…or strangely unmenacing….

…or 1000% cute…

..titillating?

But on the whole…

…I prefer Shokotan in costume.

Much more than Marina or Keibu anyway.

Hikaru no Go

Inoue Marina’s not the only person with a cosplay history – Shindo Kei (真堂圭), formerly Saito Kei (齋藤圭 and later 斉藤圭), was also a cosplayer in her teenage years using the pseudonym Hisato (央登). Like Marina, there are rich pickings of images from her cosplay days. She/her agency have done their best to bury them but they’re still floating around the Internet, guys! Try harder!

Kei as she is now

And like Marina, Shindo also got into the seiyuu world by winning an open audition for the lead role of Tennozu Kagura in Gonzo’s 2005 production SPEED GRAPHER. That remains her only headliner to date, with only supporting roles in Kodomo no Jikan (Kagami Kuro) and Gundam 00 (Wang Liu Mei) sticking out on her CV since then. Well, Kurookano Shijima/Shiratama (Miharu’s cat) in Nabari too, if you want to count that…Kei’s career certainly hasn’t taken off the way Marina’s has.

Makubex from Getbackers

Shindo used to run a site with her sister featuring cosplay photos and fujoshi-like blog entries around the 2003-2005 period, but it was pulled down shortly before the announcement of her winning the open audition. The blog apparently once featured the legendary line 朝までネットでテニスのホモ同人を読んでいた (I read homo tennis dojinshi on the net all night long).

Well known for being flippant about everything, Shindo was rumoured to have uttered “I’ll never work in a Gonzo production ever again” after her ‘less than satisfactory’ experience working on SPEED GRAPHER. True to her word, she’s not appeared in a single Gonzo show since then… well, actually she’s not appeared in much of anything animated by any studio so it’d be hard to tell if she were ever to track back on that statement.

taiyaki uguu

Gundam and Kojika are the only things going for Kei at the moment, and I doubt she’ll ever break into the ‘big time’. Her voice doesn’t have seem to have any special characteristics about it either, just another generic female seiyuu – what I’ve heard of it so far anyway. But you never know, she may end up voicing some hot, busty gun-toting female and capture the hearts of a million otaku one day. I wouldn’t put money on it though.

Who ya callin a bean?

I’m no cosplay expert, but I think she looks decent enough in these pics…certainly better than Marina did in hers anyway ^^; Anyway, a selection from her catalogue of cosplay pics below:

Lunamaria Hawke

Narutard alert

Ritsuka from Loveless

One Piece

Kyoyama Anna of Shaman King

Syaoran from CCS

as Yoshino with a frickin ugly Rosa Foetida

Kotaro from Papuwa

with Matsuoka Yuki

Shindo K & Marina + dude @ Kite Liberator premiere

Sadly, these days Kei (and Marina) are more into dressing up and nail art and all that jazz. So how did both of them go from being hardcore cosplayers and fujoshi to boring seiyuu who list volleyball amongst their hobbies? In denial, are they? ^^;;

I presume that’s Ritsuka in Loveless.

……Words fail me.

Mighty Birdy.

Mada mada dane.

Schoolgirl.

Shoot me.

Meido.

I’m so gonna kill you….with a teddy bear.

So they’re not all that bad really. I bet Marina wishes she’d never done them though…. here’s some more recent ones that she did after she became a seiyuu.

Pantasia uniform! Marina was Kanmuri in Yakitate! Japan.

Miina in Getsumen to Heiki Miina.

Schoolgirl. Y’know, Marina almost looks like Aragaki Yui in that picture….

Sadly, there are no pictures of Marina cosplaying as her Gurren Lagann character Yoko. Yes, those cosplay pics look like her (and maybe sound like her), and I will say 100% that they most definitely are pictures of her. But I’d probably need an expert to authenticate it….

Sorry for the lame joke, if anyone who’s living in Malaysia and following the hilariously fascinating Lingam case is reading this…. A scan of the cosplay pics show that they were taken sometime between May and August 2003, which is before Marina auditioned for the Sony thingy and won a role in Cossette thus launching her seiyuu career.

OK, a few normal pictures to round things off.

Old Marina.

Current Marina.

And that, is probably the first and last time I’ll ever do a post that consists almost entirely of images.