Music: Konomi Suzuki

By Shelley Pallis.

Anime music has always played a large role in the life and career of singer Konomi Suzuki. The 22-year-old star boasts that it was the sight of Sheryl Nome, the blond-tressed “Galactic Fairy” from Macross Frontier, who first inspired her to seek a career in music.

Macross Frontier wasn’t released until 2008, by which time the 12-year-old Suzuki had already spent half her life in hot-house dance classes and participating in singing competitions. “I used to sing only J-Pop until then,” she admitted to the Japanese magazine Real Sound, “Macross won me over completely to singing anime songs! Even when I went to karaoke with my friends, I would only want to do anime themes! When you go out to karaoke with anime lovers, every single song leads to a conversation about the shows.”

Her obsession led to two tries at the prestigious Anison Contest. She failed to qualify the first time, but won the top spot in the 2011 competition at the age of 15. A year later, her “Choir Jail” single was the theme song to the anime Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, and she was on course to be a teen pop idol.

Several other anime theme songs followed, including “This Game” on the soundtrack to No Game No Life, “Beyond the Blue” for Between the Sky and Sea, and “Mirror of Truth, Like a Sword” for Yu-No. The aptly named “Redo” became the first opening theme to the multi-life adventure Re: Zero Starting in Another World.

She confessed that: “When I first got it, I frankly thought that they’ve really sent me a difficult song! But it’s a very cool song, so I wanted to see it. And besides, once I went through the lyrics, I was reminded that it was a song that perfectly encapsulated Subaru [the hero] of Re: Zero, so I thought it needed to be close to that world.”

Suzuki continues to flourish as a singer with a huge roster of anime-related tracks in her repertoire – an association that has dragged her off on several Asian tours and appearances in the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. “But what I really want to do,” she admits, “is sing a live show in a planetarium. It would be so romantic to do an acoustic set there, what with the number of times that stars crop up in my lyrics.”

Re: Zero is released in the UK by Anime Limited.