Announcements on Interchannel - 29 Dec

First of all, from the Oricon 2005 Single Best 500, 4 character CDs made it into this list as follows:

Atobe Keigo - Riyuu/E-kimochi No.365
Aozu + Cap + Bin - DEPARTURES No. 403
Oshitari Yuushi with Hyotei Gakuen - Valentine Kiss No. 425
Oshitari Yuushi - Te~ Tsunago No.477

Just too bad that none of the albums made it to the Best 500 chart though. However, from the results, it seems that Hyotei-related character singles are very popular. All 4 titles are related to Hyotei characters where Atobe and Oshitari took part in the DEPARTURES single released by the Senbatsu members. And Atobe-sama should really think of releasing a new single since I bet everyone must be waiting for ages to see a new title from him. In fact, I'm also waiting for it too.

Atobe-sama is due to release a new Valentine's single on the same day as Oshitari BUT this is not a new recording. My guess is that they will use the past version of Valentine Kiss they released but the package is different. Since the price is less than 1000 yen, I have a hunch that they will be like the recent singles where there's only one song, one karaoke version and a very short chat session. Frankly speaking, I don't mind paying the normal price of a maxi single for more content. I just think one song and a serious lack of photos do drive me nuts at times especially for the Tezuka and Sanada singles I bought this year. Hey, they are my top 3 favourites and all I get is the jacket cover photo?!

Next month's radio personalities will be TK vs TK i.e Kondo Takayuki (Oishi) and Kusuda Toshiyuki (Shishido) while the first guest of the year will be Tsuda Kenjirou (another TK?!) who plays Inui. This is a pretty interesting combination...

Last but not least, this announcement gave me such a shock when I saw it. I'm not surprised at Ibu Shinji releasing his second character single on 15 March but Kuki Kiichi?! I had to think very hard before I vaguely remembered that he's the guy from Kakinoki who tried to grab Tezuka's arm and taunt him before his team was due to meet Fudomine during the district matches. Of course, this Kakinoki lost to unknown Fudomine in straight sets thus leading to them meeting Seigaku in the district finals. Why on earth is this guy releasing a single?! He didn't even appear for one full episode! After I did some research, I found that his seiyuu is Takemoto Eishi who also plays Yanagi Renji from Rikkai. Well, I dislike the sight of the guy so there's no way I'm going to buy it even though I may be listening to Renji's voice which may be conditioned to resemble how Kuki speaks. As for Ibu...I'm quite neutral towards him so I'll probably give it a miss.