I recently listed DVD information for "Makasete Iruka (R2)" and "Grrl
Power (R1)."  I realized that this is a great opportunity to show you
all why I'm so proud about being a seiyuu-otaku.

Nazuka Kaori (as I do always, family name first) plays Ao, who is
deaf.  Any logical person can figure out why people who are born deaf
have trouble speaking as well, although there is no physical reason
they can't speak well.  In fact, they don't really have trouble
speaking.  They just have trouble _learning_ to speak.

Anyway, Nazuka-san has to play Ao, and for obvious reasons, she
doesn't understand, first hand, how she should go about it.  So what
does she do?  She visits "shugei kyoushitsu" (lit. handicraft class --
basically a sign language class) and interacts with actual speech
impaired people.

Compare that to the English voice actress.  You can actually get a
feel of how American VAs go about voice acting, by watching the casual
interview session in the R1 DVD.  Ironically, Nazuka-san's speech is
also in the R1 DVD because it's part of the TAF event video, which is
not in the R2 DVD.

(Japanese) seiyuu-san tachi BANZAI!

--rich