I think I’ve heard her somewhere before…
I’ve been watching Hanamaru Kindergarten lately and caught this strange case of kindergartner-squeeitis disease (Koume hnnggggg) but I’ll leave that to one side for now.
Basically I went into this winter season blind (or should that be deaf?) – without doing a preview guide like in seasons past, I had no idea which seiyuu were in what show. (As a side note, I don’t really watch anime for the seiyuu or else I’d be torturing myself with Ladies vs Butlers & Heartcatch Precure).
That turned out to be a good thing, it was refreshing to be able to go in with a clean slate and play the ‘identify the seiyuu’ game, which is kind of an ego trip thing for most fans I would think. I’m sure we all enjoy that Eureka! moment when you hear a recognisable voice popping up in random episodes of anime you happen to be watching, like how I was able to instantly pick out Minagawa Junko in recent episodes of Cross Game and Railgun.
Hanamaru Kindergarten cast
For Hanamaru, within the first few seconds I was able to identify Hino Satoshi as the voice of Tsuchida. The guy has a very distinctive tone and quality to his voice that’s hard to mistake – from Asatte no Houkou to Shakugan no Shana and Nabari no Ou, Hino has always been a very easy seiyuu to ID. Same can be said for Hazuki Erino as Yamamoto-sensei, though in her case it’s more like ‘Ahhh, Akari-chan!!!!’ rather than ‘Oh that’s Hazuki Erino!’. I still half-expect Hii-chan in her panda costume to go Maaaa~~~~ sometimes.
Some of the other ‘easy-to-spot’ seiyuu in the show include Konishi Katsuyuki (Hii-chan’s father) and Saito Chiwa (Yamamoto-sensei’s sister) – at least they seem simple to me since I’ve already watched them in dozens of shows, or for Hazuki, grown so attached to that one character. The same can’t be said for Shindou Kei (Anzu), MAKO (Koume) or Mizuhara Kaoru (Kusano-sensei) though. Although I’m familiar with their normal speaking voices, I still struggle to correctly identify their voices in anime. Something tells me I need to go watch more shows like Kanamemo, Kodomo no Jikan, K-ON! and Lucky Star to get acclimatised to all those moeblob voices…
I think I can identify a few hundred different seiyuu purely from their voices; some by plain repetition, some because I’m a fan and look out for them, some because they’re just so darn unique you can’t possibly mistake them for anybody else.
A 30-second quick, ugly chart of seiyuu recognition ability. Obviously Wakamoto and Tomo-sensei are near the top since those two sound the same in every single bloody thing, and I’d probably throw Nonaka Ai, Yasumoto Hiroki and Hanazawa Kana would be thrown in somewhere near the top too. They’re then followed by the likes of Koyasu, Mamio and Ishida Akira who can change things up a little but generally have incredibly distinct voices that it’s hard to mistake them for anyone else. This isn’t a bad thing – after all, a lot of the ‘big-time’ seiyuu out there become popular because of their instantly recognisable voices. Mid-point would be Suwabe Junichi, Kishio Daisuke, Kawasumi Ayako, Sawashiro Miyuki, Ito Shizuka etc; voices that are versatile yet distinctive enough to pick out.
It gets a little awry from that point – Endo Aya, Kuwashima Houko, Asakawa Yuu & Kobayashi Sanae occupy the same sort of mid-range spectrum that tends to confuse at the first listen, same goes for the moe-cutesy types (watching Futakoi was a nightmare, I couldn’t tell any of the voices apart). It takes a bit of work, but eventually you get used to the the individual seiyuu’s range and nuances Nearer the bottom I’ve got people like Shitaya Noriko and Namikawa Daisuke – despite liking them a lot, I still fail at identifying them, the former because she’s too generic, the latter because he practises his versatility a little too much. I’d dump people like Kanda Akemi, Fuken Misato and Matsukaze Masaya nearer here too; I could sit for hours and hours and not be able to associate the voice of Wakaba/Akane (from Cross Game) with the voice of Asuna (Negima series) simply because it’s a voice that sounds like a few dozen other female seiyuu out there.
I guess it varies from person to person, the type of voices one is tuned into. Probably need to go listen to more drama CDs, it’s a tool I used to hone my listening skills for JLPT a few years ago, but they were also useful for training myself to be able to tell characters apart by their voices.
* This very sketchy post comes after reading omo’s bit on Ohara Sayaka/Hazuki Erino.
Themocracy
Hmm… I personally would put Ito Shizuka a bit higher on that chart… Or maybe that’s just me (’cause me likes her voice ^^)… Or maybe I’ve just had way too much Hayate no Gotoku =/ ugh XD
Also, agreed on the likes of Kawasumi Ayako (me picked her voice up immediately when I got bullied into playing Odin Sphere ^^;) and Fukuen Misato (no matter how much SmaGang I listen to, I still have issues recognizing her anime roles o.O)
Shizuka’s voice probably doesn’t sound too distinctive unless you’re really familiar with her voice or characters. I remember thinking she was terribly bland the first time I heard her in things like Tsukihime & Marimite.
Oh Fukuen Misato is a bit of a puzzle, unless she starts laughing that strange laugh of hers ^^;
I watched too much anime with Shizuka and Ayako, so I have no problem with them.
Except when Shizuka has a tomboy voice (marimite). But I watched twice Marimite so it’s good now.
A skill that I have dedicated myself to perfect over the last two years. My accuracy rate for male seiyuu is predictably lower, but for female seiyuu, it’s about 86.5%, after normalization. Of course, there is a pretty nice bell curve here, with about 60-80 names i will recognise on line, but there’s a few i will probably misidentify sometimes, mostly the newer seiyuus.
I actually find male seiyuu easier to recognise on the whole since they don’t really throw in much variation (deep voices are always deep voices!).
Newer seiyuu are tougher to identify for sure, unless it’s Toyosaki Aki or Yuki Aoi.
lol, btw where’s KobaYuu ?? XDDD~
Probably around the Kawasumi area, she has a relatively distnct voice…
Heh, I enjoy trying to recognize the seiyuu in shows, even though I’m still not very good at it. (by the way, lady bato is pretty fun :p)
I’d add Horie Yui to the easy to recognize chart as well, oh and Nabatame Hitomi is pretty easy to spot too.
p.s. are we getting random blog scribblings / monthly music reviews / seiyuu profiles still :p?
Haha. I have no set agenda with the blog, so reviews will come when they come. I can say at least Minorin & Tomacchan’s albums will get reviewed, once I get out of the Chinese New Year mood.
Are you going to review “High Touch!”?
I find MAKO really easy to identify, partly because her voice isn’t as thin or squeaky as a lot of people who do high pitched moe voices. She hasn’t had many parts though, so I’ve only once spotted her without knowing before (in Aoi Hana).
Recognizing eroge seiyuu is the hardest. I can do the easy ones like Maki Izumi or Kazane but all the shrieking loli voices just sound the same, even when I can recognize the seiyuu’s normal speaking voice easily.
Hahah eroge seiyuu ermmm, nope. I fail at recognising those as well.
I THINK KANEDA TOMOKO’S VOICE IS EASY TO IDENTIFY. Mike was a cool cat, though.
>> Probably need to go listen to more drama CDs
I listen! Except I don’t know what’s going on 90% of the time. lolVirginValentine. ._.
If I’ve heard the seiyuu in a noticeable role at least twice, there’s a good chance I’ll remember the voice. It’s just I have a problem with remembering names… >__>
Obligatory Yukarin talk – I always thought Yukarin’s voice was easy to identify [NASALLYYYYY], but people still seem to go “Wtf, Kawasumi Mai was Yukarin?” I don’t get it when most of them have seen Higurashi. orz
Mamio’s voice is super easy to recognize. I remember watching an episode of Dogs: Bullets and Carnage, and recognized her voice just from a gasp (she went “ugh” and i said, “AH ITS MAMIKO!”).
I think Sawashiro Miyuki’s voice is really easy to ID, as well as Kobayashi Yu’s, and a lot of the other people you’ve listed. Fukuyama Jun is pretty easy too.
Oh Mamiko. Even in CANAAN it was easy to spot her breathing.
OH LOL I SO REMEMBERED THAT.
It was like, “is that Mamiko’s breathing?” when I was watching the first episode with no idea of the cast list except for Miyuki Sawashiro.
LOLOLOLOL
OMG I’m not the only one who spotted Mamiko’s breathing.
There’s also Tanaka Rie in CANAAN. Miyuki Sawashiro I like her since Rozen Maiden.
Sometimes while watching Hanamaru, I find myself thinking ‘Wow, Akari-chan has grown up into such a beautiful young woman’. It’s almost like watching a sequel to Aria, when Akari moves back to Japan.
I would put Sawashiro Miyuki nearer the top. There’s this roughness about her voice that I can’t miss very easily.
For Miyuki I identify her through her style of speaking (more natural and less anime/moe) rather than her voice. Her kids voice in things like Eve no Jikan or her Kanrinrin voice in Maria Holic still got me though, heh.
The seiyuu I most have difficulty figuring out are the ones that normally voice quiet characters. I have a devil of a time placing Minorin when she’s not doing her Nagato voice.
If I hadn’t looked it up, I wouldn’t have known she did Chouhi in Ikkitousen or Touka in Saki.
I think 2+ years of listening to Minorin yapping away on her radio show got me so tuned in to her voice that I can’t miss it, even when she tries something different like Minami-ke’s Chiaki.
For me, I never set out to figure out who voices who, but I hear a snippet of a voice, and then think to myself “I’ve heard that before, who is it?”. It feels great when I can remember the name and confirm it, and it always feels a little disappointing whenever I can’t remember the name off the top of my head.
I’d also say that Miyuki’s voice is easy to spot out, even in her childish roles, but maybe that’s more of be being a fan than I’d like to admit.
Throwing in some other names, I’ve found Takahashi Mikako pretty easy to recognize. She has this happy, Nonaka Ai kind of intonation. And thanks to listening to minakike, Satou Rina’s become easier to spot too.
I don’t really have a good ear for recognising voices.
For me it’s the usual suspects, like Midorikawa, Koyasu, Ishida an’ Okiayu. Ikeda Shuuichi too. And Eternal 17 because she just gets so many mature graceful big sis roles.