A while ago, in the seiyuu thread, I jokingly suggested using this neat little song to help familiarize yourself with Japanese voice actors. Well, that's what we're going to do in this thread. We're going to go, one by one, through the list of seiyuu in that song and look at and talk about what they've done. Yes, there are actually 151 of them. No, you won't know them all.
But by the end of this thread, you will. And that's why we're doing this.
The point of this thread is to:
- Introduce you to Japanese voice actors and actresses
- Highlight interesting roles they've performed
- Increase exposure and recognizability so that you can watch out for them in your anime watching
Hirano Aya is probably one of the seiyuu that you would recognize even if you're not that into the Japanese side of things. The role that launched her fame into the stratosphere was Suzumiya Haruhi, pictured above. She was pretty phenomenal as Haruhi, but I think the shining moment was her performance of God Knows... in Live Alive. After that, she solidified her voice acting prowess as Konata in Lucky Star, a completely different voice from the boisterous Haruhi.
Beyond that, she's still an extremely popular personality. She continues to get major roles and she's expanded her singing career. Personally, I think she's a good voice actress when she's not typecast as the typical annoying tsundere. One of my favourite roles of hers that isn't Haruhi or Konata is as Etoh Mei in Manabi Straight. Her singing, on the other hand, is fairly hit or miss. Her anime singles are usually pretty good, but I don't really like her actual singing songs.
At this point, she's making moves towards a more mainstream audience, which likely means more singing and TV appearances than voice acting roles. Still, she's got some pretty major roles to fill the voices of, so I wouldn't count on her disappearing anytime soon.
Major roles
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Haruhi Suzumiya)
Death Note (Misa Amane)
Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! (Mei Etoh)
Lucky Star (Konata Izumi)
Akaneiro ni Somaru Saka (Minato Nagase)
Nijuu Mensou no Musume (Chizuko Mikamo)
Bakemonogatari (Shinobu Oshino)
Fairy Tail (Lucy Heartfilia)
White Album (Yuki Morikawa)
Kimi ni Todoke (Ume Kurumizawa)
Nurarihyon no Mago (Ienaga Kana)
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So that's the first seiyuu under discussion. I haven't figured out a regular schedule for going on to the next seiyuu yet, so I might post one tomorrow! I might post one next week! I guess it depends on how busy this thread gets. What kind of things should we talk about? Well, talk about performances you liked! Good lines or scenes delivered by the seiyuu? Bad performances?
But please don't just make a list of roles they've played, though. If you liked their performance, I'm sure you can come up with something interesting to say about their performance. If we wanted a list of roles they've done, we can just go to Wikipedia.
As the discussion in the thread goes on, please try to keep in mind the goals of this thread:
- Introduce you to Japanese voice actors and actresses
- Highlight interesting roles they've performed
- Increase exposure and recognizability so that you can watch out for them in your anime watching
Alright, let's go at it.