No Seiyuu No Life: Maaya Sakamoto

Time sure flies fast, I have just celebrated my fifth month in Japan. I can’t believe I have already been living there for 5 months already. And I still haven’t seen a seiyuu event, isn’t it sad?

Thankfully I can talk about seiyuu here and annoy everyone with Maaya Sakamoto.

Known for: Ciel Phantomhive (Black Butler), Shinobu (Monogatari Series)

My favorite : Shinobu (Monogatari Series)

The more I think about it, the less I understand why it took me so long to make a post about her here. I mean, I love her, she is one of the first female seiyuu I actually could distinguish and admired, she is also incredibly talented but somehow I didn’t think about her until now despite her being one of my favorite seiyuu ever. Let’s just say she hasn’t been in many anime lately and that’s the reason why I didn’t talk about her until now. Which is a shame, I know.

I discovered Maaya back in the days when I barely knew anime was airing weekly. I clearly remember watching Black Butler in my room after classes and being shocked and amazed when I discovered the person voicing Ciel Phantomhive was actually a female and was able to put so many different emotions in her voice despite the extra effort it takes to voice someone of a different gender.

The more I thought about it and the harder it became to find roles of her in which she was actually a sweet and loving little girl. Maybe Nino from Arakawa under the Bridge would be the better fit in all the anime with her I watched but I can’t say Nino is a sweet and loving little girl.

I can’t say Maaya is always voicing villains ever. She often voices borderline characters and I think it’s one of the thing I love the most with her. The contrast between her sweet voice when she sings (Wolf’s Rain ED anyone?) and her voice when she voices her most popular characters is quite interesting. She is obviously able to do the sweet and loving little girl but simply doesn’t and it’s great because, as usual, it’s the ambiguous characters I love most.

Take Shinobu from Monogatari Series for example, or even Shiki for the Garden of Sinners, no one can say that this kind of character is evil, but they’re not angels either. And this makes everything more interesting. Not only talking about their respective anime but also about the seiyuu that voices them. It means there are so much more possibilities and much more freedom for them to let their talent bloom and it’s exactly what happened with Maaya Sakamoto.