Miina Tominaga -- ’Cause A Woman

 

From YouTuber Cookie Crumpet, I give you the wonders of seiyuu Miina Tominaga（冨永みーな）as the villainous Majorina in "Smile PreCure" (2011-2012). When I posted my first article on the veteran voice thespian back in 2019, I did mention that I hadn't seen much of her work in anime and it was basically her time as the chief pain-in-the-neck for that group of PreCure warriors that got me to know her. 

Well, let's go back a few decades. Tominaga had already been in the anime business for about ten years but she was also putting out her own records whose songs from what I've heard so far have been in the urban contemporary field. She definitely doesn't sound like the cackling Majorina on the track "'Cause A Woman" from her July 1986 2nd album "a・ha! I'm 20".

Written by Ren Takayanagi（高柳恋）and composed by Yusuke Nakamura（中村裕介）, I was rather wondering whether "'Cause A Woman" would fall right into the City Pop groove or if it's an especially funky pop song of the mid-1980s. Any further speculation was finished when I reached the instrumental bridge and I declared, "Yeah, that's City Pop enough for me!". Still I kept the pop label in there, too. Nice and caramel groovy, it is.

Miina Tominaga -- Moonlight de Odorimashou（ムーンライトで踊りましょう）

 

It was back in late 2019 when I posted my first article regarding veteran actress, singer and seiyuu Miina Tominaga（冨永みーな）and her song "Hito Natsu no Memory"（ひと夏のメモリー）. She's had a career which goes all the way back to the mid-1970s and next year, she will be celebrating 50 years since her first foray behind the mike as a voice thespian. I figure that the above video by Otona Daigaku TV（大人大学TV）can hopefully encapsulate her many characters in anime. 

(11:30)

"Hito Natsu no Memory" was a track on Tominaga's debut album from September 1985, "M Marble"（Mマーブル）, and I described it as a jazzy synthpop love ballad. Well, another track from the record is "Moonlight de Odorimashou" (Let's Dance in the Moonlight) which has more of an old-fashioned 50s or 60s pop standard sensibility as written and composed by Yayoi Tanaka（田中弥生）. I don't think Tominaga was ever pegged as an aidoru but there's something about the song that would make it rather aidoru-friendly. I especially enjoy the strings and the background chorus work.

Miina Tominaga -- Kanojo no Kare kara Watashi no Kare（彼女の彼から私の彼）

 

Though I have seen Miina Tominaga（冨永みーな）as a veteran seiyuu and narrator, often on NHK shows, I'm still finding out about that part of her career as a singer. About a year and a half ago, I contributed the first article devoted to her through one of her early songs in the mid-1980s. Incidentally, the above video had Tominaga advertising some sort of seiyuu audition event in which she was one of the judges.

In comparison to the synthpop of "Hito Natsu no Memory"（ひと夏のメモリー）, the topic of that first article, Tominaga's "Kanojo no Kare kara Watashi no Kare" (Her Boyfriend is Mine) straddles the blurry line between 1990s City Pop and straight-ahead brassy pop. A track on her 1991 album "mind", the song has got that sophistication and flair which I've often acquainted with a night out in Tokyo back in the Bubble Era. Love that saxophone in there.

Written by Tominaga and composed by singer-songwriter Shoichiro Hizume（日詰昭一郎）, I don't know what the lyrics are about but with that title, I would think that it would have made for the ideal theme for one of the final trendy dramas on Japanese television. As for Hizume, he played support bass for TM Network and Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）, but also released a few singles and albums of his own. Sadly, he passed away suddenly in 2001 at the age of 43.

Miina Tominaga -- Hito Natsu no Memory（ひと夏のメモリー）

Miina Tominaga（冨永みーな）has been a name that I have seen and a voice that I have heard on Japanese TV as a narrator, but not a seiyuu that I have ever come across in anime all that often unfortunately. I've read that she played the third Katsuo Isono（磯野カツオ）, the sometimes naughty brother and son in "Sazae-san"（サザエさん）and another role in "Sore Ike! Anpanman"（それいけ!アンパンマン）, but my only hearing of her in an anime during my visits to my anime buddy's house thus far has been as her villainous role of Majorina（マジョリーナ）in "Smile Precure!"（スマイルプリキュア!）back in 2012.

According to her resume, though, Tominaga has also been a singer and in September 1985, she released an album "M Marble"（Mマーブル）. From this album, I bring you "Hito Natsu no Memory" (A Memory One Summer), and it sounds like a jazzy love ballad filtered through cute synthpop although I couldn't track down who was responsible for words and music (Ahh...did find out; Satoko Shimonari（下成佐登子）took care of both words and music). Plus, Tominaga, who was probably around 19 at the time, sounds more like a lovelorn Precure here than a cackling witch. I would be curious in finding more about her discography in "M Marble" as well as for any other releases by her.

She was born Yoshiko Tominaga（冨永美子）in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1966. From what I read in her J-Wiki profile, when she was in elementary school and already a child actress, a fortune teller gave her advice to the extent that she changed her stage name into Miina Tominaga with the first name in katakana（冨永ミーナ）before it was further switched into its current hiragana form. For further trivia, her sempai at the Nihon University College of Art were Hikari Ohta（太田光）and Yuuji Tanaka（田中裕二）, the famous comedy duo Bakusho Mondai（爆笑問題）.