Chiemi Chiba
Chiemi Chiba is an actor, born 1975.
Chiemi Chiba was a pop singer before she was a voice actress. She debuted in April 1993 as a member of the group Aurora Gonin Musume, and the timing matters: she arrived in anime just as the industry was starting to treat voice actresses as performers who also sing, present and tour, rather than as anonymous technicians hired by the hour.
Her defining role is Doremi Harukaze, the lead of Ojamajo Doremi, released internationally as Magical DoReMi. Doremi is a magical girl who is bad at magic, which is a harder note to hold than it sounds: the character has to be genuinely incompetent and still be somebody a child wants to be. Chiba played her across the television run and the features, then came back to the part more than twenty years later for Looking for Magical Doremi, a continuity almost nobody in any industry gets offered.
The rest of her filmography is a decent map of 2000s anime. Nanaka Kirisato in Nanaka 6/17, Wannyaa in Daa! Daa! Daa! UFO Baby, a role in Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE, a small part as Kiturubami in FLCL, and, oddly, a Kyoko Kirisaki in both Black Cat and To Love Ru.
Movies (3)
TV (27)
- To Love Ru (2008)
- Mushi-Shi (2005)
- MÄR: Märchen Awakens Romance (2005)
- Magical DoReMi (1999)
- Daa! Daa! Daa! UFO Baby (2000)
- Zatch Bell! (2003)
- .hack (2002)
- FLCL (2000)
- Star Driver (2010)
- Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE (2005)
- Black Cat (2005)
- POKÉTOON (2020)
- Battle Doll: Angelic Layer (2001)
- Zoids: Chaotic Century (1999)
- KiraKira☆PreCure a la Mode (2017)
- Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan (2019)
- Requiem from the Darkness (2003)
- Walkure Romanze (2013)
- Monkey Typhoon (2002)
- Maburaho (2003)
- Nanaka 6/17 (2003)
- Dokkoida!? (2003)
- Princess Beware (2006)
- Rozen Maiden - Zurückspulen (2013)
- Chousoku Spinner (1998)
- Ramen Fighter Miki (2006)
- Happy Seven (2005)
Where to start with Chiemi Chiba
The door is Magical DoReMi, known at home as Ojamajo Doremi. It is a long children's series and you do not need all of it; a dozen episodes will tell you whether Chiba's Doremi lands for you, and if it does, Looking for Magical Doremi is the payoff, a film about grown adults who were raised on the show, voiced by the woman who was there the first time.
For the other register, Nanaka 6/17 asks her to play one person at two ages, exactly the sort of problem a singer's ear helps with. Black Cat and To Love Ru give you her Kyoko Kirisaki twice over. Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE is the prestige entry and Daa! Daa! Daa! UFO Baby the sweetest. FLCL is in here too, though her part is tiny and it is not the reason to watch it.