Category: seiyuu

[ Song of the Week ] Michie Tomizawa – “Last Christmas”

Posted on by NieA_78
from Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Merry Christmas! (1996)

Yes, I’m a day late. The weekend went by too quickly and I didn’ t have anything ready for Monday. Anyway…

I am a fan of Wham!’s “Last Christmas”. I have heard several cover versions of it over the years, and don’t care for any of them. Except this one. This one I like. And it’s from a Sailor Moon Christmas image album of all things! Rei Hino (Sailor Mars) puts her own spin on the famous song.

(Incidentally, I’m not a fan of AMVs either, but this being a Christmas song, it doesn’t lend itself to deviating far from the intent of the source. Plus, it compiles some good winter scenes from Sailor Moon.)

KanColle+Mosaic

Posted on by NieA_78
  • Kongou-DESU
  • Karen-DESU

I recently started watching the series Kantai Collection, and it’s a fun little show. There is a huge cast of characters, so I’ve already got a few favorites. One of them is Kongou… born in England and raised in Japan. She’s got an over-the-top, yet easygoing personality and speaks in a very loud, deliberately paced, and somewhat broken combination of Japanese and English. And her voice sounded awfully familiar, since I’d heard it before.

Nao Touyama provides the voice for Kongou, and I have previously heard her as the half-English, half-Japanese Karen in Kin-iro+Mosaic. In fact, Touyama’s performance as Kongou is virtually identical to that of Karen’s, down to her speech patterns, including her signature long, drawn out -desu.

[ Anime A to Z ] ~T~ Taketatsu Ayana

Posted on by NieA_78
photo from Ayana Taketatsu official site

Is it possible for someone to be as cute as the characters they give a voice to? Often times, yes. When I first saw K-ON!, Azusa quickly became one of my favorite characters, in part because of her voice.

Azusa from K-ON!

Providing that voice is Ayana Taketatsu, who was nearly twenty years old when the anime series debuted in 2009. K-ON! being a series about a band, I got to hear her sing occasionally in some of the show’s songs. A few years after the show aired, she became a singer in her own right, both as a solo artist and as part of the duo Petit Milady with fellow seiyuu Aoi Yuki. As one might expect, the songs from both of these projects are extremely lighthearted and cute. Now nearly thirty, Taketatsu is still emitting cute waves in her music and photoshoots.