Anime and Idols in the 80's: A Look Back at the Birth of Female Voice Actor Units Kiri Nakazato's "2.5-Dimensional" Idol Historia Part 1

Nowadays, numerous "idol works" have been created for anime, video games, and other genres, and CD releases and real events are held every month by the casts who play the idols.

How were these "2.5-dimensional" idols, who freely move between two and three dimensions, born and how did they form the scene? Writer Kiri Nakazato, who has been observing 2.5-dimensional idols of the Showa, Heisei, and 2025 eras, has started a new series of articles summarizing their history!

The 21st century is the century of idol contents

The Heisei Era has changed to the 2025 Era, and the year 2020 has arrived. The world of anime, games, and smartphone apps is filled with idol works. Idolmaster," "Love Live! Aikatsu! and "Pripara," many of us have probably at least once touched an "idol"-themed content.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of "THE iDOLM@STER" series and the 10th anniversary of "LOVE LIVE! series is celebrating its 10th anniversary. On the other hand, just 15 years ago, when high school students were born, most of the current idol contents did not exist. 20 years since 2000, especially the decade from 2005 to 2015, was a special time when a new genre of idol contents built its foundation. This column will focus on how idol content has changed over the years and how it is changing.

In this column, I would like to discuss the historical tree of how idol contents were born, grew up, and were derived, from a bird's eye view.

In this article, the term "2.5-dimensional idol" is defined as follows.

In the broad sense of the term, "female idol" refers to animation, games, comics, and other works with the theme of "female idols," as well as the characters and performers who appear in these works.

The word "idol" is defined as the following

Crossover elements between the two-dimensional side (anime and games) and the three-dimensional side (live performances and stages).

Of course, this includes the school idols of "Love Live! and we may also talk about works in adjacent genres when discussing a series of works. As for crossover, the easiest way to understand this is to say that the voice actors themselves perform live and on stage. Since we place emphasis on the relationship between two-dimensional and three-dimensional works that influence each other, we basically do not cover so-called "live-action" works, which are independent dramas or movies.

The above is the premise of this column. First, we will start with the relationship between animation and idols in the 1980s, a time before the birth of various idol contents.

The 1980s, when real idols were brought into works of art

When did the concept of "female idols" first emerge? In the early days, the boundary between singers and idols was blurred, but it was in the early 1970s when Candies and Yamaguchi Momoe debuted, followed by Pink Lady in 1976 and Seiko Matsuda in 1980, In 1976, Pink Lady and Seiko Matsuda made their debut. As idols became the object of admiration, it was inevitable that creative works based on idol motifs would follow in their footsteps.

Up until the 1980s, anime works featuring idols included "The Pink Lady Story: Angels in Glory " (1978), "The Super Dimension Fortress Macross" series (1982-), " Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel" (1983), "Megazone 23" (1985), "Idol Legend Eriko" (1989), "Idol Angel Welcome Yoko" (1990) come to mind. The "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" series is particularly unique in that it incorporates the motif of "science fiction mecha and beautiful girls" with the theme of idols, and "Megazone 23," which shares many staff members, can be said to be in the same vein.

The other lineage includes "Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel," "Idol Legend Eriko," and "Idol Angel Welcome Yoko," which depict the world of show business. While there is a lineage of magical girl anime as an object of girls' yearning, the 80s saw the birth of works depicting the world of entertainment and idols as a glittering and familiar otherworldly world. The works of this era are centered on solo idols.

At first glance, these works are completely different from each other, but they have one thing in common that is unique to the 80s. That is the prominence of tie-ups with real idols and the importation of idols as cast members. In "Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel," idol Takako Ota played the main character Mami (Yu Morisawa), and in "Megazone 23," idol Kumi Miyazato debuted as the theme song artist and voice actress for the role of Eve Tokimatsuri. Although they were not voice actors, "Idol Densetsu Eriko" had a strong tie-up with idol Eriko Tamura and "Idol Tenshi Welcome Yoko" had a strong tie-up with idol Yoko Tanaka. The first one I mentioned, "Pink Lady", was a very strong tie-up project with Yoko Tanaka.

It goes without saying that "The Pink Lady Story: Angels in Glory," the first one I mentioned, is based on the legendary idol Pink Lady, and some consider "The Wandering Sun," produced by Mushi Productions in 1971, to be the originator of idol works. (Personally, I think that "Wandering Sun" is a saga of girls in the world of entertainment and should be discussed in the same context as works such as "Glass Mask" rather than idol works.)

Although the genre of the work is different, the anime "High School! (1985 ), a derivative unit of Onyanko Club, sang the theme song, and members Amiko Takai and Yukiko Iwai appeared as themselves in the main anime. The late-night anime "Kuriimu Lemon Lemon Angel" (1987) also featured members of the idol group Lemon Angel as voice actors, and used Lemon Angel's music as background music. One of the members of Lemon Angel, Satoshi Sakurai (Sakurai), would make his big break as a voice actor seven years later in 1994, playing Marin in "Akazukin Cha Cha" and Milene Genus in "Macross 7.

Looking at the world of video games from the same period, here, too, titles with tie-ups to real-life idols, such as "Miho Nakayama's Tokimeki High School" (1987) and "LaSalle Ishii's Child's Quest" (1989), stand out.

In the 1980s, there was a very strong affinity between anime and game content and real idols. This was the demand of the content side, but at the same time, we can also see the problems of the real idol side as the big idols representing the era disappeared and the otherworldly mystique and star power of the past faded away, and the record companies struggled with trial and error in how to market their products.

The Birth of the Concept of Female Voice Actor Units

Before I move on to the 1990s, I would like to introduce the anime "Ranma 1/2" (1989-) as a work that straddles and connects the 80s and 90s. Ranma 1/2" is a work with a conspicuous 80s flavor, with idols Etsuko Nishio and Kaori Sakagami, CoCo, and ribbon singing the theme song. In 1990, however, the voice actor unit DoCo was formed as part of the "Ranma-teki Kikaku Ondan" project. The unit name is a parody of CoCo, which sang the theme song, and has a strong project-unit flavor, but what is surprising is its members. The members are Megumi Hayashibara as Ranma Saotome, Noriko Hidaka as Akane Tendou, Rei Sakuma as Shampoo, Minami Takayama as Nabiki Tendou, and Kikuko Inoue as Kasumi Tendou, all of whom look like gleaming stars. Although it was a planned unit, it later released an album, and was truly a pioneering female voice-over unit.

There had been male voice actor units that dominated the scene before, such as Slapstick (a male voice actor band) in the 1970s and NG5 (a unit from "Armored Den Samurai Trooper") in the late 1980s, but the spotlight on female voice actor units and singing was a major milestone.

In contrast to the 80s, when real idols were used as voice actors, in the 90s voice actors expanded their field of activities, and voice actors as artists began to dominate the charts. In my next entry, I would like to discuss a certain work that was created "too early" in the 90s, which became a turning point in the history of voice acting.

(Text by Kiri Nakazato)