Daisuke Ono -- Llama-san no Llama Mambo （ラマさんのラママンボ）

I'm starting to think whether I should be making the anime "Shirokuma Cafe"（しろくまカフェ...Polar Bear Cafe）its own category to the right since I've put up a number of the opening and ending themes. Just can't help it...each of them has had its own charm.

One of the other things I've noticed about the 2012 show is its seemingly counter-intuitive casting. I've heard that one of the seiyuu, Hiroshi Kamiya（神谷浩史）, has played his share of macho badass characters in other anime, and yet, on "Shirokuma Cafe", he plays the harmless, snarky and insecure-about-love Penguin. Then, there is Daisuke Ono（ 小野大輔）who plays the Perry Como of the animal group that regularly visits the cafe, Llama. Llama-san is such a mild-mannered and amiable soul whose character actor Ono has also been famous for playing the just-as-mild-mannered (if a bit creepy) Itsuki Koizumi on the 2006 "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya". But for the anime I've seen, the counter-intuitive part came to me when I realized that he also played the traditionally hot-blooded Susumu Kodai on the reboot of the Yamato franchise, "Space Battleship Yamato 2199". Just try to imagine Llama-san ordering the Wave Motion Gun be fired...he would end up having a heart attack trying to get past the first syllable.

But I digress. As has been the case with every main and secondary character on "Shirokuma Cafe", Ono has had his chance to apply his vocals to one of the ending themes by Saki（ 紗希）. He went Latin with "Llama-san no Llama Mambo" (Llama's Llama Mambo), supposedly a beloved life-long musical project by Llama for which he has wanted to involve his good buddies at the cafe according to the lyrics. Being someone who has liked his share of Latin music over the years, this particular ending theme has rather stuck with me over the past few years, and since I've been re-watching the series over the past few weeks, I'm looking forward to Ono's dulcet tones in the ending credits again.