Otanjoubi Omedetou, Dan Taiichi!

The first birthday celebration post of 2006 belongs to Dan Taiichi from Yamabuki! Frankly speaking, I didn't really like him when Dan-kun first appeared. The way he spoke got on my nerves. I'm not referring to the fact that he uses formal speech but rather the tendency to put desu at the end of every sentence. In a later episode when he tried to copy Echizen in terms of dressing, that made me wonder why he had to go to such an extent so as to follow Akutsu's advice which he should learn from Echizen. Nevertheless, I can't bring myself to dislike him since he is such a kind and likeable guy after all. Maybe I'll say that I'm neutral towards him by now since I look upon him a younger brother.

Dan-kun's seiyuu is Kobayashi Yumiko who also happens to play Azuma Kazuma in Yakitate Japan and Sara in Love Hina. I've not watched other animes which she took part in though. Talking about Kobayashi-san, I didn't notice that she appeared in Yakitate until more than 30 episodes later when I happened to find her name familiar in the credits. As such, I did not have a clue that Dan-kun and Azuma-kun had the same voice before I did a search to confirm my guess. I don't really pay much attention to the cast list unless I'm interested to see if I guessed correctly when I heard a familiar voice. As such, I wasn't aware of who Dan-kun's seiyuu was so I didn't link it back to Azuma-kun. Come to think of it, if I didn't know that the seiyuu is a lady, I would have thought that the voice belongs to a guy. Seiyuus are such incredible people that some of them can sound entirely different in another series.

Kobayashi-san was born on 18 June 1979 in Chiba Prefecture's Youka Ichiba City and graduated from Wayo Joushi Daigaku's Japanese Literature Faculty. Subsequently, she also graduated from Tokyo Seitoku Daigaku's Traditional Japanese Culture Department in March 2002. Wow, that means she must be pretty strong in the Japanese language? Kobayashi-san does a lot of young boy roles and her nickname is Shupicchi which is said to be what becomes of her full name if you say it quickly. Some of the other animes where her voice can be heard includes Inuyasha, Ueki no Housoku, NARUTO, Shakugan no Shana, Gundam, Futakoi and Peacemaker.