Orihara Fujimori, UZI, Cypress Ueno, and KURO (HOME MADE Family) join "Hypnosis Mike," a rap project featuring male voice actors, as writers.

Hypnosis Mike -Division Rap Battle-" is a rap battle project featuring 12 male voice actors including Subaru Kimura, Shintaro Asanuma, Tadashi Hayami, Yusuke Shirai, and Soma Saito. It was announced today on stage at Animate Girls Festival 2017 that Oriental Radio's Shingo Fujimori, rapper UZI, rapper Cypress Ueno, and KURO (HOME MADE Family) will participate in this project.

Hypnosis Mike -Division Rap Battle- is a CD project based on rap music for the first time in the history of voice actors. Twelve male voice actors participated in the project: Subaru Kimura, Haruki Ishitani, Kohei Amasaki, Shintaro Asanuma, Shinichiro Kamio, Wataru Komada, Kou Hayami, Ryuichi Kijima, Kento Ito, Yusuke Shirai, Souma Saito, and Yukihiro Notsuyama. Each of them raps as a character in the work, which will be released every three weeks as CDs and distributed songs by three members per team, consisting of four divisions: Ikebukuro, Yokohama, Shinjyuku, and Shibuya. Character design will be handled by IDEA FACTORY and Otomate.

Information on the creators participating in the second and subsequent divisions was announced on stage at Animate Girls Festival 2017 on Saturday, November 4, and was released along with enthusiastic message comments.
Cypress Ueno will write the lyrics to "G anthem of Y-CITY," a song by Hekikoh Zamatoki (CV. Shintaro Asanuma), which will be included in Yokohama Division's "BAYSIDE M.T.C.," released on November 15 (Wed.).
The song "Bayside Smoking Blues" by Gun Usagi Iruma (CV. Wataru Komada) is written and composed by KURO (HOME MADE Kazoku).
The lyrics for Busujima Mason Riin (CV. Shinichiro Kamio)'s song "What's My Name?" will be written by UZI, who is also well-known in Freestyle Dungeon.
Yokohama Division will be composed by some of the leading trackmakers in the HIP HOP world, including ALI-KICK and CHIVA from BUZZER BEATS for D.O.C.

In addition, it was announced in a video commentary at the event that the lyricist for the third Shinjyuku Division "MATENRO" song by Izanami Kazumi (CV. Ryuichi Kijima) is Shingo Fujimori of Oriental Radio.
Rappers EGO and TENZAN will participate as stage assistants; EGO is a rapper belonging to Zeebra's GRAND MASTER label, and in the past has appeared in Sion Sono's film "TOKYO TRIBE," as well as providing raps and coaching to actors.
Some of the stage outfits for this event were provided by RUGGED, a select store in Koenji, and GUALA, a RUGGED brand. Check it out.

As a special bonus for pre-ordering and purchasing the second, third, and fourth CDs at all animate stores, a release event and Nico Live public live broadcast will be held on January 21 (Sun.), 2018.
The event will be attended by Kimura-san (Ichiro Yamada) from Ikebukuro Division "Buster Bros! Kimura (Ichiro Yamada), Ishitani (Jiro Yamada), Amasaki (Saburo Yamada) from Ikebukuro Division, Kamio (Mason Riuei Busujima) and Komada (Gun Usagi Iruma) from Yokohama Division's "Mad Trigger Crew," and Ito (Dokubo Kanonsaka) from Shinjuku Division's "Mad Ten-Ro", Mr. Notsuyama (playing Teito Arisugawa) from SHIBUYA Division's "Fling Posse" will appear. You can participate in the lottery at all animate stores from November 5, so be sure to check it out.

photo by Kumei Kenta