With over thirty singles released so far since her debut as a singer in 2000, Nana Mizuki has been releasing an average of one album, and two to three singles each year, and has performed in uniquely themed live concerts annually, all of which sell out in fully-packed venues within merely a few hours from their announcement. Arguably the most prolific of the female seiyuu-singers with the title of “ Queen of Anisong“, this talented and accomplished artiste has a whopping seven out of eleven albums and sixteen singles placing top 3 in the Oricon charts before.
Mention anime and almost everyone would have certainly heard of Nana Mizuki before. The seiyuus are listed in no particular order of merit, and are alternated between the female and male artistes. In our list below, we present five notable female and five notable male seiyuu-singers that have stood the test of time and established themselves beyond their voice acting roles to have an equally prolific music career. These ten names we have picked are already fairly big acts in the voice acting and music industry in their own right, with some of them having their own music units or bands who have become household names. We at J-Network recommend ten of such voice actors and actresses who have started their own music careers and whose music is of sufficiently impressive merit, originality and interest, giving a reason to more fans who may be seeking to listen to more seiyuu-singers’ works to listen to these musicians. With many more seiyuus today having singing roles as well in the animes they star in, and just as many beginning to make that crossover into the music industry as well, ‘ seiyuu-singers’ are becoming an emerging new phenomenon that will hardly go away anytime soon.
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While many anisong themes were initially created by mainstream music artistes themselves, as time progressed more voice actors began to double up as singers as well, some eventually debuting with their own professional music careers, and it is not uncommon to see many of these anisong tracks draw from broad sources of inspiration from other genres such as J-pop, J-rock or electronic music.
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An emerging but major sub-genre within the larger sphere of Japanese music is anisong (short for ‘ anime song‘), which refers to songs composed and used as opening and ending themes to popular anime series that are often released subsequently by their artistes in their singles or albums in a personal capacity. In part due to the rise in prominence of Japanese entertainment culture – especially anime – across the world, the voice acting scene itself began to see increasingly qualified entrants with comparable musical talent to more mainstream artistes.
To some extent, it is considered a sign of prestige to attain great success as a seiyuu, and many seiyuus today have an illustrious history of prior stage experience, with some even graduating from institutions specifically set up to train aspiring voice actors. Voice actors have been a prominent presence in the Japanese entertainment scene for as far back as since the 1960s and many actors and singers have, in fact, learnt the ropes of the industry from a career in voice acting, eventually earning their stripes as an established artiste. Fans of anime would certainly be familiar with the term ‘ seiyuu‘ (声優), or ‘ voice actor‘ in Japanese.