Quote:
Originally Posted by Sorrow-K
Why are Nakahara and Shimizu always in anime together. Are they tied to the hip or something? And, yes, I've seen the Strawberry Panic ED video clip and that just made me more confused... about a lot of things. The voice acting in this anime has been competent, but nothing special, and I'd say none of the seasoned veterans in this series (of which there are, obviously, a few) are putting out a career-best performance. They're each doing a fair job, but none of them is really shining. It is interesting to see Nakahara in a role vastly different from her staple, but it's not what I'd consider a terribly demanding role. She does bring her own little nuances to it, though.
|
I too wonder why Ai and Mai are so often cast together. I checked and they are not repped by the same agency (Ai is with 81Produce, Mai with I"m Enterprise). They did have at least one long-running radio show together. And they are among the
seiyuu rumored to have a
yuri relationship, but that is probably just for laughs and for show, like the ED. And would likely not much affect what shows they were cast in, anyway.
I do tend to be optimistic about things, but I see Mai's performance as quite promising. She is bringing some little twists, and I look forward to hearing what she does when the role becomes more prominent in the show. Ai is just doing her thing.
I
am finding Noto Kawaii's performance pretty riveting, though. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just that the role exposes the hypnotically beautiful aspect of her voice better than her other recent roles. I do think she's capturing a lovely interplay of innocence and experience, normalcy and weirdness. Perhaps that's the skill she's showing. Or maybe it's her real personality.
The
seiyuu I'm most interested in, however, is Honda Youko, who plays Mana. Not because she's doing an especially remarkable job -- although she's doing very well, I think -- but because I liked her as the lead in
Uta~Kata over two years ago, and she is only just now returning to any prominent roles. I think she had a middling role in
Inukami, but not much else since fall '04. It sometimes seems that when young
seiyuu get an early starring role, they are then relegated to minor roles or no roles for a while before they crawl back up, if they ever do. Is this true?
In Youko's case I sometimes think that the nickname Asano Masumi gave her -- "Yoda" -- is partly to blame. The nickname is supposedly based on
Yoko Hon
da, but unfortunately she does
look a tiny bit like Yoda from
Star Wars.
There is another of my favorites in this show: Yahagi Sayuri, who plays a classmate. I think we've seen her once, rejecting the weird doll. It sounded to me as if she was treating this as a training session, as she did Akazukin, and squelching the uniqueness of her voice for the sake of being a dependable pro. Unlike
Karin and
Kyoushirou, where she let it all hang out.
I think we did hear Koshimizu Ami in this past episode, as a classmate, again showing her ability to make her voice sound any way she wants.