Rie Tanaka

Rie Tanaka is a Japanese voice artist (seiyu) and a singer who has played many important roles in anime, video games, and radio dramas. She has also done some opening and ending songs for various shows, and released a few CDs.

If you enjoy watching anime, you probably heard Rie Tanaka's voice already: she had lead roles in popular animated series, like Chi from Chobits, Suigintou from Rozen Maiden, or Lacus Clyne from Gundam SEED. You can find her bio and a longer list of her roles in various anime shows below.

Rie Tanaka was born on January 3rd, 1979 in Sapporo (Hokkaido, Japan). As a child, she took singing classes and performed in a number of concerts. After graduating from high school, Tanaka joined a popular animation company in Tokyo and started her career as a voice actress.

She is quite popular in Japan, having had a dedicated fan club named "Cafe de Rie" until 2012. She has also released three albums: "24 Wishes", which contains some Chobits songs and a few new tracks, "Garnet", which contains a jazz version of "Kiss Kara Hajimaru Miracle", a song she performed for Steel Angel Kurumi anime, and "Kokoro". Tanaka is also a member of the Steel Angels, a singing trio composed of the three lead seiyuu of said anime, which besides her include Atsuko Enomoto and Masayo Kurata.

She is 1.62 m tall, enjoys Indian cuisine, likes writing lyrics for music, and keeps a few pets (a cat and a dog). If you understand Japanese, visit Rie Tanaka's blog for more info!

Chobits is one of the most popular anime with Rie Tanaka, where she voices the female lead, Chi. She also does both opening and ending songs of this anime (you can watch the music video of those below). Here's a short summary.

Hideki Motosuwa is an average farm boy who moves to Tokyo to try to get into a college. A lot of people there have persocoms (computers shaped realistically like humans); Hideki wants to get one badly so he could do all kinds of stuff, especially access the porn sites. Of course, he cannot afford to buy one, but amazingly, he finds a persocom in the form of a cute girl, just lying in a heap of garbage.

Hideki carries the heavy persocom home and turns her on. It seems, however, that something's wrong with her: the only thing she's capable of saying is 'Chi'. Thus, Hideki names her 'Chi' and starts teaching her all kinds of things. Chi is really clueless, but a fast learner; it also seems she is even more unique than anyone would have guessed...

The following are some of the most popular series with Rie Tanaka as the main character.

In these shows, Rie Tanaka stars in a supporting role.

She has released three albums in total, although they didn't enjoy high popularity, whether in Japan or outside it.

She has played numerous supporting roles in games like Persona 3, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Drakengard 3. Perhaps most notably, she is the voice of Neptune from the Hyperdimension Neptunia series.

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