Mizuki Nana – How I Became A Fan

It’s Mizuki Nana’s birthday and I figured there’s probably no better time to post this. And yes, I recognize that it’s still January 20th on this side of the world, but it’s already the 21st in Japan. I’ve been trying to write this for many, many years and considering it is a milestone birthday for Nana, I promised myself to write and post something on her birthday (which I am doing now).

2020 will mark the year of Mizuki Nana’s 20th anniversary since debut. With the many YouTube videos on 水樹奈々 YouTube Official Channel along with the release of CANNONBALL RUNNING (my favourite album in years – and yes, I have been keeping up with her albums despite not being active in the fandom at all), I thought that it’s probably a good time to write down how I became a Mizuki Nana fan. It’s a tribute of sorts. This is also largely spurred on by seeing her Brave Phoenix performance at Live Park 2016 (uploaded to her official YouTube channel), because every time I rewatch that video, I am reminded of why I respect her as much as I do.

In looking back, there was a large time gap between me knowing about the existence of a seiyuu named Mizuki Nana to becoming someone who developed a strong interest and admiration towards her.

What I’m about to write depicts how I became a fan. It doesn’t go too deeply into why I stayed a fan but it tells of a gap that I never truly thought about until putting it into words.

 

Shaman King

I know there were (are?) a lot of controversy surrounding both the anime and the manga, but I don’t want to get into that here. I enjoyed the anime as it was, on its own. There are a lot of characters I came to like, and being the young child that I was at the time, only cared about the voice behind the character if I cared about the character enough.

Side note: It took a few more years after Shaman King for me to realize how luxurious the cast was as a whole – and I still appreciate the fact now.

I am almost certain this series is my first exposure to Mizuki Nana. She played the role of Tamamura Tamao, a semi-regular (i.e. recurring) character in the series.

Now, I had mentioned that I only cared about the voice behind the character if I cared about the character enough. I need to make a point clear. It’s not that I disliked Tamao, because if I had to categorize, she’s definitely on the “like” side. However, my feelings in comparison to a lot of the other characters would put her closer to neutral. Tamao as a character was not meant to stand out. She’s timid. She’s… not one of the characters who makes a big impact.

Which, coming back to the point of this post, is unfortunately to say that as I did not care who did Tamao’s voice.

My story as it relates to Nana-san playing a role in this series did not end there though. Shaman King, being the successful series that it became, had drama CDs and character songs. And me, who really, really liked this series at the time, did all I could to get them.

And that is how I came across the very first song I had ever heard from Mizuki Nana – 花、星、空 – the character song for Tamamura Tamao (I’m listening to it as I write this part, by the way XD). I’m going to spoil it right now, there was no transformational realization about the awesomeness of Nana after the song. I remember liking her singing voice and that was about it. It didn’t quite change my impression of her character. Not to mention, this character song didn’t really hold a candle to all the other songs that was sung by Hayashibara Megumi for this same series.

Let me sum this up. The point is that my exposure to her singing through that one song didn’t lead anywhere. It didn’t get me curious enough to search up any other works that was under the name Mizuki Nana. However, what it did do was put the name Mizuki Nana in my head; enough for me to recognize her as a regular seiyuu when I saw her name credited as Hinata in Naruto. Although that still did not go anywhere because Hinata did not leave much of an impression on me either.

But the name was in my head and that was the beginning.

Shining Wind

By this time, it was the year 2007. That’s a least a few years after my exposure through Shaman King.

There was this obscure PS2 game called Shining Wind. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s right to call it obscure. I think it had sold pretty well in Japan, just that this game never got released in the west.

A little bit of background, the Shining Wind game had an anime counterpart as a way to promote the game. The anime was known as Shining Wind x Tears, released a month prior to the game itself. The series essentially had two protagonists – Kiriya and Souma. However, both in the game and in the anime (which mostly told the same story), Kiriya and Souma had their own parties and did not travel together. The game told of Kiriya’s side of the story where the anime told of Souma’s.

Put in simpler terms:
Shining Wind (game) = Kiriya’s story
Shining Wind x Tears (anime) = Souma’s story

Now with that clear, it’ll be easier to connect how one thing led to another. Souma was voiced by Hoshi Souichirou. I had been coming out of my Digimon Savers craze at the time, so Shining Wind x Tears was the immediate next thing I latched onto (especially considering Hoshi used the same tone with Souma as he did with Daimon Masaru). A lot of people already know this, but Hoshi Souichirou and Ishida Akira starred in a lot of works together. Gundam SEED and Saiyuki being probably the two most well-known works. I was a fan of both, more so with Gundam SEED.

Ishida Akira was Kiriya.

My uncle had a PS2 that I had easy access to, and with this series having two rather popular seiyuu of its time, there was very little reason for me to not be interested in the game.

(Before I go further, I would just like to say that the anime did no justice to Kiriya’s group whatsoever. If you’re interested in this series, please either play the game first or play and watch at the same time or… just keep in mind that Kiriya and Sheena had a lot more personality and story behind them when you’re watching the anime.)

In an odd twist of events – it was neither Kiriya nor Souma that ended up being my favourite character (or not so odd, in hindsight, because oftentimes the main character of a series is rarely my absolute favourite). It was, in actuality, Kanon Sheena.

And I need to come back to this statement:
I was still in the period where I “only cared about the voice behind the character if I cared about the character enough.”

Guess what?

Kanon Sheena was voiced by Mizuki Nana.

-AND-

To those who were more observant of Nana’s involvement, Heart-shaped chant was the OP for Shining Wind.

I know there was no character song for Sheena, but I had ended up liking Sheena so much that I wanted to find one that would fit her. Where better to start than checking out other songs by the person who did her voice? And that was exactly my entry point. I found SECRET AMBITION and Level Hi! first (for obvious reasons), taking an almost immediate liking to Level Hi!. However, it didn’t quite fit my image of Sheena (it was a little too upbeat – that song later went on to become my morning alarm for several years), so I went to YouTube and found Innocent Starter.

Innocent Starter in turn introduced me to THE MUSEUM — and at that point, Mizuki Nana became more of a singer than seiyuu in my mind.

If there was door to my entry into the Mizuki Nana fandom, then Shining Wind was it.

Personal Experience – An Emotional Breakdown – Ano hi yume mita negai

At this point, I would consider myself a casual fan. Someone who knows of Mizuki Nana, would occasionally listen to her songs, but would not actively seek out her works or additional information beyond that.

That changed one day as I sat alone in a study room inside my university. I had been down in the dumps emotionally, the quietness of the room scared me so I searched for something to watch/listen on YouTube. I landed on Ano hi yume mita negai. My memory here is a bit of a blur, but I recall crying during/after the song. I know Nana-san didn’t write the lyrics, but the words of the song had struck me hard (along with the gentle way she had sung it), and I just associated the entire moment to her.

For those curious, the video in reference was the one where she sang Ano hi yume mita negai in a studio.

Things began accelerating from here…

Personal Experience – The words I needed to hear – 「人は人。私は私。そんな暇があったら、もっと努力しないとダメ。」

In my more active pursuit in trying to learn more about Mizuki Nana, I came across a magazine interview related to her Dream Skipper album. There was one sentence in there that I really needed to hear at that point in my life. And it’s words that I find myself repeating even today.

「人は人。私は私。そんな暇があったら、もっと努力しないとダメ。」
Rough translation: Others are others. I am me. If there’s time to draw comparisons, then there’s no excuse not to work harder.

This was a defining moment. The level of respect I held towards Nana-san rocketed. I was officially on the Mizuki Nana express at this point and I was not going to turn back.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha

MSLN was a series of which I had heard the name long before I cared to look it up. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that my Nanoha obsession was always meant to be. XD Come to think of it… I might have first heard Eternal Blaze in a MAD for Tales of the Abyss (using in-game anime cut scene) possibly before Shining Wind.

The reason I had known of the MSLN series long before I even thought to give it a chance was because MSLN was a popular series. However, I was not entirely into “magical girls” genre at the time, so I never bothered. Even during my phase as a casual Mizuki Nana fan, looking at the summary/premise was as far as I went. I simply was not interested. Yet as I found out more and more about Mizuki Nana, she always referenced one particular character – Fate from the Nanoha series.

I watched A’s then StrikerS then the first series. Not that it really matters because MSLN series as a whole ended up being one of my favourite of all time. I can probably dedicate another few thousand words on MSLN alone. There’s some really good world-building, especially in StrikerS. It’s one of those more personal series for me that I hold close to my heart because of all the memories I have attached to it.

Mizuki Nana and MSLN kinda got tied together and I ran with an obsession that lasted 7 years before tapering off to something much more casual in comparison. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a Mizuki Nana fan and I have never stopped being a Nana fan. MSLN remains to be a series I hold close to my heart as well. I’m eternally grateful to friends I have met online as I posted about MSLN or Mizuki Nana or both on LJ/WP.

If I were to be completely honest, it wasn’t just Mizuki Nana and MSLN. It was everyone I interacted with that kept the blaze going. If you’re someone who used to frequent my LJ/WP and is currently reading this… I want to say: Thank you. Every comment, response, conversation was fuel and created an environment of laughter and giggles when things otherwise started to become overbearing.

It is now 2020 and a lot of things have changed since my adolescent days. However, one thing remains unchanged. I very much still draw inspiration from Nana-san. And more than once, I would find myself in amazement at that fact.