and volume to death. Also check the thread to see lots of people posting their copies (and variations).
At Otakon 2023, Iwao Junko (Tomoyo in Cardcaptor Sakura) had a panel focused exclusively on her history and career. This is a summary of the panel, as well as notes from the Q&A that occurred. To read the interview I conducted with her and collaborator Kawamura Ryu, go here.
The Beginning
Iwao started off the panel by talking about her childhood, and how she loved listening to records found in storybooks, watching anime, listening to music. At that time, voice acting wasn’t seen as it is today, so when she asked others about a career in that realm, they told her she would have to be an actor or a singer/musician. Even so, she thought about getting into voice acting since she was 6 or 7 years old.
Around 13, she secretly auditioned to become an idol, and while she was ready to get rejected 100 or 200 times, she ended up getting accepted after just on try. Her parents (especially her dad) were very against it, but she promised them that she would quit in ten years if she didn’t make it.
So she went to Tokyo and did lessons, and she eventually debuted as an idol in a four-person group at the age of 16. She was actually replacing another idol in the group who had “graduated” (i.e. quit and moved on), but the group was already planning to split up after one year. Once that was done, she had to do part-time jobs and attend night school.
Iwao’s First Anime Role
From then on, until the age of 23, Iwao just worked and auditioned, ending up with various jobs. She was in musicals, and also played an assistant in a science show for kids. She even worked at a train station. One day, one of the members of the science show saw Iwao and asked if she had given up on show business. At that time, the ten-year deadline she had promised her parents was almost up. This person mentioned that a certain show was looking for someone who could act and sing, and so Iwao went for it because it could be her last chance. After auditioning, she was nervous waiting for results every day.
It was her first anime role, and it was Melissa Thorn, one of the main characters in an Japanese-French co-produced anime called Montana Jones, about explorers on a voyage. Got the part of one of the main characters of Montana Jones. When she told her parents about it, worried that time was technically already up, her parents instead congratulated her, and said they want Iwao to keep trying for another 10 or even 20 years.
From there, Iwao joined a voice acting school and practiced for her debut in Montana Jones. One thing that surprised her about working on the show was that there was no rehearsal time in anime. The first day of recording is when you meet the rest of the cast.
Another surprise was that they recorded based on roughly drawn non-color animatics. She expected to be acting in reference to finished animation, and while there was sometimes color, that was often not the case. Sometimes, ttwo characters would even be represented by just a red line and a blue line.
The other main characters were played by Otsuka Akio (Solid Snake, Black Jack) and Nakao Ryusei (Freeza). Their performances were so good that she worried there were actually prior practice sessions that she didn’t know about and missed. Iwao couldn’t keep up with them at all.
The way the recording studio was set up, 10-plus people had to work with four microphones. And in fact, one of those mics was the “main character mic,” exclusively used by Ohtsuka as Montana Jones. The result: you ad to quietly get up to the mics each time and constantly choosing which of the three you’d use every time. Not only that, but recording was analog back then, and the tape didn’t stop for you. Every take was 15-minute long (about half an episode), and whenever there was a mistake, everyone had to start all over again. Iwao remembers the other voice actors getting frustrated with her and asking, “What is this amateur doing here?” It was Otsuka and Nakao who helped her through the process, until they eventually finished the first episode.
After the debut episode, haired, the show actually got complaints from viewers who wanted her to be replaced with someone more experienced, and she even received a stack of physical hate mail complaining about her. The other actors supported her and let her know that everyone has to deal with this. Gradually, the staff also supported her, and she gained fans little by little. She still got negative feedback, but would also receive letters from fans. Because of that, she wanted to become someone who could someday help a newbie overcome these same troubles. Something curious she noticed was that once she started having a more positive outlook, she started landing a lot more roles.
Going Full-Time
At first, she didn’t have enough voice acting gigs to quit her day job, but eventually had enough roles that she could go full-time. Her first time as protagonist was in Key the Metal Idol, and from there, it was Cardcaptor Sakura and Evangelion and so on. She remembers her manager saying, “You’re gonna get it,” in regards to Eva. It was with Eva that she could make voice acting her sole career. One thing she learned, though, was that despite the job being “voice acting,” a lot of her work seemed to be event-related. Couldn’t get much sleep, which was rough.
Iwao recalled that the Eva audition was 15 minutes long for everyone. There was a long bench where everyone sat as they waited to try out, and she could see so many voice actors there who were interested. Iwao actually auditioned for two roles, and hinted that the second role has become known recently, but did not specify which one.
Q&A
At the 20th anniversary CCS exhibition, she got to go to dinner with all the other actors outside of work.
Shows she wishes people would know more: Harimogu Harley, Betterman, Key the Metal Idol.
Perfect Blue was a case where she actually received a real script and storyboards prior to recording. Iwao’s time as an idol only lasted one year, but she knew from others while working at that time that some of the things Mima goes through in the film actually dho happen. What she didn’t find out until later that director Kon Satoshi didn’t know anything about her idol history or age, and decided it based on one line that everyone was supposed to recite for their audition: “Who…are you?” Kon had decided on voice alone, so when he looked at her résumé, he reacted to Iwao’s extremely strong-sounding family name, which translates roughly to “Boulder Man.” Kon was excited to see what kind of Rock-like Man would show up, and was surprised Iwao was rather small. Because of this, he was watching her with a stern and scary face, but she didn’t know this was the reason, and Iwao was so scared that she couldn’t greet him. When playing Mima and the “other” Mima, she had to have separate recording days for the different personalities, and thought Matsumoto Rica (who played Rumi) gave a powerful performance.
When asked if she ever had the chance to be the mentor she wanted to become during Montana Jones, she mentioned that she thought upon entering her 50s that this would be her mentorship phase (Iwao is 53 this year). The series where she was able to to do this was an anime called Shining Post, where she thought, “Now is my time to shine.” Iwao ended up telling the new voice actors about what she herself had experienced.
I got to ask a question as well, one that I couldn’t fit into the interview! “Are there any roles you played later in your career that would have been difficult for you earlier in your career?” Iwao replied that it would have to be Hisae in Onihei, as it was a role where she felt she could bring the experience she had built up over time. When playing her, Iwao thought, “Finally, I can play adult roles.”
Everyone who worked on the Madoka Magica found out about the twists and turns week by week, so it was a surprised to everyone.
Iwao is from Kyushu, and a major Tomoyo/Iwao fan asked the final question, which was regarding recommendations for anyone traveling to her home prefecture. Iwao’s Her recommendations are Beppu in Oita Prefecture, which is famous for hot springs. She also suggested checking out Nagasaki.
Iwao Junko is a singer and voice actor most famously known for playing Daidouji Tomoyo in the anime Cardcaptor Sakura. Kawamura Ryu is a musician and composer who has frequently collaborated with Iwao on musical projects.This interview was conducted at Otakon 2023 in Washington, DC.
My first question is for Iwao-san: I first came to know you through your role as Tomoyo in Cardcaptor Sakura, and you helped make her one of my favorite characters ever. I’ve noticed that in the first series, our approach to Tomoyo was a little different from how it turned out later on. Was there any catalyst for this change?
Iwao: Daidouji Tomoyo in the Clow Card series is an elementary school girl, and she’s grown up a bit in Clear Card. So as some years have passed, I played her a little more mature.
Iwao-san, your singing as Tomoyo is beautiful but also notably different from how you approach your personal music. How do you manage to stay in character so well while singing as Tomoyo?
Iwao: When I sing as Tomoyo, I sing as an elementary school girl. But when I sing as myself, I use my natural voice.
Is it a challenge to play Tomoyo while singing?
Iwao: It’s not all that difficult, actually.
My next question is for Kawamura-san: What made you decide on the bass as your instrument of choice?
Kawamura: I’d have fewer rivals.
And how did you go from playing music yourself to also arranging for others?
Kawamura: It’s actually something I learned from Tanaka Kohei-san. What he mentioned was that, as a musician/player, you don’t get the same royalty payments as you would if you’re a composer. So what I learned is that you should be well-rounded, and have both “composer” and “player” under your belt.
Are there any other lessons you’ve learned from working with Tanaka-san that have stuck with you?
Kawamura: His policy was “make something other people won’t make.” He’s ingrained that in me.
Speaking of Tanaka Kohei, I also know Iwao-san from a series called Betterman, and your performance really stands out to me when you play Sakura—it’s very haunting. What was it like working on Betterman?
Tomoyo: So on Betterman, which Tanaka Kohei-san did the music for, I auditioned and landed that role. I wanted to play the character of Sakura as a girl who is cute, yet enigmatic and even a little frightening. Expressing that scariness was not so much about changing my tone, but rather taking care to change the tempo within the lines.
Kohei-san was the one who basically welcomed me into the world of anime, so I’m very grateful to him. I had done various jobs as a singer and such, but I always longed to be involved in the world of anime—to be a voice actor. I was missing that step towards that industry, though, and It was Kohei-san who allowed me to get into singing covers of other songs, providing me opportunities for people to see and hear me. So he is a very important figure to me.
Another series Iwao-san worked on that is very influential is Evangelion. Do you have any memories of working on Eva that stand out strongly in your mind?
Iwao: I got the role of class rep Horaki Hikari from auditioning. When playing her, Director Anno-san asked me to express her energeticness and her “class-rep feel” through my voice. However, in Shin Evangelion, Hikari is a mother, and as a mother, she would have a different voice tone as well as a different emotion to her compared to the television version where she was a school girl and a class rep.
On that note, over the past decade or so, you returned to many roles—in Evangelion, in Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card, and you even reprised the role of Sakura in Super Robot Wars 30. What is it like to revisit these older characters of yours?
Iwao: Going back to previous roles is very interesting because what I thought I remembered I may not actually remember, and some things might have changed—like the tone of my voice. I would want to focus on meeting the expectations of my fans. For example, for Super Robot Wars 30, the Betterman director, Yonetani-san, was actually there to see over my breaths and my tones so that I was better able to reproduce what I sounded like and what the fans expected me.
Kio attended a live screening of the newest How Do You Like Wednesday?, which included people from the cast. It was a fun and unusual experience. He did not attend in Ikebukuro.
Kio made these Madarame drawings as part of a special collaboration with the series Love-yan, which features a protagonist who resembles Madarame. Kio also vaguely denies knowing about the Rocking Spark attack from Ultraman and how similar it looks to Madarame’s pose.
Kio recalls how tough it was to live on the top floor (6th) of a building because of how hot it got in the summer. He tells fellow manga creator Kusada to take care of himself amid some very high temperatures.
The first tweet states that really good artists can draw Image B, where the frame is mostly taken up by the left leg. Kio says that he tries to draw B but can only really do A.
Kio has played Elden Ring for over 50 hours and is over Level 50, but only just reached Limgrave.
He can’t get the timing for rolling and such down, and while he played King’s Field, he hasn’t played later FromSoftware games aside from Shadow Tower and Dark Souls.
July is a packed month. Not only do I have Otakon at the end of the year, but I’m also in LA this weekend for Anime Expo and to see today the first HololiveEN live concert, Connect the World! Back when tickets became available, I almost missed them entirely, but I got lucky that there was some available after the initial prerelease sale. I fully intend on writing a review of the experience.
I won’t be lying when I say that I’m nervous about attending large events after just getting over COVID a month ago, but I will be masked as much as humanly possible for my sake and others’. I hope everyone else treats others attending these big gatherings with respect and compassion.
Thank you to my Patreon subscribers at the start of this summer season!
I got to conduct an extensive interview with a 20-year veteran of the industry. Tabata goes into detail and working with the late, great Kimura Takahiro.
Anime Expo and Connect the World has many powerful individuals I’m interested in, but Otakon has Iwao Junko: the voice of Tomoyo from Cardcaptor Sakura. Here’s to hoping I can get an interview with her! It would be a dream come true.
Gundam manga artist Tokita Kouichi shares a photo of a first-era Gundam model kit. Kio reacts by saying that the instructions are from before they changed how joints work on Gunpla models.
Kio’s tortoise has been walking quickly around in their home, being hyper. Kio comments that outdoor spaces would be good for it, but the actual outdoor space available right now isn’t all that big, so this is the best he can do right now.
The reason it’s so hyper is because the warm summery weather is affected it as a cold-blooded creature.
Kio visited actual sites from some How Do You Like Wednesday? Specials. The first tweet shows one of 12 bridges featured, and the second is Suigou Sawara Ayame Park.
Kio thanks a fan for sharing a Monthly Newtype video about manga in 2008, the height of one of the host’s teen years. Genshiken and Spotted Flower both get mentioned briefly. (See 23m45s in the video below.)
Kio later tweets about the video separately, commenting that he likes how writer and host Mafia Kajita says that Spotted Flower has had one hell of a development.
As Kio sees artists tweeting about whether they got into Comiket or not, he is working on his (unrelated) erotic doujinshi. He’s been drawing but also cutting content out, so even though he’s drawn 30 pages, it feels like only the beginning.
Working on his new ero doujinshi seems to be an endless task. It includes things like fretting over which erotic sound effects to use, like “guchu” vs “gucho.”
Kio, after getting his ass kicked by the boss Margit in Elden Ring, goes back to drawing ero manga. He likes how he can just skip bosses and explore elsewhere in an open world game.
Kio got through 63 pages of his ero manga manuscript, but is setting it aside to get some of his professional work done. Apparently, the next part is the climax.
So it finally happened: I got my first case of COVID-19. I’ve been isolating, but I’ve also finally started testing negative, so I think I’m over the hump.
I already announced it on Twittter, but anyone who attended Anime Central 2023 should probably get themselves tested if they haven’t already. While I was masked for pretty much the entire time, I most likely had COVID-19 during the entire event, and it’’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to the coronavirus.
While it might be too late for anyone who’s first reading about my COVID-19 case here, I still wanted to talk about it in this status update for a couple reasons. First, well, this is technically the “status of Ogiue Maniax.” Second, many people are afraid to admit they got COVID, worried that they might be looked upon negatively if they say anything, or feel a sense of guilt about how they put themselves and/or others in danger. But I think the more we publicly talk about it, the more we can reduce the stigma without downplaying the ongoing severity of the pandemic (it’s not just “the flu.”)
Thank you to my Patreon subscribers, who allow me to continue to indulge in this hobby of mine:
While Anime Central wasn’t ideal due to my condition, I did manage to conduct some interviews, and I think they all turned out well. Expect to start seeing them soon!
Replying to manga creator Kusada (who just got done selling at the doujin event Comitia), Kio mentions that he’s also hesitant about posting URLs to his 18+ doujinshi on Twitter for fear of being shadowbanned.
Kio has decided to undertake a rather massive personal project. Back in 2010, Kio sold at Comiket a very rough manuscript of a genderswapped Episode I parody called Sister Wars. Now, he’s turning the entire thing into a fully illustrated doujinshi. (Note that I will be making a separate post about this at some point.)
Another person talks about wanting to own Sister Wars, but Kio says that if it’s something where money needs to get involved, then it’ll cause issues, so his intent is to keep it free and online-only.
Kio says the whole thing is 350 pages, but it’s someone he always wanted to do, and he feels that it’ll be a waste if he doesn’t use the free time he has now to work on it. He put a lot of thought into it beyond the genderswap aspect too.
Another commenter recalls there being no Jar Jar, to which Kio responds that other characters from Episode II were also cut, as they seemed to mainly be there originally to just make things more confusing.
Kio realizes a line during the theme song for the variety show/special series How Do You Like Wednesday? comes from a spoof drama they did called Shikoku R-14. Kio originally thought it may have been unused footage.
Finishing the drawings of the Kujibiki Unbalance dating visual novel, here are Koyuki and Chihiro routes as reviewed by Kohsaka and Ohno, respectively.
Some old Genshiken-related drawings. Kio couldn’t remember when it was or what it was used for other than being part of some multi-creator piece, but a fan points out that it was part of an Afternoon 20th Anniversary illustration, as seen on the above library card.
High-quality version of the cover illustration for Genshiken Volume 5.
A fan comments that they remember not being able to read the doujinshi the Genshiken club made, to which Kio responds that most people couldn’t [because it was heavily mosaic’d as part of the joke].
A Genshiken drawing used for the cover of a 2004 issue of Monthly Afternoon with Saki helping to zip up Ohno’s Kuradoberi Jam cosplay, and Ogiue staring awkwardly in the background. Kio also responds positively to people talking about how great Ogiue is in this image, even saying that Ogiue looks like she’s seeing cosplay for the first time. He recalls wanting to draw a scene that doesn’t happen in the actual manga.
I actually found my old instructions for the Kotobukiya Ogiue figure, as well as the glasses for her, all of which I had thought I lost! Kio retweeted it.
Kio saw the 2022 movie Bullet Train. Even though the depiction of Japan is not at all genuine, he was entertained nevertheless. In fact, he even liked the scene in the quiet car. He really wishes he saw the movie in the theater like he had originally planned.
Kio bought Go Go! Ghostbusters Club by Kusada, and mentions wanting to see more of the assistant and wanting to find out why the club president would start a Ghostbusters Club when they’re afraid of ghosts. Kusada thanks Kio as well. (Note that Kio often retweets Kusada, which is not fully reflected in these tweet summary collections.)
Kio watches and reacts to the DVD for the How Do You Like Wednesday? special, How Do You Like Japanese History If We Only Travel by Late-Night Bus for Three Nights Straight?
(Without context, I can’t really properly summarize the reactions so I will leave it like this.)
Kio read Love Comedy Experiments Manga by Shima Toki and really liked the part where they have to stop right before climax (sundome). Shima thanks Kio as well. (Shima is another author who often gets retweeted by Kio; both them and Kusada all do manga for Rakuen, the magazine that runs Spotted Flower.)
While trying to figure out how to fix the warping in this kit part, Kio receives various pieces of advice ranging from pliers to dryers.
Thank you! These days, I'm doing two things while taking a break. One is to draw an R-18 doujinshi (sold at FANZA, titled "ぜんぶ、せんせいのせい。"). The other is to draw "シスターウォーズ" on Twitter.
Kio building a 1/144 Gundam Aerial model kit. He added a bit of weathering effects to the paint job. It also felt like a long while since Kio worked on a Gundam kit.
I find myself in a constant state of worry that I’m not doing enough with anime and manga. It’s not like I’m avoiding it entirely, but I think my very focused consumption of it has receded slightly both in an attempt to do things I’ve never tried before and to make up for time lost in other categories.
There’s an entire Breathof the Wild sequel coming out this month, and I’ve only just gotten the glider in the first game! I want to build my language skills in Japanese as well as in others. I worry about being the person chasing two rabbits, but at the same time am perpetually unable to pursue just one without regretting losing the other.
In the meantime, shout-outs to my Patreon subscribers, including a new supporter among the Sue Hopkins fans.
I’m actually going to Anime Central this month for the first time! I’m hoping to get to see Kubo Yurika (aka the voice of Hanayo).
And you probably have heard about this, but the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike to protest unfair wages from streaming and the threat of companies potentially trying to use AI to hamstring writers. Funnily enough, the last time a writers strike started was on November 5, 2007—the same month as the birth of Ogiue Maniax.
Kio drew his first original 18+ doujinshi, called It’s All Your Fault, Sensei, which is now available on FANZA and DLSite under the circle name ぼたん堂. Content note: It is futanari on cis girl, and in terms of depictions of sex goes well beyond anything shown in Spotted Flower.
Those who have been following Kio’s Twitter account might recognize one of the girls, as he drew an earlier version of her around the New Years in a bunny outfit.
Kio mentions that had he wanted to draw what happens between Sasahara and Ogiue on the couch, it would have been “something similar,” though the original tweet has been deleted, so it’s not clear if he’s referring to his doujinshi or the fact that Not-Sasahara and Not-Ogiue are in bed together in the side chapters.
A doujinshi cover of Ritsuko from Genshiken Volume 1.
From Genshiken Volume 4, reviews of different routes in the Kujibiki Unbalance visual novel. Madarame reviewed Renko’s, Sasahara Ritsuko’s, Tanaka Izumi’s, Kugayama Kasumi’s. Kio agrees with a commenter that Ootani Ikue (voice of Pikachu) fit the character perfectly.
According to Kio, drawing ero manga is sort of the opposite of regular manga, and that’s what made it tough for him when planning it. In regular stuff, his thought process is paneling -> text -> art, but for pornographic stuff it’s art -> text -> paneling.
OGIUE MANIAX 