So the first episode of Soul Eater has been broadcast and unsurprisingly, the poison darts have started flying at Omigawa Chiaki, the voice of heroine Maka Alban. All the fuss over her has somewhat detracted from Uchiyama Koki’s solid turn as Soul - he was almost Ishida Akira-like with his menacing growl. Good or bad, they’ve both certainly left an impression on viewers. Here’s a brief intro to the two teenagers.

Dead, lifeless, annoying – all manners of adjectives, all unflattering, have been thrown at Omigawa’s performance. Amusingly, a few people hated her so much that her wiki page was vandalised, with somebody first changing the description of her as a seiyuu to “stick” (棒) and another tacking a few more letters on to form “wonderful stick” (素晴らしい棒). That actually made me laugh ^^

My personal thoughts? Well…Omigawa’s Maka was wooden, hence the stick jibes. Her performance lacked emotion and expression, and was akin to listening to a speech by a deaf zombie. I believe I’ve heard more coherence and articulacy coming from a tree trunk. Her voice (the tone) itself sounds fine. The problem was that she made Maka sound deader than a doornail.

But that’s the risk you take when you hire a talento for the job instead of a well-drilled professional seiyuu. Sometimes it works out OK (Miyazaki Aoi in Mahou Tsukai ni…, Kikuchi Mika) and sometimes it just doesn’t (Yamada Yu in ParaKiss, 98% of the Aishiteruze Baby cast, some Ghibli movies). And when it doesn’t, it can drag the whole show down. I still can’t find the correct words to describe the pain my ears felt when I was watching the Kippei and Kokoro raburabu scenes in Aishiteruze Baby. Aural rape?

Luckily for Omigawa, the people surrounding her are all voice acting pros, which somewhat softens the blow of the bloody nose her Maka voice gives me. I wish Takeuchi Junko (the voice of Naruto, and the original Maka on the drama CD) was the one in front of the mic.

Er… I think I’m losing the plot now. I’ll leave the talento criticism for another day and get on to the main feature.

**Scans and information gleaned from Seiyuu Animedia and Seigura April 2008 (sorry for crap pix quality, my scanner is from the dark ages)**

Maka Alban

Voiced by: Omigawa Chiaki (小見川 千明)
DOB: 11th November 1989
Hometown: Kanagawa, Japan
Blood Type: O
Agency: Hirata Office

Height: 158cm
Three Size: 75-56-83
Shoes: 24.5cm

Yes, Omigawa is an idol. Why else would they give her three sizes? Apparently she won some Idol Audition Grand Prix thing, but I can’t find much evidence of it. She just signed to Hirata Office talent agency last year, who also handle people like Miyazaki Aoi, Kudo Yoki and Tabe Mikako. Predominantly a stage actress, her profile says. It’d be hard to tell from listening to Maka :/ Maybe she plays tree trunks in all her stage roles?

I actually got a good impression of Omigawa as a person after reading those interviews a few weeks ago – a bit airheaded maybe, but just a typical girly girl excited about getting a chance to try out voice acting.

Maka Alban is Omigawa’s first piece of voice acting work – never done any ads or narration work, a complete rookie. Not that that’s a valid excuse for being poor at it, mind you. One of her Soul Eater-manga reading friends told her before her audition that most of the series’ characters talk at top speed, but that as Maka, she should speak slightly slower. Sadly, I think Chiaki equated “slow = emotionless”. But still, she did get the job so the sound director must’ve heard something in her voice. She also remarked that people tell her she’s like Maka in character.

Omigawa recalled that she had no idea where to stand when auditioning – if you’ve seen the studios you’ll notice that they use microphone filters to limit the unwanted noise during recording. Like below.

So Chiaki looked at that and wondered “How the heck does this work?” and decided to stand on the side where the mic was and not the side where the filter was. And she had to face the humiliation of the sound director piping over the sound system that she should stand on “the opposite side” instead. That’s how amateurish she is!

The seiyuu she admires most is Saiga Mitsuki, for the rather amusing reason that Omigawa’s mother watches BS morning anime, and hence she got to know Saiga’s voice through shows like Terra e… and King of Bandits Jing. She states her favourite anime as Gag Manga Biyori (!!) but also enjoys things like Kumo no Muko, Yakusoku no Basho.

I really, really hope that Omigawa improves (she can’t get any worse, surely!) cos my enjoyment of Soul Eater went down two notches everytime she opened her mouth. I don’t want to go through another 50 episodes with my ears bleeding at the end of every 23 minutes.

Links:
Agency profile

Soul Eater

Voiced by: Uchiyama Kōki (内山 昂輝)
DOB: 16th August 1990
Hometown: Aichi, Japan
Blood Type: A
Agency: Gekidan Himawari

No complaints about Uchiyama so far. Though this is the first time he’s headlining an anime, he has done extensive dubbing work for movies and TV series including the titular character in the American Dragon: Jake Long animated series and Klaus Baudelair in the Lemony Snicket movie, as well as other Disney kids’ shows. In fact, he should sound familiar to Japanese Kingdom Hearts II fans, being the voice of Roxas – a role he will resume in the upcoming 358/2 Days game for the DS.

Uchiyama has been signed to Himawari, who also have fellow Soul Eater seiyuu Miyano Mamoru on their books, since the age of 3. He believes his first piece of voice work was a dubbing role when he was in the 5th grade. Listening to the radio is one of his hobbies, and his favourite aspect of the seiyuu job is recording radio dramas.

Uchiyama says he approaches voice work pretty much like he’s acting in a play. I think he also hits the nail on the head when he talks about the importance of expression in anime and game work (ゲームやアニメだと、誇張という大げさにしないと画面に合わないので・・・). More exaggeration is needed to match the voice to the character - I think he needs to pass this advice on to Omigawa Chiaki ^^

Hmmm, what else? Ah, one of Uchiyama’s favourite movies is Pan’s Labyrinth. He claims to have no special skills, and is always in a quandary when his agency asks him to fill in the ‘Skills’ box for their yearly Talent Directory. He’s in his senior year in high school, and is a fan of Yamadera Koichi (voice of Spike Siegel in Cowboy Bebop).

I already like Uchiyama a lot just from hearing the one episode and er…he’s quite cute to boot. Having been in the entertainment business for so long, he does appear to have a mature head on his shoulders and I’m definitely gonna keep an eye on him in the future.