Seiyuu Digest #37 – Tarusuke Shingaki

Tarusuke Shingaki is one name that should not be left out of the radar in the seiyuu industry. In the entertainment industry it is important to showcase one’s talents, and most of all to prove one’s worth as a seiyuu, therefore the more one has to bring to the table, in theory, the better one’s future will be.

Shingaki is one of the prime examples of a talented seiyuu with a wide range of different characters he has portrayed so far. Shingaki is indeed a chameleon, constantly finding a way to delivers us with distinctive performances each and every time.

Seiyuu

Born on June 18, 1976, in Okinawa Prefecture, most precisely in Kumejima town, located in the north of the prefecture. Shingaki came to Tokyo to pursue his dreams and in 2001, he signed a contract with Mouse Promotion.

Ever since he debuted in 2000, Shingaki has made endeavors to the seiyuu narration department, the latter being his primary focus.

Nonetheless, he has made a place for himself in the industry, since he has a unique talent, though most of the time the seiyuu himself appears to be a little m.i.a from the seiyuu scene.

2000 – 2010

First steps in the seiyuu industry

Shingaki‘s debut into the seiyuu industry was not much like any other seiyuu as his first role, instead of your stereotypical minor role in anime, was in a movie titled Jinro.

Only after this first role did Shingaki make his appearance in the seiyuu scene, with his first roles in anime being for Lupine The Third Alcatraz Connection, Ghost in the Shell STAND ALONE COMPLEX, and Samurai Deeper Kyo, just to name a few of his first steps in the initial stage of his career.

For the first two to three years in the seiyuu industry, the seiyuu was still stuck with minor roles in diverse anime, which if we think about is not a bad thing at all, and in fact, he managed to change his status quo in the following years. His ever so slightly slow start in the entertainment business has not been bringing him down, in fact, despite the fact that he debuted at the belated age of 24 years old, which in the industry’s standards is considered late, has not had an influence on him.

Nonetheless, Shingaki managed to strive to achieve his position in the industry.

In order to build up his momentum, Shingaki began by making appearances in famous anime such as sci-fi/adventure/drama anime Wolf’s Rain, even if he only got a minor role.

It was, however, in 2003 that he would manage to have his first role with a tad bit more importance to the main plot of the anime than he had ever had before.

His role as Billy in Transformers Micron Densetsu was the one that enabled him to draw people’s attention to himself, despite the fact that his character was essentially a bully that never accomplished a thing he had desired. 2004 would be the year that would prepare Shingaki for a big turn of events in his career in the seiyuu industry.

Though his roles mainly consisted of numerous minor roles, some of the anime he was featured in is Agatha Christie’s detective Poirot and Marple, Kyo kara Maou, and Samurai 7, just to name a few.

However, in this same year, the seiyuu had the opportunity to be Tezuka Ippei in the drama/mecha anime Fafner in the Azure, despite it being a minor role it was one of the first roles he had gotten, at least of named characters, so all in all, we can say for sure that this was yet another big step for Shingaki in his career.

In 2005, lots of changes were felt by Shingaki and one of the major ones had to be his first main role in Gunparade Orchestra as Eitaro Nagano.

This sci-fi/drama and romance anime enabled Shingaki to work alongside great names in the seiyuu industry, such as  Norio Wakamoto boosting his want to gain experience and recognition in the industry, and let’s think about it calmly, it might have been a wonderful pleasure to work with one of the top veterans in the seiyuu industry.

We must say that 2005 was a prolific year for Shingaki. On top of his role in Gunparade Orchestra, he was Dario in Gallery Fake and Takashi Suzuki in Honey and  Clover.

It is equally interesting to note that it was in this precise year that Shingaki got his first role in a vampire anime, Trinity Blood, as Captain Tristan.

Though it may not make much sense for one as to why we are mentioning this fact, we can guarantee that it will when we reach 2008. In the following years, Shingaki was busy with his reprised role Honey and Clover II as Takaido, Air Gear as Onigiri’s father in the sports shounen anime, iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia, and in Rocket Girls.

At the beginning of 2008, as aforementioned, Shingaki returned with one of the most well-known characters he has portrayed so far, Rido Kuran in the vampire anime Vampire Night Guilty, the series second installment.

Kuran is a pureblood vampire that makes his first appearance in the last episodes of the season. But fear not, because he will make up for the hasty appearance by acting as a full-fledged evil vampire that sees no problem in taking all the necessary measures to obtain what he believes to belong to him without worrying about whose life he tramples on in the process.

Kuran is undoubtedly a character which besides being a complete “jerk” and of course having a dark past, but due to Shingaki‘s talent to portray cocky and ill-mannered characters, which definitely is an asset of his, in fact, it might just be because of this proficiency that we often see or listen to Shingaki‘s characters and get exactly the idea that they are the type of characters that can easily be hated on, despite the strong impression that they may give us. The rest of the year was pretty much uneventful for the seiyuu as he got minor roles in other famous anime such as Library Wars, Monochrome Factor, and Clannad After Story.

In the following two years, Shingaki kept on making his appearances in numerous anime and among the list, we can count on names such as Fresh PreCure! and his role as the brother of Myuki and classmate of one of the main characters.

Unlike what we aforementioned, Daisuke Chinen is a nice and kind character.

Mind you that Shingaki does the ill-mannered characters most of the time, however, he will occasionally also have to portray a gentle character, whose depiction is just as high quality as any other performance he has delivered us, regardless.

Moreover, Shingaki is one of the seiyuu which manages to indeed bring characters to life with much emotion and with quite the realistic touch.

To add to his amazing skills of portrayal, as we have already mentioned a few times now, is a chameleon so having to alter his pitch is an easy task; another anime in which the seiyuu is featured is Working!!.

2011 –

The safe choice in the industry

After some of his roles notorious roles, Shingaki has certainly established himself as a safe choice in the seiyuu industry, as he can easily cover his tracks as his vocal range is just that versatile, but he also can, as aforementioned, portray any type of stereotypical character you can think of.

In that sense, Shingaki is indeed a safe choice for any anime producer. Following this idea, in 2011 Shingaki’s name was in numerous cast lists of famous anime such as the gag/parody anime Gintama’, the 3rd season of Natsume’s Book of Friends as Ill Youkai and Hanasaku Iroha as Tamio Oshimizu, the main character’s father.

In Fate/Zero, his character, Kariya Matou is one of those characters that ever so slightly escapes the trend in Shingaki‘s roles. Matou is your average man which has thrown away his family because he grew up feeling appalled with its values.

While giving up his long unrequited love, he decides, after a plethora of events, that he has to do something to protect those he loves, namely his childhood friend which he has always loved but has now married another man and has been a mother of two girls.

Sadly enough, Matou does not have a pleasant story as he is used and forsaken as soon as his worth is deemed to be none.

This character is the martyr whose attempts to guarantee the safety of his dear ones left him to drift in the cruel tide of destiny and all that awaited him was not achieving a thing he desired.

2012 was not only a good year for Shingaki, but it was equally productive for the seiyuu as in this precise year he was cast in the famous tennis anime series Prince of Tennis.

The majority of people actually know Shingaki for his role as Eishirou Kite, which is the captain of the Higa-chuu team from Okinawa. Though Kite has his rivalry, all the members of the team really respect him.

The remaining part of the year was pretty much the same old story for Shingaki, with lots of minor characters in anime. Some of the names are Accel World as Crimson Kingbolt, Area Knight as Yuusuke Saeki and he reprised his role as Eishirou Kite in Prince of Tennis, as well as his role as Director Muraki in Akatsu! or Takamura Tsutomo in Mr. Sazae.

The following year, Shingaki was featured in Uchuu Kyoudai as Carlo Greco, in Shirogane no Ishi: Argevollen as Maeda, in The Irregular at Magic High School as Shigeru Sanada, in Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers as Manimo Giordani, in Tonari no Seki-kun and finally in Francesca as Kazue Souma, this anime was the anime was publicized in order to promote the region of Hokkaido.

To overturn the trend of the previous years, Shingaki started to prepare himself for something big that was to come and while he did that, the seiyuu made appearances in popular anime such Seraph of the End as numerous members of the nobility, then he was also cast in the famous shounen anime Ushio and Tora as Izumi.

With the new season of Ghost in a Shell, Shingaki reprised his role as Togusa, as well as taking part of the cast of the OVA of Big Order as Abraham Louis Fran.

In 2016, Shingaki had three interesting roles. The first one being as Caramia in the game adaptation of Ozmafia.

Caramia is one of the three main characters of the franchise and he is the Boss of the team. However, despite his apparently kind personality, beware because you should never judge a book by its cover.

While paving his path, Shingaki managed to even get the role as possibly his second main character ever as the mysteriously attractive Nobel in the anime adaptation of the Korean manhwa Noblesse.

While not having a single hint of how the 21st century works and how to behave in society, Cadis Etrama di Raizel or commonly known as Rai appears to be much more powerful and cryptic than he initially did.

All in all, despite the fact that Rai speaks little or does not even utter a single word in most situations, Shingaki‘s deep voice does not take away from this character’s charm.

By now, it has become more common to find Shingaki doing a certain type of role. In 2018, Christopher Brandt, his character in Ingress has the fans believe, up until midway through the anime, that his presence was fickle, but at the same time were invaded by the feeling that perhaps this scientist/researcher has something more to do with the plot than we think.

Once again, Shingaki is playing a character that easily deceives the more air-headed viewer into thinking he is a martyr.

Other anime series he’s voiced characters in include:

• Bungou Stray Dogs,
• Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru,
• Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan,
• Ikemen Sengoku: Toki wo Kakeru ga Koi wa Hajimaranai
• Maji-kyun Renaissance
• TRICKSTER
• Omiai Aite wa Oshiego, Tsuyoki na, Mondaiji

Dubbing & Narration

If in the seiyuu realm Shingaki had quite the vast repertoire,  in what concerns dubbing he has just as many entries in the category. Starting off, we can mention that the seiyuu has dubbed several North American crime-procedural TV series such as Criminal Minds, C.S.I New York, How to Get Away with Murder, ER, Nikita, Without a Trace, and Lost, just to name a few.

However, we cannot forget to mention that Shingaki has also had the pleasure to dub an extremely popular South Korean TV drama titled Moon Embracing the Sun as Kim Soo Hyun‘s character Lee Fong.

Related to the narration department, the seiyuu has recorded several television CMs for Calpis and another commercial about home food, just to give you some examples.

Acting/Reading Play

When it comes to Shingaki making endeavors in the acting field, there is little to say as he appears to not have that much focus on the field itself.

Recently, however, Shingaki has been cast as a member of the two-men live recitation play, as well as the director in charge, called Futari Shibai.

Games & Drama CDs

If Shingaki had a tough time getting a main character role in the anime industry, the same does not repeat itself in the gaming department, as the seiyuu has quite the vast number of main roles.

After his debut in the seiyuu industry, Shingaki only took his first steps in the gaming department with a career of 4 years.

In his first year of testing the waters, by the end of it, Shingaki had 5 roles in different games, namely in Kowloon Okamaki Nori as Izawa Ichibu, in Tokyo Majin Gakuen Gehōchō: Keppūroku as Fly, in Dororo, in The adventure of the law of the month of Popolocrois as Defrob and in Fuun Shinsengumi as Toshizou Hijikata.

So all in all, his first steps in this department surely made him confident enough to proceed with his advances in this branch of the entertainment business.

In the following year, Shingaki managed to secure a role, though minor, in the game of the popular series Fullmetal Alchemist 3.

While this role of his was of low relevance, plot-wise, the remaining part of the year was prolific for the seiyuu as he had a role Twelve ~ Sengoku Shikugakuen ~ as Kumaro Gokyo and in The Fukudoku Shogunate as  Toshizou Hijikata.

In 2006, Shingaki reprised his role in Gunparade Orchestra in its game Gunparade Orchestra Blue Chapter as Eitaro Nagano. 

Ever since then Shingaki has had the opportunity to be in numerous and diverse games which as a result enabled him to also portray different characters.

From this point onward, the seiyuu made appearances in titles such as:

• Tennis no Ouji-sama Dokidoki Survival Series,
• Bloody Call
• Ryuusei☆Halation
• Ciel Nosurge ~Ushinawareta Hoshi e Sasagu Uta~,
• Root Double -Before Crime * After Days-,
• Getsuei no Kusari -Sakuran Paranoia-,
• Ozmafia!!,
• Ar Nosurge ~Umareizuru Hoshi e Inoru Uta~,
• Photograph Journey,
• Ikemen Sengoku◆Toki o Kakeru Koi,
• Magic Kyun! Renaissance,
• Steam Prison
• Crank In.

In what concerns his drama CDs, Shingaki has quite the resume, however, the majority of his works are either from franchises such as Tenipuri or from games in which he has been cast and therefore also worked on the drama CD, some examples are Bloody Call Drama CD · I ~ NEDE 編 ~ as Cabracan, Fate / Zero Anthology Drama CD Triples of Togashi, Photograph Journey ~ in Aichi ~. Another aspect we cannot forget to mention is his wide list of BLCDs.

Music

In the music industry there are singers and singers, yet what is truly valued is one’s diversity.

If you take this perspective into account then we can undoubtedly ascertain that Shingaki is one person in which this category fits like a glove.

Being a chameleon wherever he goes, Shingaki has not disappointed us so far, though he does not have a solo career as a singer.

Despite it being a letdown, we can be content with Shingaki‘s vocal performances in the songs he has sung for the Tenipuri franchise.

For instance, Alert is one of the songs from the various character songs he has sung as Kite that will amaze you.

We must say that the instrumental piece has a lot of poise with its main focus on the bass and the synths and slow drum performance to back up the rest of the instrumental.

Needless to say, Shingaki is a total master in concealing his characteristic tone therefore we advise you right off the bat that it is difficult to distinguish him solely by his tone while he is singing. Other songs are Chu Ba Fighter, Firework, and Autumn Breeze.

What is also interesting is that the seiyuu has claimed to have helped in the composting process of numerous character songs of his character in the Tenipuri franchise, and despite knowing Shingaki’s passion for singing and playing the guitar, never would we have thought that he would make endeavors to the composing department.

Most recently, however, it was announced the debut of a new seiyuu unit called VAZZROCK which is the most recent Tsukipro’s offspring in 2.5D format.

What is extremely interesting is that this unit is his first steps into this growing industry of the 2.5D units, and he will do that in the best way possible while being the leader of this group composed of Yusuke Kobayashi, Masahiro Yamanaka, Yusuke Shirai, Tsubasa Sasa, Shun Horie and naturally Tarusuke Shingaki himself.

As the leader of Vazzy, Shingaki has shown his vocal prowess.

Not only is he capable of adjusting himself to any genre of music, but he is also equally adept to deliver quality performances on any occasion.

Granted, Shingaki has not been the most active seiyuu when it comes to these types of projects, however in this case it only makes his presence all the more refreshing and pleasant.

In “AMETHYST” Shingaki shone bright, not only in his solo track NOT A GAME, but even more with his song featuring Kobayashi in Trick Trap Trick.

Far from being the usual Shingaki that can easily sing any genre, as aforementioned, he mesmerized everyone with his swift and suave vocals that made him resemble a Japanese version of George Michael.

So far Shingaki has been featured in VAZZY vol.1 – shido –, VAZZROCK play of color Series Vol.1 and “AMETHYST”.

For more details on the unit, please check out the original post.

Radio

Although we would definitely enjoy radio shows with Shingaki’s participation, that is a dream yet to come true as the seiyuu has very little to an almost nonexistent presence in radio shows, we can only mention three occasions in which he appears on them.

Therefore, he occasionally makes appearances in The Prince of Tennis On The Radio, in Sugao no Shounen‘s show he has been a guest and finally for the Namura Village Office Public Relations Department.

Variety

Banpresto (2018)

Banpresto is one of the shows to which it is impossible not to laugh, from Suzumura’s comments and behavior to Osaka’s reactions, the show is never boring.

In this episode, Shingaki was the guest and aside from talking about Kumejima, his hometown, they did the usual. Promoting merchandise and playing games in the designated corners.

What perhaps Shingaki was not expecting was the usual cameramen techniques that Suzumura likes to use, namely his close-ups, which by the way are extremely close to the point that even someone as playful as Shingaki said that he was too close.

VAZZROCK LIVE 2018

The first live event of the franchise had a place in 2018 and all the members of the cast were present. Shingaki sung “NOT A GAME” and “Trust me, Trust me!“.

Although this was the first live performance for the seiyuu as members of the cast, VAZZROCK LIVE 2018 ended with a lot of energy that was consistent from start to end.

Facts

Accent teacher

It is not a widely known fact, but both in the anime and musical adaptation of Prince of Tennis, it was Shingaki was the one who taught everyone in the cast the Okinawa accent, and what better person to do so than an actual native.

Plays the guitar and loves singing

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you have read it correctly. Shingaki does indeed play the guitar, something that although has completely gotten us off guard is not precisely all that unusual.

Changed his stage name

His former stage name was in fact Masaki Shingaki and not Tarusuke Shingaki as you would imagine. As it would appear the reason behind his change of heart was his decision to pay homage to his late grandfather which therefore leads him to make the decision of being Tarusuke Shingaki.

Extracurricular activities

Shingaki did indeed belonged to the baseball club during middle school and to the rugby club during high school.

And with this we have finished yet another SEIYUU DIGEST. Hope you enjoyed it and stay tuned for next month’s.