Rie Tanaka

Rie Tanaka (田中 理恵, Tanaka Rie, born January 3, 1979)^[1] is a Japanese voice actress and singer.^[2][3][4] Notable among her numerous roles in anime are Lacus Clyne in Mobile Suit Gundam Seed and Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny, Chi in Chobits, Hikari Kujou/Shiny Luminous in Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart, Minna-Dietlinde Wilcke in Strike Witches and Suigintou in the anime adaptation of Rozen Maiden.^[5] In video games, she provides the voice of title character Neptune in the Hyperdimension Neptunia franchise, Morrigan Aensland in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Project X Zone, Sesshoin Kiara in Fate/Extra and Fate/Grand Order, Murata Himeko in Honkai Impact 3rd and Himeko in Honkai: Star Rail, Mitsuru Kirijo in Persona 3, Lisa in Genshin Impact and Ciel in Megaman Zero.

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When Tanaka was in elementary school, she was a member of the book club. She loved to read to others, and would give picture story shows to the younger students in the morning before the homeroom teacher came to the classroom. One of the activities of the book committee was to hold a picture-story show competition in the audio-visual room, and when the students saw her picture-story show, they were delighted.^[6] She loved reading and illustrations to begin with, especially those of Mutsumi Inomata, and her desire to become a voice actress was directly triggered when she bought and listened to the drama CD CD Theater Dragon Quest, whose jacket illustration was done by Inomata, at a bookstore.

When she was in high school, she was a member of the Manga Research Club and participated in the Manga Nationals, where she directly appealed to Kazuhiko Shimamoto, a judge from her hometown, that she wanted to be a voice actor. After graduating from high school, she moved to Tokyo and enrolled in the voice acting course at Yoyogi Animation Academy. As she was very fond of reading and taking care of children, becoming a nursery teacher was also a big dream of hers. She was torn between going on to higher education and becoming a nursery teacher or becoming a voice actor, but she chose the latter because she wanted to bring her voice to children in a larger world, not stopping at one world.^[6] While still in school, Tanaka won the grand prize at the vocal audition held by MediaWorks & Scitron Digital Contents. She made her debut in the entertainment industry when she sang the opening theme song for the PlayStation version of "Eien no Shin'yū" in Yūkyū Gensōkyoku 2nd Album. This is why her debut as a singer was earlier than her debut as a voice actor. At the same time, she also participated in the theatrical anime Rurouni Kenshin: The Motion Picture as a minor role. She made her debut as an agency voice actress in 1999, playing the role of Mitsuki Sanada, one of the heroines in Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure. 2006 saw her first starring role as Hiroko Matsukata in Hataraki Man.

Due to management reasons, Tanaka moved from Dramatic Department,^[7] to which she had belonged for many years, to Retreat on April 1, 2008, and to Office Anemone on March 1, 2019.

In addition to voice acting, Tanaka is also active in music, singing character songs for some works, and sometimes releasing singles under her own name. On April 26, 2019, it was announced that she will be working as a Youtuber under the show name "Rie Tanaka TV."^[8]

Tanaka's favorite phrase is "Never get discouraged, never run away, never give up," and she has been actively increasing her Twitter friends since around 2010, including Rina Satō and Kenjiro Hata. However, on June 23, 2013, a man with a knife intruded a Neptunia promotion where Tanaka was present,^[9] yelling "Give me Tanaka! I am the victim!". In the hustle, Tanaka fell and bruised her knee, and after the incident, she took a break from Twitter^[10][11][12] and later returned in 2014.^[13]

On June 17, 2012, Tanaka announced on her blog that she had married voice actor Koichi Yamadera.^[14] A year later, she disbanded her official fan club, "Cafe de Rie."^[15] She co-starred with Yamadera as Kusuo's maternal grandparents in 2016's The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.. On August 3, 2018, she announced on Twitter that she and Yamadera had divorced in July.^[16]