When I first got into seiyuu, high-quality magazine scans and images were almost non-existent. It was hard to import magazines, most of what you saw online was thumbnail-sized and heck, I didn’t even own a scanner then. Of course it’s a totally different story nowadays with most of the major mags (Seigura, Seiyuu Animedia, Voice Newtype, PUV) easily obtainable and scans a cinch to find on places like Seiup and Seiyuup.
I have been collecting whatever images I could find of my favourites online for a number of years but sad to say, lost great batches of them in two separate hard drive crashes. Perseverance has enabled me to claw some of them back, but I’ve found myself getting annoyed by various things people do with scans:
1.watermark them with their silly online username or website
2.put them in a rar file with a password which is only obtainable if you lick the scanner’s ass
3.make people ‘pay’ for them on forums with shitty forum points or whatever
For god’s sake it’s just a piece of paper, you don’t own the copyright. If you’re so cheesed off about people ’stealing’ your (already stolen) scans then don’t upload the bloody thing in the first place. The pictures are bound to get around the interwebs sooner or later regardless of your efforts.
So in the interest of sharing and sticking up two fingers at these selfish people and whatnot blabla, I’m starting a Photobucket that will hopefully keep all my images organized (since they’re completely messy in my archives). They’re a mix of my own scans and stuff I’ve leeched from some forum, dug out of 2ch’s nether regions etc etc. You can usually tell which of the scans are mine cos they’re really crap – I have a small scanner and I don’t like pulling my magazines apart.
Anyway, if anyone’s interested in contributing pics (particularly older ones) then feel free to email me or leave a comment or something. For now, the gallery is mostly Sphere and Tomatsu Haruka images, since those are what I spend most of my waking hours salivating over but Minorin, Kobayashi Yu and KitaEri albums are likely to come soon. Probably (gasp) Ono Daisuke too.