The girls of Haruhi and Ore no Imouto have been drafted in to make the learning of English more moe in the form of English annotated versions of the novels, whilst top seiyuu have been “helping” with pronunciation guides in what seems to have become a mini-industry of late.
The latest books take the form of the original Japanese light novels with annotations detailing the tortuous intricacies of English grammar as they apply to the text, in the hopes that the presence of such literary masterpieces and cute girls the student will find things slightly less tedious.
Exclusive illustrations also cunningly ensure they have some value even for collectors.
Both the Haruhi and Ore no Imouto tomes are available now.
Other similar efforts to appeal to the otaku English learning demographic have seen such top seiyuu as Hisako Kanemoto lending their voice to “very beautiful English” accent improvement guides and English textbooks – although given the quality of English typically seen in anime this sounds a rather risky proposition.
In other news, the girls of Lucky Star have also been teaching chemistry of all things:
Rather more appropriately, the more scientifically minded cast of Nichijou is doing the same thing with both chemistry and physics:
Sergeant Maritan always the best…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQgGUEnMZrg
Only good English voicing performance by a Japanese voice actor that I can remember was Junichi Suwabe’s UBW chant from Fate/stay night…
One thing I really liked about the K-ON! movie was that they hired real native British people to perform the voices of the British inhabitants of London. 😉 That was awesome.
I know right? I remember in the game Sleeping Dogs, the main character would seamlessly switch from speaking American English and Chinese, done with different voice actors. It worked really well so why can’t they do that in anime more often?
i hope it gets translated into English form….oh,wait…
I never had to learn English I just remembered new words as I heard them.
Teach me ENGRISSHU my lovely imouto !