The Shana seiyuu were and remains till today, one of my favourite casts ever assembled for an anime - it had a good mix of male and female, young and old, yuri and non-yuri etc etc. Anyway, this video, shot during recordings for the last episode of the first season, is a pretty amusing 5-minute clip where you get to see the seiyuu…racing to go home. It was more interesting to see what was going on in the background - you could see various members of the cast chatting away to each other, some drinking juice, others fiddling with their bags and so forth. It must’ve been the dead of winter when they were recording this, look at all those thick coats!

A quick whip through the majority of the cast members to help you better identify them:

In order of appearance:

The Nojima brothers Kenji (earphones) and Hirofumi. Hiro’s the older one, Kenji’s the married one. Hiro was basically repeating everything Kenji said about his character (Sato) but I guess that’s cos they’d apply to his character (Ike) too.

Kawasumi Ayako, voice of the cheerful but creepily scary Yoshida. Guess Aya was desperate to get home early then? She was sitting at the side somewhere.

Ebara Masashi, the man behind the oh-so-sexy voice of Alastor. He’s also the man behind the voice of the oh-so-not-sexy Maito Gai (of Naruto fame).

Sakurai Tomo’s probably the only member of the cast whose looks/age is similar to that of their character.

The resident yuriyuri duo from KenPro. If you’re observant, you’d have noticed both Nabatame Hitomi (Margery Daw) & Ito Shizuka (Wilhelmina) glancing sideways trying to catch each other’s attention before rushing to the camera. Don’t think Shizuka meant to barge Naba that hard though…besides, she was too slow cos she went to collect her damned coffee at the side of the room -_-

I dunno why Watanabe Akeno (Tiamat) is wearing a mask, after all she was drinking juice at the start of the video, face uncovered… Maybe it’s cos she voices a faceless, inanimate object? I don’t think she was too pleased that Miyake Kenta (Sydonnay) introduced the two of them as newly-weds either ^^; I’m pretty sure that they both dashed off to the nearest bar after the recording, such is their love for alcohol.

Then it was a stampede where all the seiyuu who had been sitting at the right hand side of the screen made a mad rush towards the camera. Ohara Sayaka (Bel-Peol) won out, with (from left to right) Kondo Takayuki (Tanaka), Kobayashi Yumiko (Ogata), Iwata Mitsuo (Marchosias), Noto Mamiko (Hecate) & Kato Nanae (Domino) behind her.

I wonder why Mamiko tagged along with this group instead of with her beloved Naba or Ayako.

Iwata Mitsuo is his typical self, hamming it up for the camera.

Tobita Nobuo (Dantalion), one of the elder statesmen of the cast, and probably one of the few that doesn’t have a few loose screws in the head.

The rumour mill is always on the overload with Kugimiya Rie (Shana) & Hino Satoshi (Yuji), given the amount of time they spend together, the things they say etc etc. Affectionately(?) known as HinoRie, they even have a wiki and (very unflattering) Uncyclopedia entry dedicated to them. You can see the two of them gesturing to each other throughout the video. Amusingly, this is one of the few heterosexual pairings that get talked up to the max in the seiyuu world, a change from all the yuri stuff we hear all the time.