VA Tanaka Rie and Yamadera Koichi Get Married

I disagree, for the obsessive seiyuu lovers, according to their perspective, she is an old hag by now @ 33

Second she is not a ***_insert your own adjective-***** woman that was screwing around sexually with several of her coworkers.....


I see no problem at all, save for a minority of her more hardcore followers-.

I Think you and me know plenty of examples of female seiyuu getting married and their seiyuu work is the same as always, Tanaka Rie is a consolidated seiyuu by now, not a seiyuu over-hyped and over-rated by one(or 2) equally over-rated character/series, that got famous basically overnight.

I can only see majority of people congratulating her.

Late to the party, but my sentiments exactly. ^_^

Meantime, Rie Tanaka has posted a photo of the wedding on her Twitter account.

Wish them all the happiness.

That's a bit of an age gap but I wish them luck and many congrats.

No, the heavier emphasis is not really on virginity but on public image and appearances. Remember that idols are pretty much trading their personal lives for fame, so anything that goes against the ideal they are trying to sell is forbidden. And that goes whether the idol is female or male, there's no difference here. And forget any boyfriend/girlfriend problem, if somebody in the media finds that an idol has been for example, smoking since she or he is 18 (legal age in Japan is 20, I believe) and makes it public the talent agency will drop that idol immediately. Something as simple as smoking can completely destroy an idol career forever.


Well, anything taken to extremes is disturbing and dangerous.


It was exactly this point that made me write my first reply to your post.
First, why are you so worked up by the closure of Rie's official fan club? There's no controversy or anything of the sort in the news. It's simply saying that she got married and her official fanclub is closing. If I remember correctly, during Hirano Aya's controversy, it was announced that her official fan club closed the same day she left her management agency, which has always led me to believe that official fan clubs are managed by the idol's agency in some way, so the news of the closure of Rie's official fan club may be because she wants to leave the firm or something along those lines.
The curiosity as to what led you to respond in a manner so unlike your usual informative and level-headed responses is what made me originally believe that you simply were unfamiliar with the Japanese idol industry in general.


You are criticizing a group of people belonging to a different culture because they don't want to deal with the inconveniences of reality, yet our own culture worships idealization so much that the only movies children are allowed to watch are the ones where they are made believe that the whole world is a fairy tale where every story has a happy ending.
That said, now re-reading what I wrote I found my past post hostile and really uncalled for, I apologize.


Yes, the idol industry is pretty mainstream in Japanese society. That's why I never thought that Sankaku's attempt to make the typical Japanese anime otaku into the worst type of idol otaku would be that successful since after all, the two subcultures are really incomparable in size and a fast search in Google would tell you how ridiculous Sankaku's claims are. But sadly, I was very wrong.


Well, generally people don't understand foreign cultures and much less concepts that go against their own personal morality. Culture shock can be a very nasty thing.


The main difference is that Western societies are individualistic by nature, so in this case we have people becoming enraged by the mere thought of people not respecting an idol's individuality and right to do whatever he/she wishes with his/her life, while Eastern societies are collectivistic by nature, so the interdependence of the individual is the number one priority, where the well-being of the majority outweighs your own. So criticizing a group belonging to a collectivistic country using the values and morals of an individualistic society has always seemed fundamentally wrong to me.

Yes, sure the fans are the financial support. However, idols are not supposed to be their slaves.

i remember a certain anime convention in akiba in japan 2 years ago, there's this fan who asked a seiyuu (dont know her actually, since i am just a passer by going to work) this: "if she retires, how would she like to be remembered. by anime character or as you?"

there's a momentarily pause, but she answered: "i want to be remembered as me."
( its a simple nihon so i can understand.)

well not all seiyuu would answer that... it would be generalization if i say all...

but i think this scene is enough to tell what jmal is saying... seiyuus want to be respected (and remembered) as a human not as the fictitious character we all know because yep that's technically disrespect

just my IMHO...

Pretty much this.

However, we are not idol otakus here. We don't give a damn about anything other than her seiyuu career. Even if she quit her seiyuu career fans should be supportive too. It's her decision.

I think jmal is criticizing the overall delusions of the more hardline idol otakus in general. The fact that the industry was designed to encourage this type of reaction doesn't make these reactions pleasant. Using the argument "this is the idol industry and how it works" does not invalidate the criticism about it. That's not how argumentation works.

Also let's not be delusional about the matter by reading Sankaku. That site is just mostly propaganda and a nest of trolls. The majority of the idol fans are regular people. Only the hardliners are more hardcore. Even then, what they say on the Internet is just 2ch and 4ch level of Internet trolling. It's called having a low mental age on the Internet syndrome.



jmal wasn't defending western culture. That's not hypocrisy. And please no more "people don't understand Japanese culture". Unless you are Japanese yourself. Even then, a lot of foreigners understand Japanese culture, sometimes more than the Japanese themselves. However, it is true that most East Asians also share a common and affiliated cultural background as opposed to Westerners.

Be more like Aya Hirano if you think you have the skill to do your job properly otherwise you have to take care your fans more than your actual job.

Ah...are you forgetting that an idol is precisely a manufactured product which sells her fictitious idealized image? How can you demand her fans to treat her as a "real human being" when her work is precisely to be as fictitious as possible? Remember, to be an idol a person has to become something worth to be idolized.
But at the same time I understand that it's really difficult for Westerners to even begin to understand such foreign concept since there's nothing even remotely similar in our cultures, but when I try to explain that concept to an American, I personally use the example of Disneyland (since I don't think Disneyland and the Japanese idol culture are that different): A manufactured place whose business is to sell fictitious dreams and happiness.



As I said before, don't confuse seiyuu with idols. A lot of idols are seiyuus (like Aya Hirano) but just being a seiyuu doesn't get you that treatment. You can be a seiyuu, J-pop singer or actor/actress in Japan but as long as you are not an idol nobody really will care if you get married or not. Most Westerners get really confused with this point since a lot of idols are also singers, VA and actresses, so a lot of people here believe that an idol in Japan is just another name for a singer, VA or/and actress like in the US, but nothing could be further from the truth.


If they wanted to celebrate personal milestones with their fans, they wouldn't become idols, as simple as that. The moment you profit from your idol status, in my opinion, you lose the right to demand to be treated as a non-idol celebrity by your fans and the media.


I find very hypocrite that you are criticizing Japanese idol otakus for not wanting to deal with the inconveniences of reality, when here in the West the whole child-rearing process consists of precisely censoring everything that could soil the holy innocence of our children and teens so that they believe everything in the world is a Disneyland theme park full of dreams and happiness.


Exactly. If you don't want reactions like these from your fans, you should refrain from entering the idol industry.


Ah...no. Her career as an idol is over, but her career as a seiyuu is a completely different matter. Of course, there are idol fans who are also anime fans, but the two things are fundamentally different, even though they overlap frequently. Unless she wants to be a stay-at-home wife, there shouldn't be any reason for her to quit her job as a VA.
Remember that Rie is not the same as Aya Hirano. Aya was primarily an idol, which was also a seiyuu, J-pop singer, actress and TV celebrity while Rie is primarily a seiyuu and singer. The idol part of her career is pretty small, and she appeals primarily to the anime otaku community (which wouldn't care at all if she is married or not as long as she doesn't quit her job), not the Japanese idol fandom.

Well, I don't mean she is saying that herself, but thats the message the fans get from her... since they like her as an idol since they think shes supposedly pure and doesn't have interest in men or anything. So seeing her get married is everything against their ideal view of these women.

As an idol, you sign up for this stuff... you need to understand how your "fans" feel about you, so you need to expect these reactions from this. Its why I feel this is a career ending move, since Rie Tanaka is a long time veteran... she knows enough to know how people would react. So now that shes done with the seiyuu industry and wants to move onto other things, she can finally marry.

^
To make it short for you.

Understanding =/= Agreeing/Accepting

Honestly who give a damn about those otaku/stalkers?
It is the man and the woman who agree to get married while knowing the consequent of their action. Therefore there is no need for people to worry about it.

It's not that bad site - i've found thanks to them manga about trout, yes I mean fish.
Plus a lot of creepy stuff

but whole thing is one more proof that Lem was right when he said:
"I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet."

still if those are problems of people... I kind of allows me to appreciate my life more (which is still pretty awesome)

Yeah, and it's really saddening how much credibility and popularity it has gained around here. It's almost ridiculous.


I'm extremely surprised that you of all people is ignorant of how the Japanese idol industry works in Japan, jmal. I generally never bother answering to these bashing posts about Japanese idols fans since most users here are completely unable to understand cultural differences between different countries, and will always judge Japanese idol otakus according to Western values and morals, but I never thought you will join the bashing wagon, to be honest.


jmal, an idol getting married means she is 'graduating', so of course the fan club is getting closed. Remember that even though being a seiyuu and an idol are different things, the two careers frequently overlap. I imagine that the only people getting bothered by Rie's retirement from her idol career are idol otakus. Most Japanese anime otakus will only take this news badly if her marriage would also mean her retirement as a seiyuu.

yea give we know still most of them are in shock, hit by frying pan, stun, brain bleach, BSOD, etc on it all.

& yet i'm more into the Lacus only give really i'm still like WHY this read this yet still shock on it but as long it all safe well then i can live with it.

lol, fanclubs shutting down.

Anyway, have a good life Maria :smile:

Nope, this are real quotes, from Sankaku, screenshot from a message board.

Even worse quote:
“I agree. Idol seiyuu ought not to engage in romance until I tire of them.”
“I agree completely. As a fan, the purity of my dear 2D characters is preserved, so there’s no excuse for a seiyuu to be engaging in romance however she pleases.”

Those are just fake quotes that he think the otaku would be saying

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-06-19/voice-actress-rie-tanaka-fan-club-to-shut-down

^ act of desperation

the "various circumstances" reason is actually this: they are robbed of their... waifu... :D

Please, in name of Humanity... those are not actual quotes? (or some kind of rephrasing what those people are saying)
They are not???
o.O