Mayumi Tanaka a Big Hit at Sakura Con 2010

Mayumi Tanaka posing with a Luffy Cosplayer

Article and Photos by J!-ENT’s Michelle Tymon

Luffy from Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece is one of the most unique, energetic, and funny characters you’ll ever see in an anime/manga series and to provide the voice for such a character, I don’t think anyone could play it as well as Mayumi Tanaka. Mayumi Tanaka is one of the most well known seiyuu in Japan to date, with a list of roles including Luffy from One Piece, Krillin from the Dragon Ball series, Koenma from Yu Yu Hakusho, Wataru Ikusabe from Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru and Kanna Kirishima from Sakura Wars just to name a few of her major roles. Recently, she was a guest a Sakuracon 2010 and the fans were rather excited to see her.

Mayumi Tanaka at the Sakura Con 2010 Press Conference

Mayumi Tanaka was born on January 15th, 1955 in Tokyo, Japan as Mayumi Abe. She graduated from Aoyama Women’s Junior College. She had always liked acting, resulting in her becoming a stage actress and eventually a seiyuu. Her roles as a seiyuu mostly consist of those of energetic boys, and she rarely plays girl roles. Among those boy roles, many of them happen to be short (and sometimes bald: ie: Chibita from Osomatsu-kun, and of course Krillin from Dragon Ball). Besides stage acting and being a seiyuu, she also does narration work, one of her most recent and popular narration roles being for the popular quiz show, “Quiz! Hexagon 2”. She has also done Japanese dubs for American movies, one in particular she mentioned and demonstrated at Sakura Con was her version of Babe the pig from the movie “Babe”.

Mayumi Tanaka holding the devil fruits that fans made for her

Mayumi Tanaka was definitely a fan favorite at the convention and all of her events were rather packed with fans. On the first day of the convention, she did a live voice acting stage performance with the Seattle area voice acting group, Dream Catchers where she of course acted out Luffy along with Pazu (Castle in the Sky). As Luffy, she reenacted one of the most memorable and emotional scenes in the beginning of the series with Shanks. She also performed the opening theme to Sakura Wars, “Gekitei (Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan)” and then an original song of hers called “Watashi Amaryllis (I’m an Amaryllis)”. After seeing her perform live, I can say that she may be small in stature, but she has a very powerful voice and an amazing and energetic stage presence. During an intermission, we got to see her son, Kousuke do some juggling and other performance tricks while wearing an official Zoro costume that he borrowed from Kazuya Nakai himself (Kazuya Nakai is the seiyuu for Roronoa Zoro from One Piece). The energetic hour and a half performance ended with Mayumi Tanaka performing the One Piece opening song, “We Are!” with the Dream Catchers.

Mayumi Tanaka posing with the One Piece Cosplay Group

Mayumi Tanaka singing with the One Piece Cosplay Group

On Saturday, she held a fan panel where she answered various questions concerning her roles as well as performed various fan requests. Most of the questions the fans asked had to do with One Piece, which she seemed to enjoy as well. She was also asked about the rest of the One Piece cast quite a bit and she mentioned that not only did their characters get along, but they were all very good friends in real life and outside of work. She mentioned that there were numerous times that even if certain cast members were done recording and had to go to other engagements that a lot of the time they would come back after that engagement was done and they would all hang out until the next morning. Towards the end of the panel, a fan asked her if she would join her and the rest of the “One Piece” cosplayers for their photoshoot and she agreed. About an hour after the panel, Mayumi Tanaka showed up outside to take pictures with the group of One Piece cosplayers and took plenty of pictures of them as well. Throughout the convention, fans also mentioned that she would come up to them if they were One Piece cosplayers and ask to take pictures with them. Fans were definitely excited to see her. A couple of fans even made life sized replicas of the devil fruit for her and Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece.

Mayumi Tanaka taking pictures of the One Piece Cosplay Group

Mayumi Tanaka signing a Luffy poster for a fan.

On the last day of the convention, she had an autograph signing. The line for the signing was so long that the Sakura Con staff had to cut the line off to try to get everyone already in line through because they only had an hour. Tanaka-san personalized most of the autographs and was happy to take pictures with her enthusiastic fans. Despite the efforts of getting everyone through within an hour, only about half of the people in line were able to get an autograph. Tanaka-san and her staff tried to see if they could get a little more time so more people could get through the line, but because the next autograph session starting, the Sakura Con staff had no choice as well. For the people who were not able to get an autograph, Tanaka-san shook everyone’s hands and apologized to as well as thanked each person individually.

The autograph line for Mayumi Tanaka

Tanaka-san expressed numerous times that it was unbelievable that so many people in the US not only had such a strong interest in anime like One Piece, but had such a strong interest in her since she only speaks Japanese and all of her roles are done in Japanese. She said that she was flattered and honored to meet so many enthusiastic fans and the fans were more than happy to have a chance to meet her and interact with her. She mentioned that in Japan, most of the anime fans seemed more introverted in a way and she was happy to see that so many fans in the US were so enthusiastic about their love for anime and her work. She seemed to have a great time in Seattle and I’m sure the fans in Seattle are hoping for her to return soon.

J!-ENT’s Cosplay Underground – Cosplay Photo Book 004 by Nergene Arquelada is up

The fourth edition of J!-ENT’s “Cosplay Underground” cosplay photobook 004 by Nergene Arquelada is now up for download.  Featuring cosplayers showcasing their costumes for the anime series “Cardcaptors Sakura”, “Naruto”, “Pokemon”, “Dissidia Final Fantasy”, “Axis Powers Hetalia” and more.

Click here to download the latest cosplay photo book

Cosplay Girls 2 (A J!-ENT Book Review)

“Another wonderful reference for those looking for high quality, full color photography of various cosplayers from Japan. DHP’s series of ‘Cosplay Girls’ is definitely worth it if you are in it for just to see cosplay girls or want simply a cosplay resource for ideas.”

BOOK: Cosplay Girls 2

COMPANY: Cocoro Books (DH Publishing, Inc.)

PAGE COUNT: 112 pages

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Enter the wacky world of Cosplay, Japan’s underground costume scene. All over Japan hard-core fans of anime, video games and manga dress up in their latest costumes. This is a world where ordinary girls reinvent themselves as street-fighting chicks, emerald-haired princesses and faux-fur kittens. Why do they do it? Find out as Cosplayers explain their obsessions in their own words. • All new girls • All new costumes

Earlier this year, I reviewed Cocoro Books “We Love Cosplay Girls” which was an excellent book for reference material and the way the book was broken down to several areas in cosplay from heroes to dark side, I just felt that the book was well done, sold for a great price and worthy of purchasing.

Before “We Love Cosplay Girls”, in 2007, Cocoro Books released “Cosplay Girls 2″, another cosplay book that can be found for a great price and also featuring many photos of various cosplayers in Japan in a variety of outfits from popular video game, manga and anime series.

One thing that is noticeable is that “Cosplay Girls 2″ is an 8.5×11 book, which the newer version is much smaller.

Also, the introduction features a pretty length 3-page article on the alluring world of cosplay.

Another difference between this book and its current incarnation is that in the newer version, you would see several cosplayers in the same outfit or from the same series. Whereas, this version breaks things down in several chapters such as “Cosplay Girls Catalog Part 1″, “Before and After”, “Cosplay Girls Catalog Part 2″, “Cosplay Boys Catalog”, “Cosplay Beauty Asuka and her 25 transformations” and “Cosplay Girls Catalog Part 3″.

The Table Contents features the name of the cosplayer, the character name and the series its from. While in the main pages, a single photo features the cosplayer with the character and series below the photo.

The spelling of the series is more towards the Japanese romanization, so “Eureka 7″ is spelled “Eureca 7″ and a few typos with “Scenery” typed out as “Scernery” and a few format errors where a word’s final letter would continue in the next paragraph but this is very few and it doesn’t detract from the overall book.

The “Before and After” metamorphosis chapter is actually quite intriguing as it features several women, featuring their cosplay name, age, job, how long they have been cosplaying and what is cosplay to them. So, you have their before and after photo.

And another small problem I found was that you would have an odd page featuring the before’s (ie. page 51) and then the next page on the other side 52 would feature their transformations. So, it would have been nice to have the before and after on the same page but again, another minor thing but nothing that detracts from the overall book.

Whereas the first chapter feature cosplayers in full-page or a large photo on each page, part 2 of the catalog features two or three photos per page.

And I saw this as a way to not make things too expensive as it is evident that there were so many photos that Cocoro Books wanted to feature but to make things cost effective print-wise, to put 3 photos on a page instead of just one.

In “We Love Cosplay Girls”, I wrote about how it would have been awesome if male cosplayers from Japan were shown and sure enough, “Cosplay Girls 2″ features a few pages on cosplay guys.

The next chapter features a “Cosplay Beauty Asuka and her 25 Transformations”.

This chapter features the cosplayer Asuka in a few similar poses but wearing a 25-different outfits.

The final chapter “Cosplay Girls Catalog Part 3″ returns to large photos and half-page photos.

Again, I have to applaud Cocoro Books (DHP) for bringing these Japanese cosplay books to the US. The third volume “We Love Cosplay Girls” was awesome and obviously much was learned from the previous cosplay books including this “Cosplay Girls 2″.

So, “We Love Cosplay Girls” features a very different focus and done very well. “Cosplay Girls 2″ has its slight problems but yet when it comes to these type of books, it’s not a book that is for reading, it’s a book for admiring the cosplay and creativity of that cosplayer (or its maker) and of course, for others, it’s about admiring the beauty of female cosplayers.

“Cosplay Girls 2″ does offer things that are not on “We Love Cosplay Girls” and the transformation and before and after chapter was pretty cool to see.

As well as showing a few pages of cosplay guys as well. So, it’s good to see some inclusion of that, even at a few pages.

But all in all, there are big photos which selective cosplayers can use as a reference for ideas of upcoming cosplay outfits or to see how certain outfits were crafted.

So, it’s a book that serves its purpose and all in all, for its price which you can find online at a great price, there is no need to hesitate in buying this book, even though a third book has come out.

So, check out “Cosplay Girls 2″. A very good reference book for cosplayers and for those who want to see beautiful Japanese girls and women in cool outfits based on anime, manga and video game characters. Check it out!

J!-ENT’s Cosplay Book 001 is now up for download – For free!

Check out J!-ENT photographer’s Nergene Arquelada’s first cosplay book. Now available on J!-ENT. Featuring various cosplayers in full-color, large photographs.

The book will be an ongoing series featured for J!-ENT’s “Cosplay Underground”.

You can download the book by clicking here.