Kawasumi Ayako

With the current strong emphasis on the idol aspect, perhaps even more so than the actual voice acting aspect, of the new generation of seiyuu, Kawasumi Ayako was a relatively new seiyuu that surprisingly came into fame by her sheer determination in sticking along with what seiyuu were suppose to do, voice acting. Debuting in the anime TV series Outlaw Star in 1998, Ayako since then took on many different roles, no matter how major or minor the character was. And from doing that, Ayako built up a formidable list of roles in a short period of time. These include the cute side-kick fairy Rishu in Mamotte Shougogetten, the proud and determined princess Lamhirh in Seikai no Monshou, the generous and kind Akari in To Heart, and a quite typical Japanese school girl Mogi Natsuki in Initial D. Having performed so many characters of which the characteristics differ from one to other in such short period of time, Ayako built a name as one of the more skilled seiyuu to have appeared in recent years. While Ayako is very active in her voice acting career and continuously taking new and challenging roles, on the other hand, she remains very quiet on other works. Currently with no personal album and only co-hosting one internet radio program, Ayako looks to be content in sticking to voice acting for the time being.

CC's comments (contains bias ^_^):

At first, other than that strange "I've seen her name somewhere before" feeling that I get when looking at the cast list of some anime I watched, I was not very much aware of Ayako's existence. Of course now it's a bit of a different story.

Now I really enjoy the listening to Ayako perform. Most of the time Ayako's voice is very easy to the ears, like Ruriko, Akari and Natsuki, because it is a very natural acting voice, unlike some seiyuu whom might push their voice into a different range or tries to act really cute etc. Ayako's most recent role as Mahoro in the anime Mahoromatic is probably my favourite yet, encompassing all her previous performance in one package, and watching the variety which ranges from numbingly gentle to comedy is truly enjoyable.

While Ayako is very good at voice acting, she's not as good with singing. Perhaps this is why she chose to stick with broadening her skill as a seiyuu because she knew her own weakness. Not that I'm complaining, because this is preciously what's given her the edge in the current generation of seiyuu. ^_^

(At the date of writing, Ayako's got her first personal album scheduled for a March release, titled "Primary" by Victor Entertainment, would be interesting to see how well she does with her debut album)

- 10th Feb 2002