[houkoholic]

Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo

While it's true that she has been in an actual idol group ("Springs"), I don't think it's true to say she did it for "the last few" years. All of their singles and their one album appear to have been released in 2003. I think it's more accurate to say that she was briefly in an unsuccessful idol group. By the way, people can see some of their performances and interviews on YouTube. Aaya wasn't the lead singer, as far as I can tell from videos. But she had already done several TV commercials and some anime before she was in the group.

The point being that she's been on more TVs than even the most idolised seiyuu can claim, which means that she has way more experience in handling these situations and protarying a certain image to maximise her appeal. Despite being in a rather minor idol group, it is still a teenage girl idol group aiming for the general population, which is unarguably selling out their teenage moe at millions of pervy Japanese men (what else CAN they do besides that?), and that makes her experience in "calculated moe" leagues higher than the majority of the seiyuu. Thus that's the reason that I found saying that Hocchan is more calculated in her moe than Aya is a totally laughable claim.

I have nothing bad to say about Chihara Minori, and I like her singing, but her role as Yuki was so limited that it didn't prove much, and I haven't seen her previous work.

I like Minorin more for her singing, though I think she has the potential to be better as a seiyuu. Normally she has a pretty hyper and exaggerated personality, which makes her getting the role of Yuki a bit of a surprise actually. I predict that when Kadokawa gets their lazy arse (yes, contrary to popular believe, it's got nothing to do with Kyoani as Kadokawa is the one calling the shots as they spearhead the project, and currently they are very happy in just milking the cashcow without the need to actually do any *new* work, plus they now have another cash cow that is Lucky Star to milk) around to do the rumored 2nd season of Haruhi based on the "Disappearance" novel will we really see what Minorin is capable of.

"Japan is hardly roses all around" (houkoholic) seems like a bit of an understatement to me. The Japanese news seems full of corrupt commercial and political machinations of various kinds. I get the sense -- perhaps unjustified -- that certain worlds in Japan are really the "war of all against all." My sense is that Japanese courtesy hides intense and generalized interpersonal competition. Is this true?

Competition is not really the right word I would use. The courtesy Japanese displays, especially in a business situation, is really a mean for them to help each other out to avoid direct responsibility as then everyone's hands becomes dirty and everyone shares the same blame if things goes wrong. The problem with Japanese culture in general is that it is an extremely reactive society due to this mentaility. It's no exaggeration that they will not do anything until shit hits the fan and they can no longer cover it up.