Mizuki Nana

For seiyuu, besides doing voice acting work, it's not uncommon that they also have to sing. Many seiyuu were famous due not only to their ability to voice act, but their ability to sing as well. For example, Hayashibara Megumi is famous for her upbeat and catchy songs, Sakamoto Maaya for her stunning performance of Kanno Yoko pieces, Inoue Kikuko for her soft gentle style, just to name a few. Recently, one seiyuu that caught a lot of attention due to her ability to sing is Mizuki Nana.

Originally, Mizuki Nana stated she was interested in singing and really wanted to become a Enka singer. Because of this dream, when she graduated from high school, she entered a voice training school to receive professional training, and it was during this period that she was asked by her trainers if she was interested in becoming a seiyuu. Being a fan of anime and games in the first place, Nana took this recommendation and entered the audition for a role in the game "Noel", and landed her debut voice role as Kadokura Chisato. Her role as Kadokura Chisato was such a success, and added with her acclaimed ability as a singer, a full album was released under Chisato's name.

However, Mizuki Nana's currently list of major roles is still short, falling in either secondary characters or shows that are not exceptionally popular, but in contrast for a seiyuu who is still relatively new, her performance rating in opening and ending theme songs for anime and games on the other hand is quite high. With the current high demand of singing ability as a prerequisite for seiyuu nowadays, her ability in singing would greatly help her career as a seiyuu in the future.

- 3rd Nov 2002

CC's comments (contains bias ^_^):

Ah, Mizuki Nana, easily my favourite of the recent batch of uprising seiyuu stars. My first exposure to Nana was in the Sister Princess Eve live concert. Among the SP seiyuu, there were two seiyuu which were of particular interest to me, they were Horie Yui and Kawasumi Ayako. My original intention of watching that concert was to see those two in action, but to my surprise, neither of them caught as much of my attention as Mizuki Nana did.

In Sister Princess, Nana played the Aria, a soft, slow speaking strange little girl that's also a bit of a cry-baby, and in the concert there was a part where she had to act out a telephone message she left for her brother. It was a message telling about how Aria is feeling lonely with a lot of sobbing in between, at that time I though "hmmm, her acting's not bad" and I filed that thought. What really caught me was when she came out to perform Aria's character image song. Nanawaswearingthisreallynicelightbluefrillydressandshelooksooooocute *ahem*, sorry that was not it; it was her beautiful singing that caught me (that, and three-quarters of the SP seiyuu can't sing probably made her performance have an even bigger impact XP). The song, Ouji-sama to Amai Hoshi, was a slow and a simply arranged song fit for Aria's image. Though that cute timid voice of Aria also managed to sing in a very strong vocal. Afterwards I compared her live performance to that of the recorded version of the song and found them to sound almost just as good, I got really interested in her, as I have great respect for anyone that can sing live as well as the recorded version. So when Nana released her first solo album "Supersonic Girl" last December, I bought it without second thoughts.

When I pop the CD into the player for the first time, I actually thought I got the wrong album.

Having fully expected a cute-voiced, sugary anime-ish album because of the Aria image, instead what I was treated to was a stunning Jpop CD with fast beats couple with a deep, almost husky, powerful voice. Any seiyuu that can sing automatically wins my respect, and Nana does it one better by being able to do so for such different types of song. Granted that this is not a display of her skill as a seiyuu, but someone good enough to sing with a wide voice range definitely has the potential. So far, Nana hasn't participated in many famous anime works as of yet, but she might yet be one to look out for, if not just for her singing, not unlike another seiyuu, Sakamoto Maaya.

Oh, btw, I do think she is very cute. XD

- 3rd Nov 2002