Kenji Utsumi, one of the longest working voice actors in the anime industry, has passed away today at 3:01 PM JST due to cancerous peritonitis.
Utsumi voice acted since there was voice acting to do. His voice credits go all the way back to Sally the Witch in 1966. If you’ve watched anime, you’ve likely heard him from all the popular roles he’s done through the ages. Emperor Gore in the original Getter Robo, Raoh in Fist of the North Star, Eternal Dragon Shenlong in Dragon Ball, Daniel J. Darby in the ’93 JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA, Coach Kamogawa in Hajime no Ippo, Alex Louis Armstrong in Full Metal Alchemist. The roles go on forever. A voice that fills a list of roles as long as your arm but now leaves us with that empty feeling when something or someone we take for granted it suddenly gone. His final role will be Todoroki in the upcoming Silver Spoon anime for which his voice has been prerecorded.
Goodbye, Conqueror of the Century’s End, Emperor of the Dinosaur Empire, Granter of Wishes, Ultimate Gambler, Coach, Master of Arts passed down for GENERATIONS! Kenji Utsume, you will be missed.
I had no idea this was going on or I would have posted about it immediately.
The JoJo Royale is a world wide JoJo fan contest being run through their Google Plus based site. Contests Stages and general JoJo news is released there regularly in both Japanese and English. The contest legs are Stages with each stage being a different competition with some amazing prizes from Araki drawings to replica manga items made for the JoJo Exhibit.
But more importantly, here’s a posing baby with the gallery of other entries.
Stage 3 was a cooking contest. Cook a JoJo’s themed food and take a picture for entry. Anything JoJo’s was accepted, and man did people get creative. Here’s the Winning Entry. The prize seems to be a few of the signs from the JoJo Exhibit: 123
But there’s something about this entry’s personality that I just love.
Finally, we catch up to the contest at Stage 5. You have to write your wishes for the future of JoJo’s on an Ena, take a picture, and send it in. If you can’t find Ena where you live, it’s also fine to just write on a board. Once again, there are no language barriers, and the contest prize is a replica of the Bow and Arrow.
So that’s the ongoing contest. More Stages will be revealed as we move through, and there’s no barrier to entry other than being a part of Google Plus so you can post your entries for the Stage on the JoJo Royale Google Plus site. Not a big fence, and these are some cool prizes. I encourage everyone who can to enter, and give this contest the best JoJo’s fans across the world can give! Here’s the page where you can post your entries for Stage 5. Good luck!
(All images from the Google Plus site and the official JoJo Royale site. Credit goes to them and contest participants.)
It’s time for JoJo’s Part 3: Stardust Crusaders. We’re covering the manga, with all the poop eating babies and orangutangs with super boats. Would you believe those are some of the more normal enemies?