A fresh start for Sakai Kanako
Finally Sakai Kanako gets out from the wretched clutches of RAMS! This may not interest the casual seiyuu fan too much, but RAMS are a seiyuu agency who have been pretty adept at mismanaging and destroying (ok, maybe a bit of an exaggeration…) their talents’ careers. Sakai’s departure from the agency on the 1st of July follows that of singer Ohmi Tomoe and Sakai’s former Clover bandmates Saito Momoko & Shoji Yui in 2008, leaving Nogawa Sakura, Inoue Nana and Miyazaki Ui as RAMS’ only real assets remaining.
The 22-year old Sakai debuted in 2005 with the lead role of Onda Aka in REC and was Ruri in Lovedol and Kikuri in Jigoku Shoujo, but has mainly focused on presenting TV shows (Anime Paradise) – which seemed a waste of her talents.
A bit surprisingly, Kanako has chosen to move to a relatively small theatre company called Gekidan Come Come Minikina (劇団カムカムミニキーナ) – I don’t believe they have much, if any experience at handling seiyuu but perhaps Sakai just wants greater freedom and control over her career. Certainly she’s not sitting idle, the announcement of the change on her blog was accompanied by the launching of a new official website as well as a radio show called Takulog.
Here’s hoping for the best in her future career.
I hope this means that she’ll be getting more roles from now on. I’m not a big fan of REC but i absolutely loved her work on the Ar Tonelico series (and other GUST games she’s voiced) and really want to see (hear) her do more different roles that will showcase her talent. all though, I hope her leaving RAMS won’t mean that she’ll be cut out from AT3
Agreed. Kanako definitely shined in AT. She also stole about 50% of the scenes in Lovedol even up against that legendary cast, but her efforts were wasted on such a horrible show that not a single person I know finished it. Moving away from RAMS is encouraging, but I hope its not too much of an uphill battle now that she’s lost her newcomer momentum.
Good for her. I almost thought she was done for like Atsuko Enomoto was for a while.