Halko Momoi
Singer
When she’s not on stage dressing up in costume-play
gear acting out one of her many roles as an anime voice actress, baby-faced
idol Halko Momoi (born in Tokyo on Dec. 14, 1977) can be seen dressing
up in school uniform in the heart of Tokyo’s electronics and gaming
district Akihabara promoting her latest volume of memoirs. Little surprise,
then, that this voice actress and singer of anime and video game songs
has gained a following among the anime-obsessed males in Japan and beyond.
As befits an idol popular with the Akiba-kei generation (a term that literally
means “Akihabara style” and refers to young adult men interested
in manga, character figures and video games as well as idols), Halko Momoi
first gained a profile on the Internet in the late 1990s, keeping an online
diary when she was a high-school girl. A magazine editor discovered the
diary and promptly gave Halko a column, for which she would take on the
penname Moai Halko. While a student at Tokyo’s Tokai University,
Halko (inspired by the onboard computer of the Discovery spaceship HAL
9000 in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”) started performing
guerilla street-live shows in the youth mecca district that is Harajuku,
and in Akihabara. It wasn’t long before she was performing at road
show-type “talk lives” across Tokyo, idol events slavishly
attended by enthusiasts of cosplay and the voice actors of anime films
and TV series.
Halko’s
music career began in earnest in 2000 with her major-label debut single
“Mail me” (released on King Records) and coincided with her
dropping out of university. Sion Sono, director of the cult 2002 cult
mystery flick and fan boy favorite “Suicide Girls,” helmed
the single’s video. While the song was only a minor hit, Halko quickly
became dubbed the “Queen of Akihabara,” a reference to credible
J-pop singer Shiina Ringo, who two years earlier had scored a big hit
in Japan with the single “Queen of Kabukicho,” another area
of Tokyo, although the two share no musical common ground whatsoever.
Halko made her voice-acting debut in 2001 in the violent animated TV series
“The Soul Taker” as the 17-year-old, saucer-eyed hospital
nurse Komugi, still her best-known role to date. A part in the Japanese
animated television series “Final Fantasy Unlimited,” among
other roles, followed.
At the same time as becoming an in-demand voice actor, Halko also formed
in 2002 the group UNDER17, a duo that paired bespectacled Halko’s
helium-voiced vocals (this won’t be a surprise to anyone who has
seen an anime to which Halko has lent her voice) with the over-the top
guitar playing of Masaya Koike and a hyper-charged electronic backing,
the de rigueur style of music made to accompany Japanese anime and video
games. The group broke up in 2004, shortly after the release of “Best
Album 3 Soshite Densetsu e… ~,” playing a farewell live show
at Yokohama Blitz in November in which Halko bowed out by leaving her
glasses on stage at the end of the concert. With Halko presenting radio
shows and penning cellphone related articles in addition to her voice
acting roles, she was well-set to restart her solo career and find a fan
base beyond the Akiba-kei hardcore.
Halko’s debut solo album “momo-i quality” was released
on the Avex label in August 2006, a collection of theme songs from various
animation productions. The beginning of 2007 saw a flurry of activity,
including the release of Halko’s memoirs, “AkihabaLOVE –
Akihabara to Isshoni Otona ni Natta (I became an adult along with Akihabara).”
Another collection of mainly older material, “UP DATE SONGS BEST,”
preceded the release of 8-bit versions of old (some very old) and more
recent anime theme songs, “Famison8bit” in March 2007 and
another voice role in a television anime, “Seto no Hanayome.”
Visit this website to learn about the "CALL" cheering method
to make Momoi's concert an experience to remember!
http://www.momoi-halko.jp/eng/index.php
Visit Momoi's iTune's store for more of her songs!
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=157172232
