I'll be honest with you...up to now, whenever I heard the name Mei Mei, the only image I got was the one for the little sister of Panda-kun on the early 2010s anime "Shirokuma Café"（しろくまカフェ）. As voiced by seiyuu Kana Hanazawa（花澤香菜）, her crazed excitement over her crush, the zookeeper Mr. Handa, was such that she made Sonny the Cuckoo, the mascot for all those Cocoa Puffs commercials, seem all calm and collected in comparison.
However, that's all changed now. Why? Well, I found out that Mei Mei is also the childhood nickname of singer-songwriter and 70s aidoru Agnes Chan（アグネス・チャン）, and as such, for her 1976 album "Mei Mei ~ Itsudemo Yume wo"（いつでも夢を...Dream All The Time）, the title track was indeed her nickname. Not surprisingly, "Mei Mei" is so Agnes Chan...an adorably sunny and sing-songy folk tune created totally by her describing what I think is a typical day in her life in Japan, and it seems as if she were a fine foodie with shoutouts to the patisserie, curry, and her favourite tea shop. Gastronomy is bliss! I've followed that philosophy a little too well.
Something that does make me go hmmm though takes us back to Mei Mei the panda. As a seiyuu, Hanazawa has a wide variety of voices at her disposal. So it is interesting that in my observation, her voicing of Mei Mei seems quite similar to how Agnes sounded back in the 1970s...well, without the manic screaming, that is.
I have created a new genre for this! I am calling it kawaii-Folk! I like how she hits those tones and the pitch too it is kind of like country and folk music mixed together.
ReplyDeleteY'know...I can imagine her singing this under a banyan tree somewhere while playing the guitar and most of the local mammals congregating around her.
Delete