Kana Hanazawa -- Summer Sunset

Well, congratulations to seiyuu Kana Hanazawa（花澤香菜）on her marriage to fellow voice actor Kensho Ono（小野賢章）on July 8th a few weeks ago. Apparently, according to "Oricon News", Hanazawa made the announcement on her Twitter account.

I've seen her in many roles over the years but I will always adore her Mei-Mei from "Shirokuma Café"（しろくまカフェ）, and I hope that she was feeling very much the same thing on her wedding day as her character did here.

Perhaps one fellow seiyuu who may be feeling some slight blues right now is Tomokazu Sugita（杉田智和）. Man, the above video has been one on my heavy rotation over the years just for Sugita's constant razzing of Hanazawa. Not sure if that's going to happen all that often anymore. Oh, well, I guess he can always tease Sumire Uesaka（上坂すみれ）.

Well, in commemoration of the blessed event (though belated), I give you "Summer Sunset" by Hanazawa on her 2nd album "25" released in February 2014. A nice slice of Latin-spiced mellow pop, it was created by lyricist Yuuho Iwasato（岩里祐穂）and composer Katsutoshi Kitagawa（北川勝利）, the same duo who came up with the more uptempo "I♥New Day!" in her 3rd album "Blue Avenue". Personally, I'm glad that she uses her higher-pitched voice to sing rather than the voices of her scarier characters.

Would also like to take this opportunity to pay a little tribute to fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto（山本寛斎）who passed away almost a week ago at the age of 76. He was always the very flamboyantly eccentric character who would come up with some very crazy designs for clothes and events. I don't quite remember how but I ended up with a tote bag with his name on it years ago when I was in Japan, and it's still with me today although the handles have lost some of the outer coating. In fact, I used it to go shopping at the local supermarket this morning.