For the past few months I have been reading the Moteki manga, and now the live-action drama adaptation is on air (check out Hinano’s post on it). It’s basically about how this guy has never had a girlfriend for 20+ years but suddenly finds himself the center of female attention, facing a period described as ‘moteki’ (モテ-popular 期-period).
There have been studies claiming that each person goes through a moteki at least twice (sometimes thrice) in their lives, and a recent article on livedoor related the experiences of a few young people including a girl who always got rejected during their schooldays but somehow at the age of 27, found herself the recipient of 3 love confessions from male friends.
Thinking about how moteki might apply to seiyuu and their careers – if you look at casting trends over the past 10 years or so you might notice a recurring pattern. Certain seiyuu suddenly become ‘hot’ on the back of one role, with some ending up voicing the same type of voices and characters (think Kugimiya Rie and tsundere) over the next few seasons.
It is hard to sustain such success over a prolonged period of time though, a lot of times you’ll find a previously popular seiyuu making way for their younger colleagues’ turn to be motemote (モテモテ). You can see how Hanazawa Kana is this year’s moteki seiyuu – she already has more leads in 2010 than in 2008 and 2009 put together while 4-5 years ago her Osawa Agency senior Noto Mamiko went through something similar.
There are many reasons why a seiyuu might find themselves in a moteki:
1.Riding the wave
Ah, the benefits of having your name attached to the right project at the right time. Case in point – the Haruhi quintet of Hirano Aya, Chihara Minori, Goto Yuko, Sugita Tomokazu & Ono Daisuke or more recently, the K-ON! quintet of Toyosaki Aki, Hikasa Yoko, Sato Satomi, Taketatsu Ayana & Kotobuki Minako. Unfortunately this is something like throwing a bunch of darts and hoping that some of them stick, you can never really predict what shows will take off with the otaku crowd and what shows will fall flat…especially when auditions for shows are done anywhere between 6-12 months in advance of airtime.
2.Agency decides to push the seiyuu hard
Unflatteringly known in the business as ゴリ押し, or assault tactics. Please ignore how suspicious it is that Aniplex and Lantis-backed anime have various members of Sphere either singing theme songs or all having major roles in the show (*cough Manimani *cough AsoIku *cough Kannagi *cough Occult Gakuin)!
3.Plain luck
Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Even the best of seiyuu fail at auditions (Kamiya Hiroshi couldn’t get into Minami-ke for example), so just try harder next time.
Some good examples of seiyuu who spent years being irrelevant only to suddenly find themselves in moteki include Kamiya and Fukuyama Jun. I remember the days when they both looked like geeky schoolboys and marvel at how they managed to transform into heart-throbs thanks to Gundam and Geass. Moteki indeed, and they had better enjoy the attention while it lasts – it might not come around for another 10-12 years.
I wish I could resume doing those seasonal seiyuu trend posts I used to do but alas, time is not a forgiving master. It would be nice to be able to do nice little graphs detailing the seiyuu who were most popular (by season) over the last 10 years. I’ll shove that idea into my stuffed box of ‘Things to do before I’m 50′ then!
In the meantime, why not try finding out when your own personal motemote period will be? It might be pretty accurate too, pointing out my level of mote-ness being high at the age of 11 which is when I had my own mini-harem of 4 boys who did my every bidding, although one of them ended up breaking my heart. But that, is another story for another day.
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