Of late, or rather, as of 2007 since I started getting into anime rather “aggressively”, a seiyuu back then that just popped up as a small name on the side was Katou Emiri. She was hardly a name I picked up much on at the time for two reasons – the first was that I was not as grateful for the seiyuu scene back then when I was still a newbie to the anime world, and the second was that she was voicing a side character. But as of 2008, Katou moved into quite the high rank for voicing one of my waifus. And right now, in the summer season, she is taking on two roles that might as well be cast as mains in their respective series, and one other minor role, making it a total of 3 series this season I am watching (out of 5) that she is in.

The problem? These three roles seem to conflicting with what I am used to hearing from Katou. Let me attempt to find out why, and whether it may just be me. By the way, the picture above is the best I could do on short notice, I fail at Google it seems, finding a picture of her that does not make her look stupid. The picture comes from her own personal blog, Emiri no Nichijou, and is part of her banner.

First of all allow me to list the roles that I actually remember hearing her as, and quite deeply as that. Considering that I do not watch that many anime and are not into the subjective view that is moe, I can only go by the two roles by which I have cast her in. Here is a short review of both.
 

Screenshot thanks to Pure Anime Gallery.

Kayanuma Kiko from Darker than Black (2007)

Kiko was an annoying otaku fangirl, almost fitting into the FYG syndrome except for the F part, and Katou’s voice well suited this character. It is said that first impressions count, and quite frankly ever since Kiko I can hardly portray Katou’s voice as doing anything other than young girls or female characters that go into the moe category, or at least, the freakishly or humorously annoying type. Kiko fits the bill for her kind of voice after all – she is into anime, likes yaoi (hinted at about two to three points during the series), and fangirls over Hei each time he appears, even going to the point of despair when Hei turns up with Kirihara at the restaurant.

Of course, being a side character, Kiko was hardly given a lot of airtime except for the relevant episodes she was cast in, so Katou’s exposure to the audience here was limited to how many people actually gave a damn about the show.
 

Blair from Soul Eater (2008-2009)

Katou’s next big role for me, despite it also being somewhat of a side character, was the ever flirtatious and yet dangerously powerful cat Blair in Soul Eater. Here, Katou uses a more mature form of her voice to play her role as Blair, as we can hear throughout the series where Blair is present. Katou also seems to have an easier time playing roles with cat voices in them it seems – in cat form, Katou uses a slightly different form of her voice to have a pronounced “nyan” as Blair, and Kiko, if you will recall, did cosplay as a cat during the search in Darker than Black for Gai’s client.

This portrays Katou’s voice as being more mature, and feminine, as compared to the previous Kiko. So a new typecast for her voice has been set, and quite frankly, can one deny that she did do a pretty good job as Blair, even more so considering how Blair turned from cute to dangerous at times, and had a slightly different voice form while as a cat?
 

One other role that she cast in was from the Japanese version of the Korean MMORPG, Granado Espada, in which her voice was put to further use as Feng Ling, the lady warrior of the East. However, despite what we were led to believe, Feng Ling is more of a stereotyped “Katou” kind of character in terms of her voice use – statements like “I’m hungry!” (Onaka suitane), “Where is this!?” (Koko doko?), and “Where’s the delicious food?” (Oishi mono doko ne?) sound familiar in depth and voice maturity to Blair’s.

So, looking at the stereotypes that I have already put her in (remember this point for the last part), let me now look at the three roles she is doing for the summer anime season.
 

Disk from Needless

Disk is a Half, a cyborg of sorts, meaning it is likely that she was created by combining machinery into an original human body. Her cold demeanor is a move away from the usual Katou voice I am used to, which accounts for the fact that until I checked Katou’s roles in ANN, I missed this entirely (despite probably saying in my summer watchlist that I did see her name inside).

Katou probably does not have much to do for Disk compared to the other roles this season – Disk is a side character and is almost monotonous, aside from a slight inclination in intonation now and then. However it is nice to see a colder side to her voice, despite the fact that I believe she still does better using her normal voice.
 

Houjouin Seika from Princess Lover

The one role I could not agree with as Katou being cast during summer, Houjouin Seika is the tsundere stereotype with a chip on her shoulder not for the main male character Teppei but rather his family. Yet she also starts to like Teppei for almost absolutely no reason (if you want to find out a possible reason, read the comments in this post), and has a high-and-mighty and condescending attitude.

Now the main reason I dislike Seika, other than her obvious arrogance, is partly because Katou’s voice sounds so bland as her. I have no idea why, but this really sounds unlike the Katou Emiri I am used to. It may come from her playing a role she is not used to either, but I am not buying that considering that she has, by now, quite a few roles under her belt. So, is she just having a bad hair day (or days, if you count the number of episodes Seika has been in) compared to her other role below? Seika is almost monotonous (not the kind you would expect from a character like her) – take her anger in episode 4 for instance when she appears in the Society Club’s building and talks to both Mezu and Teppei. Does not her voice when she is angry sound not very much different from the usual Seika (compared to episode 2 when Teppei bumps into her)?
 

Hachikuji Mayoi from Bakemonogatari

The lost snail from the highly popular summer series Bakemonogatari is a loli that has declared how dirty she is in the screencap above. Yet Mayoi’s true form is actually that

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, despite her appearances. What is even better is just how good the voice acting brought about by Katou is as Mayoi.

From the high-pitched “screams” of Mayoi as she realizes she has been groped by Araragi to the low-pitched tones of her retelling her past, her moves from a seemingly not-so-innocent loli to a young girl that just wants to find her way home despite

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, Katou delivers throughout without a drop in her voice power, compelling the viewer to feel as much for Mayoi through her voice, as through her background history.
 

The Problem?

So why is it that, just comparing Mayoi and Seika, that Katou is so different in both roles? I mean, it may seem as though it is a biased comparison, and we are, after all, only looking at two of Katou’s roles (Disk hardly counts). Yet I find it difficult to believe that a seiyuu can do so well in one series and yet blandly in another for the same season (in spring it was, believe it or not, Noto Mamiko, who managed this distinction for me, despite me not posting about it; just so you know, I actually like Noto, you fags). Hashihime disagrees with me to a large extent, and considering that he has indeed been keeping tabs on anime and the seiyuu world for longer than I do, his statement might hold more weight than mine.

Yet the title should not be missed, and all that I pointed out throughout this post. It would be missing the biggest point if I did not say that this is all based on my subjective view of Katou Emiri’s voice talent. In other words, because of the stereotypes that I have cast her in, it is difficult for me to accept her role as another stereotype that I might happen to dislike (I like tsunderes, but not to the point of HNGH and stuff, and Seika is just annoying). Further, Seika is annoying (did I mention she is annoying? Heck I cannot remember) in Princess Lover, so that may count for something too.
 

One could of course argue that my strong dislike for Seika’s character has a lot to do with how I am disliking Katou’s voice here – in other words, my feelings against Seika are being extrapolated to the “performance” factor for poor Katou. Or, it could be that she is doing such a good job of Seika that I feel compelled to dislike Seika. Who knows?

Finally, I am pretty sure j1m0ne also knows more about Katou and can probably talk about this to a bigger extent (assuming she watched the three shows I mentioned this season), but that still does not escape the fact that all of us are looking at Katou’s voice through the tints of our own subjective colorful experiences. There can be little objectivity when even our subconscious plays an indirect role in determining what we like or dislike; thus, whether or not we think Katou is doing well as a seiyuu is just going to be based on what we believe subjectively to be “good” or “bad” in terms of the characters she voices and the anime we watch.
 

Oh, and Seika is annoying. Mayoi is golden though.
 

PS: Katou’s birthday is just a week or so before mine and we were born in the same year. HNGH almost-twin sister. Yeah I know, lame.

Related posts:

1. PL 03 – Bouncing Charlotte, Angsty Seika
2. #BP IRC Excerpts – Son I Am Disappoint
3. An Ero Neko – Blair
4. Faps Are Needed – jGE’s New Seiyuu
5. Princess Lover 04 – Too Much Seika