Otanjoubi Omedetou, Echizen Ryoma!

Today's Christmas Eve as well as the birthday of Echizen Ryoma, our Prince of Tennis! Well, I plan to upload the picture of his new mini album released today so until I get hold of it, I'll just have to leave this post as it is for the time being.

Being the lead of this series, Ryoma gets to enjoy lots of attention and airtime/feature. Personally, I find that he does look good but I feel towards him like a younger brother so my liking for him is not as strong as my Top 3 i.e. Sanada, Tezuka and Atobe. Maybe the only thing which I don't like would be that he always wins in the anime, regardless of whether I think it is logical or not. I admit that I'm still sore about Sanada losing to him in the Kantou finals but this can't be helped since Seigaku would not have won the title if Ryoma had lost.

Minagawa Junko plays the role of Ryoma and I got a surprise when I saw her photo. She's so feminine-looking with a bubbly personality and yet she manages to fit into the role of a arrogant yet arrogant tennis prodigy with her low and husky voice. I've done a feature about Minagawa-san during her birthday last month so in case you are interested, you may refer to it.

Otanjoubi Omedetou, Minagawa Junko-san!

Today's also the birthday of Minagawa Junko-san, the seiyuu who plays Echizen Ryoma in Tenipuri! What a coincidence, she shares the same birthday as Amane Hikaru. First of all, let me start by sharing some information on her. She was born on 22 Nov 1970 in Ibaragi Prefecture's Tsuchiura City. Frankly speaking, I think she looks too young to be 35. She graduated from the Ibaragi Kenritsu Tsuchiura Daisan Koutou Gakkou and her blood type is A. She was the ace player in her junior high volleyball team and joined the basketball team when she was in senior high. Apparently, she's someone who's good at sports and also has a Level 2 cert in mental abacus. Momotarou (Momo for short) is the name of her dog which is constantly mentioned in the diary of her official website. Minagawa-san used to be an OL but she took up lessons in voice acting and made her debut after graduation. As her voice is quite low and husky, most of her roles are male characters. It is mentioned on Wikipedia that her close friends include Park Romi, the seiyuu for Edward Elric in FMA and Saiga Mitsuki, the seiyuu for Maria Ross also in FMA. However, I see from her online diary and some of the special footage on Tenipuri DVDs that she seems to be very chummy with Kaida Yuki who plays Fuji Shuusuke and it seems like there's a tradition between them and Okiayu Ryotarou to exchange birthday presents every year since they are all born in Nov. By the way, she's in the same agency i.e. Tokyo Haiyuu Seikatsu Kyoudougumiai (Haikyou for short) as the following seiyuus who also appear in Tenipuri e.g. Suwabe Junichi (Atobe Keigo), Kondou Takayuki (Oishi Shuuichiro) and Namikawa Daisuke (Ootori Choutarou).

I've not seen any of the other animes which Minagawa-san has appeared in like NARUTO, LOVELESS (I think she plays one of the leads in this) and Aria. As such, my impression of her is strictly restricted to Echizen Ryoma. Personally, I think that she has done a very good job to play a guy who is much younger than her. In addition, she has to show the cool side of Echizen without losing the charm of a child's innocence. And seeing how she interacts with her fellow cast members gives me the idea that she's someone who's very warm and friendly so everyone calls her Junko-chan or Jun-chan which is usually what you would call a close friend. Here's wishing her a happy birthday and hope that she can continue to impress everyone in the future Tenipuri anime OVAs and movies to come!