Anime Meta-Review
Glossary Entry : Megumi Hayashibara
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In general seiyuu's (voice actors) are not going to have glossary entries. While they are generally very skilled, and give the heart and soul to a character, they rarely get the chance to establish a strong image of themselves. After all, an actor is required to bring many different characters to life, following the visions and style of their creator, rather than express their own style.
However Megumi Hayashibara has failed that test. Not only extremely talented and very flexible, as well as having been active for a long duration, she tends to shine out in whatever role she plays. Her ability to play innocence, boundless energy but also clever and crafty characters is immense. And when she plays a cute character, wow. And her characters, even in quite simple roles, exude a rich possibility of unrevealed depth...even if the writing doesn't. If you like anime (sub-titled obviously) you will probably come to know, and appreciate, the talents of this actress. She also records a lot of music, and frequently sings on anime sound-tracks, with results that once again show the strength of her talent and skill.
Another nice element is that it seems her energy and `kawaii' is fairly innate. The anime `Fight! spirit of the sword' features an interview with all the voice actors. Looks for a strange woman literally exploding with energy (at 9 in the morning) and whapping the others with a stuffed character from the show...that's her. Or look at some manga, done by her friends, about megumi-being herself. wow, they're even stranger than I remember them being.
And given that the `megumi-toons' page has 150K hits (at this time) it's pretty clear that her popularity in the english speaking world is pretty high. In fact it turns out she even has an internet fan club complete with newsletter. Pretty spartan front page though. Although many internet savvy anime fans regard Hitoshi Doi's online Seiyuu Database to be an excellent source of information. Naturally he has a Megumi page which includes a listing of all the anime roles she has performed.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:49 WST 2009