Soramimi Project #28: Tanaka Rie 田中理恵

First heard: Chii (Chobits) or Lacus Clyne (Gundam SEED)

First noticed: Lacus Clyne (Gundam SEED)

Memorable characters: Chii (Chobits), Lacus Clyne (Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED DESTINY), Koigakubo Yuri (Toradora), Matsukata Hiroko (Hatarakiman), Liang Qi (CANAAN), Aizawa Chizuru (Shinryaku! Ika Musume), Kuki Ageha (Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de), Yamamoto Misaki (Hatsukoi Limited)

Image character: Lacus Clyne (Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED DESTINY)

Discernment rate: high; visual

Number of works seen: 23

Number of merchandise owned: 5

Tanaka Rie is in the list of my top 10 female seiyuu, and for good reasons. Compare to some other seiyuu, I actually haven't seen a lot of her works, but almost every single one of her character leaves an impression on me. 2002 was when I started to get into anime more so I can't be sure if I got to watch Chobits as it aired. So my first experience was either with Gundam SEED or Chobits.

Lacus Clyne was what opened my eyes to RieRie's wonderful voice and acting skills. The phrase "粉紅切開來裡面都是黑的" (the inside of pink is black) was coined for the character in the Chinese ACG community, thanks in no small part to her striking portrayal of the character transformation over the period of 50 episodes. Live event for shows are not counted toward the number of works seen, but I think RieRie's appearance at the Gundam SEED Festival is worth a mention here.

RieRie plays a wide range of character types, as illustrated in some of the memorable characters I listed above. She's remarkable as anego roles, charming as gentle and calm girls, and exceptional as maniacal and scheming characters. She has a great singing voice and sings a number of character and theme songs for various titles. Her character song "水の証"(Mizu no Akashi) for Gundam SEED was one of the first (if not the first) songs in Japanese that I had the lyrics memorized. She also has a nice figure (really!) and a known avid gamer.

Beside the series I listed under the memorable section, she's probably best known for her roles such as Suigintou from the Rozen Maiden series and Maria from the Hayate no Gotoku series. There's a lot of her works that I haven't seen, so I look forward to see and hear more of RieRie!

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Starting with this one, I'm adding another stat for number of merchandise owned related to the seiyuu. This includes CD's, DVD/BD's, games, and drama CD's. I usually try to buy what I can (and on the look out to poach series released in new boxset), but there's simply too much stuff (especially outside the DVD/BD department) that's not available in North America...