I saw that today, May 30, is the 43rd birthday of famed Japanese voice actress (and Queen of Tsundere) Rie Kugimiya. Since I’ve been a fan of hers for years and years, I thought I’d ask J-List’s awesome customers to share their favorite Kugimiya characters. Let’s see who they picked!
Rie Kugimiya was born May 30, 1979, in Osaka. In high school, she was in her school’s broadcasting club and regularly read school announcements over the P.A. system, which gave her a lot of practice in front of a microphone as well as positive feedback from her classmates. Rie debuted as a voice actress in a Playstation 2 visual novel called etude prologue -Shaking heart-, which is sadly not an eroge. At just 159 cm/5’1″, she’s “Taiga sized.”
As her characters become more and more popular in the early 2000s, the strange emotional attachment fans felt for the characters she voiced created a Japanese net slang phenomenon called the Kugimiya Virus Hypersensitive Cerebral Corticalitis (shortened to “Kugimiya virus”), which was the basis of the official KugiRie T-shirt J-List sold back in the day.
What Are the 13 Best Characters Voiced by Rie Kugimiya?
One classic Kugimiya character is Nagi Sanzenin from Hayate the Combat Butler. The series wouldn’t have been the same without Rie Kugimiya’s unique voice.
Kagura from Gintama is another classic KugiRie character, always entertaining us.
Mizore from Rosario + Vampire gave us many panty shots, I mean entertaining scenes.
Because Rie Kugimiya usually plays diminutive tsundere characters, sometimes it can be easy to have trouble identifying her in a unique role. It took me a long time to realize that Melona from Queen’s Blade was voiced by her. That show had amazing and sexy music, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7JCfoBbciw
I’m not the only one to have trouble identifying Rie-chan’s characters. A J-List Twitter follower said it took him until Yazuka 5 to realize that Haruka was voiced by her.
Rie Kugimiya is so versatile, she can play boys as well as girls, like the adorably cute Hasuta from Haiyore! Nyaruko.
I got into idol anime through the Idolmaster audio dramas, back before the show got its first anime, and hearing her voice Iori Minase would have made me a lifelong fan if I wasn’t already one.
The anime that marked the end of the Kugimiya-voiced twin-tail tsunderes might have been Aria the Scarlet Ammo (aka Hidan no Aria), a well-executed show that tried to recapture the magic of Toradora by reuniting Rie Kugimiya and Ryuji voice Junji Majima…which felt more than a little off.
Shakugan no Shana was a legendary work in which Rie did some of her best work. During the height of the tsundere era you could sort of see Shana, Louise from Zero no Tsukaima, and Taiga from Toradora as some sort of Eternal Tsundere, who exist in every sphere of the anime multiverse, sort of like Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion, a hero who exists across several universes.
Speaking of Michael Moorcock, another epic Rie Kugimiya role as Alphonse Elric. See what I did there?
Louise from Zero no Tsukaima, aka “Magical Taiga,” is another fan favorite, though the levels of tsun and dere are slightly different from some of her other characters, which turns off some fans. What do you think the best tsundere ratio is?
Finally, we have Taiga Aisaka from Toradora. Of course, there could be no other choice for the best KugiRie character, and she defined the trope with this legendary 2008 anime.
(Damn, was Toradora really 14 years ago???)
Bonus round! Then there was the time Rie Kugimiya starred as herself in the fun anime Sore ga Seiyu!, a show that explored the seiyu industry itself and offered advice for up-and-coming voice actors to break into the business. In the days before Shirobako, it was the first anime to really break the fourth wall for anime fans.
Another bonus! For many fans, the best part of anime are the anisongs, and Rie Kugimiya has brought us many great songs to listen to. Here’s one of my favorites!
Thanks for reading this post celebrating the best roles of Tsundere Queen Rie Kugimiya. Did we miss your favorite character? Post them below, or reply to us on Twitter!
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