Maki Kawase

Maki Kawase (河瀬 茉希) is a Seiyū who lends her voice to bring Junko Konno to life, both in anime and in real life.

Biography
She used to read manga at an aunt's house every time she visited her, one day she saw an anime adaptation of one of those manga and was fascinated by how the voices were just as she imagined they would be. In her sophomore year of high school a friend invited her to a voice actor event, Maki was not really interested in them and only intended to go because she likes anime. When they did a reading play, they were moved, they had brought their favorite characters to life in front of them.

After attending the event, she searched for a training institute and while in his junior year of high school she joined the Japan Voice Narration Interpretation Institute (Nichinare), where even high school students can take classes once per week. She was nervous at first but passed all tests, was able to audition after school and joined the Arts Vision agency.

Her debut as a seiyuu was in 2015 with small characters and his first leading role came in 2018 with Eru Hoshino (Hisone to Masotan), but it would be with Junko Konno with whom he would achieve recognition not only as a seiyuu but also as a singer. Although she had no singing and dancing experience, the lessons she took in Nichinare served her well. At first she couldn't even do simple steps and the other seiyuus had experience doing these things so it was difficult to catch up, even practicing a lot at home. Maki had no idea that voice actors were performing as their respective characters and never thought she would, that changed once she took the stage and saw the audience in front of her react to her performance, that made all of that effort and practice was worth it.

Trivia

 * She likes black tea sweets, is good at drawing, and does fan art on her characters.
 * She is a fan of Disney characters and her favorite is Baymax.
 * Some say that she has a very strong voice for her age, despite being able to make soft voices.
 * When she's nervous she tends to talk a lot and very fast, they jokingly call her "talking machine gun".
 * She cries easily, especially when she is excited or touched.
 * She is fond of drawing pictures of her characters to whom she lends her voice, Junko without exception, creating quite a few pictures of her.
 * On Junko's birthday (September 2), Maki wrote a letter in which she thanked Junko for allowing her to be her voice, which letter was uploaded to her Twitter account.

Maki Kawase