Naobou Debut! But Does It even Matter Anymore?

I think the most astute observation I’ve read since the announce of Touyama Nao’s solo music career start was that she’s the only singer on Q-MHz’s album that did not had a solo career. It is also likely not a coincidence that her attachment to Flying Dog (subsidiary of Victor) is like how Kinmoza is a Flying Dog seiyuu group. I also think this is kind of like how Numakura Manami got into all this, who went on record after her solo debut to explain that her days in Trident changed her mind on this matter. Both are with Flying Dog, too.

So it’s possible that this is a localized phenomenon. Both Numakura and Touyama are well-known among seiyuu otaku circles as people who’s got “it” and can perform the solo stuff, but clearly there’s a difference as people who got into the biz as seiyuu versus those who are making a music career from that fan base (or beyond). In other words, we are not looking at it from the talent’s perspective. We are not looking at it so much from the producer’s perspective either.

I just want to point out that it doesn’t really matter, solo career or not. For example, last night’s roundup from Crunchyroll off of the usual anime matome blogs didn’t even mention this. Imagine if I was a PR guy I would almost be mad that the main news doesn’t get reported, but the ancillary social media engagement did. I mean, having a twitter account is not that big of a deal in the big picture, especially since it’s a PR account. It’s funny, a little weird, but also not unexpected. It also shows us where our priorities lie.

And the truth is that seiyuu do the solo music thing all the time, ever since decades ago. Entertainment biz was fluid even before seiyuu became a thing, and that part hasn’t changed. Naobou started with a push as Kaminomi’s idol character, and that anime adaptation went all in on it, with seiyuu talents who all turned out to have ties to works of that nature. In some sense Naobou is the least surprising seiyuu debut this year, to the degree that a lot of us go “huh, she didn’t yet?”

I personally am still reeling from buying all this Mocho stuff, and was already happy enough that I was there in person during her solo announcement. I guess we’ll see how things go, but I get the feeling we’re not going anywhere we have not been before.