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Anime voice actress Maaya Sakamoto covers Katy Perry’s “Firework” in spectacular fashion【Video】

 

Veteran vocalist shows she can sing in English like nobody’s business in preview for Japanese release of animated musical Sing.

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Vocaloid takes over teen karaoke scene, more than half of 2014’s top 20 songs synthetic

No matter where you are in the world, the end of the year is always fun because you get to look back on the last 12 months and reflect on the different trends, hits and big stories. Joysound, a company that is bringing karaoke and social media together, is doing just that, and recently released a list of the top 20 karaoke songs of 2014 divided by age, from teens to 60-year-olds.

For the older age groups the rankings are pretty similar, with tracks like Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s opening theme song, “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis,” being a particular favorite, and Frozen’s “Let It Go” managing to sneak into every single group’s list of most-sung tracks. The biggest anomaly, however, was the teen group, with 11 of their top 20 songs being vocaloid tracks, and the remaining nine from anime.

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Siri Puts the “Ass” Back into Personal Assistant with Her Japanese Record Debut

Japanese independent musicians IOSYS (ee-oh-she-su) have a treat in store for us this Christmas.  They created a concept album titled Teach me Shiri Sensei! starring everyone’s favorite virtual assistant who only knows what you’re saying half of the time, Siri.

You might be wondering from the image above why anthropomorphic moé Siri (yes, that’s her) has a severe case of plumber’s crack. It’s not just pervy for the sake of being pervy. In Japanese, there isn’t really a “see/si” sound. Instead, it’s a “she” sound.

First, this can make it very funny when a Japanese person asks “May I take a seat?” Second, this changes the pronunciation of Siri to “Shiri”, which is the Japanese word for “buttocks.”  This word play is a major theme in the album.

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