In the case that the domestic animation industry has not yet developed, skipping the industry accumulation stage and directly going to the voice actor idol is actually a radical approach.
Hedgehog Commune | Zhao Siqiang
"Believe it or not, I dared to send that picture here and plucked your dog's head."
At exactly 9:00 a.m. on March 28, the well-known Japanese voice actress Kaori Hanazawa sent out her first Sina Weibo: "I am Kaori Hanazawa!" I started using Weibo! Please support everyone in China! (*⁰▿⁰*) The coriander in the picture is wearing a printed pink T-shirt, and the whiteboard behind her is written in Chinese, "I'm starting to use Weibo." ”
The influence of the head voice actor was quickly reflected, and as of 00:00 on the 29th, the number of retweets on this Weibo had reached 24,000, the number of likes exceeded 140,000, and the number of Weibo fans also quickly soared to nearly 300,000. Whenever a foreign star opens a microblog, it attracts a large number of forward comments, earlier this year, Kimura Takuya's first microblog had 50,000 retweets, 180,000 likes, And Beckham's first weibo in 2013, with 40,000 retweets. However, Japanese voice actors who have opened Weibo have such considerable data, and at present, only Hanazawa Kaori is alone.
Fans in the comments to discourage not to send the "that picture", in fact, many people know the opportunity of Hanazawa coriander - a few years ago in Japan recording a show, Hanazawa kaoru did not control their smile because the atmosphere is too hi, just on the screen there is a line of weather forecast, written "Hyogo North Rain", and "Yao Ming face", "Kanako Director" and called the Asian expression "Big Three" "Hyogo Kita" was born, even because there are too many people using this stem, if you type the four words "Hanazawa Coriander" on Baidu, The first associative search was "Why doesn't Hanazawa coriander laugh?"
Of course, coriander didn't really stop smiling, on the contrary, coriander, who opened Weibo, smiled happily. After all, in addition to a magical meme, she still gained a large number of Chinese fans with her excellent business ability and a song "Love Cycle". At the 2019 Beijing TV New Year's Eve Party, she also sang this well-known otaku song in the "calling" of fans, and in the online popularity vote, her vote exceeded Xu Weizhou and Di Maxi, ranking first, and more than 6 times more than the two.
Head voice actors like Kaori Hanazawa are no longer simply behind-the-scenes workers, they are artists with a huge fan base. Such voice actors are not uncommon in Japan, and in 2015, Kaori Hanazawa held her own solo concert at budokan in Nippon, and before her, 7 solo actors had already held solo concerts here.
With the development of the Japanese animation industry for decades, the profession of voice actors that give the soul of anime characters has slowly been given more responsibilities and expectations, and the idolization of voice actors has become an irreversible trend.
In Japan, voice actor idolization has been in the foreground since the 1990s, the earliest is the emergence of voice actor magazines, the industry's more popular voice actors will appear on the cover of the magazine, when the influence accumulated to a certain extent, these voice actors will "act and sing" and release their own albums. As early as 1997, voice actor Shiina Biryo held his first concert at the Nippon Budokan.
Today, many voice actors have multiple identities, both voice actors, singers, actors, in addition to basic business capabilities, the market for voice actors stage performance capabilities, vocal singing ability and even expression management and fan marketing also have more demand.
For example, among male voice actors, Tatsuya Suzuki is the lead singer of the band, and Mamoru Miyano has released six solo albums, and has also played roles in some film and television dramas. Female voice actresses include Masaya Sakamoto, Nana Mizuki, Aina Nanjo, etc., among which The album released by Nana Mizuki in 2009 won the oricon public trust chart and sold more than 100,000 for the first time, becoming the first voice actor to participate in the NHK Red and White Song Contest (equivalent to the domestic CCTV Spring Festival Gala) in the same year.
In the eyes of some senior seniors, this is "not doing the right thing", and the voice actor Sanshi Koto, who has participated in classic animations such as "Sailor Moon", "Evangelion of the New Century", and "Girl Revolution", once said that he could not understand why the voice actor was directly responsible for promoting the work. I don't want newcomer voice actors to be too busy with acting events and broadcasting to neglect learning, and eventually be used and lost.
In the eyes of many people, voice actor idolization will lead to the younger age of voice actors, newcomers do not have enough time to hone themselves, in a Japanese variety show, an industry insider said that the previous works are usually the elderly with new people to work, but recently there will be a situation of new people, lack of mutual guidance.
This actually involves the question of which side is the main business, whether a person can dub an idol, or can be an idol voice actor, in fact, is a completely different concept, just like ordinary artists will be divided into strength and idol faction, voice actors are the same.
For a professional voice actor, sending out photos, releasing CDs, and opening concerts can be icing on the cake, like the above-mentioned Kaori Hanazawa, Miyano Mamoru, Mizuki Nana and others, who have excellent results in their own work as voice actors, trying other fields is a normal path to expand the boundaries of personal development.
At the same time, there are also some voice actor idols whose idol attributes are higher than those of voice actors, which is also a more common trend in the past two years. For example, the very popular "Lovelive!" and "His Highness the Prince of Songs", for this type of idol animation, the voice actor's business ability is no longer the main indicator of investigation, but more importantly, it is necessary to provide the audience with a three-dimensional image that can project their favorite characters.
This method is more like the marketing method used to promote the work, after all, there are more things that can be done by live-action than simply selling animation-related peripherals. In 2016, in addition to the album's big hit, the voice actor lineup also appeared in the 2016 Red and White Song Festival.
Another very important reason for the idolization of voice actors is that Japan's animation industry is extremely mature, voice actors are actually a job with a very high threshold, there are Japanese media statistics, there are about 300,000 people who are willing to become voice actors in the country, but in fact, there are only about 10,000 qualified practitioners in the end, and the head may only be a few hundred.
In such a high-pressure competitive environment, it takes a long time for newcomers to "stay up", if it is not particularly outstanding, it is likely to be buried, so if you can give full play to your other additional skills, then you can gain popularity through these ways, not only is it a good thing for yourself, you can get more income, for companies and investors, the benefits can be greater.
In China, voice actors and voice actors are two different concepts, voice actors are mainly for the service of TV series, to make the voice fit the performance of film and television actors, it is not obtrusive, will imitate the voice actors can often create a sound that fits the actor, so that people can not hear the dubbing.
Voice actors, on the other hand, mainly serve animation works, using sound to shape characters. Forced by the current situation in China, 80% of the practitioners mainly dubbed TV series, and there are few professional voice actors who specifically voice ACG content. Now many of the head voice actors, many of them are amateur online players who have grown up with the development of the Internet all the way, and after a long period of barbaric growth, they have become more and more professional in the past two years.
In the past two years, the development speed of domestic animation has far exceeded the growth rate of professional voice actors, and the existing personnel can maintain the completion of current domestic works, so whether it is from voice actors to idols, or from idols to voice actors, it is difficult to achieve the current situation in China. From the "Sound Immersion" program with a relatively high degree of topic in the past two years, it can also be seen that as a dubbing program, only a few guests really appear as voice actors.
Fuji Shin, co-founder of Beidou Penguin Studio, also said at an event held by Sanwen Entertainment that the Japanese voice actor industry has developed into a part of Japan's mainstream culture under the triple effect of excellent industry accumulation, developed front-end market and wide public awareness, but in the case that the domestic animation industry has not yet developed, skipping the industry accumulation stage to directly do voice actor idols is actually a radical approach.
In the past two years, there have been a lot of excellent voice actor teams, such as 729 Sound Workshop, Sound Bear Alliance, Beidou Penguin Studio, etc. In these teams, some more head practitioners have slowly emerged, such as Ajie, Bianjiang, Shanxin, etc., their Weibo fans are above one million, Ajie currently has 3.3 million fans, a year ago, this number was less than one million.
But for these head voice actors, because the current industry development is still in the early stages, there is no ability to provide them with a way to transform into an artist, although the number of fans looks very impressive, but its main work is still concentrated on the main business.
Similarly, it is difficult to train idol voice actors in China, on the one hand, the voice actor talent reserve is not enough, on the other hand, the domestic idol industry is far less developed than Japan, not only the idol training and operation system is not perfect, the market demand for idols is not so much, even if the introduction of voice actor idols, it seems difficult to get enough attention.
Now there is another way for voice actors to choose, that is, virtual idols, the success of tripping love has allowed many people to see another way of self-realization of voice actors, and there are also platforms like kilakila in China that are promoting the development of virtual idols, but they are still in a very early stage.
The development of the voice actor industry, limited by the development of many other industries, behind Japan's ability to create two different types of voice actor idols, is the high maturity of the entire entertainment industry, and this point in China, there is still a long way to go.