Kae Araki
Kae Araki is an actor, born 1966.
The job that made Kae Araki's name started as a cover shift. When Kotono Mitsuishi, the voice of Usagi in Sailor Moon, went in for surgery, Araki stood in for her. She was then given a role of her own in the same series, Chibiusa, and played her across the television run and a long string of films and specials. Very few substitutions in television have paid off quite that well.
It also set the template for a career. Araki has spent it playing children, younger sisters and girls being braver than they feel, and she is exceptionally good at the thing that actually requires, which is keeping a high register from collapsing into a squeak. Listen to her as Hikari Yagami across Digimon: Digital Monsters and its run of films, or as Miaka Yuki in Fushigi Yugi, where she has to carry a lead role through comedy, panic and full melodrama inside a single episode.
The range is wider than the type suggests. She was Hilde in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (1995), Minnie May in Gunsmith Cats, Yumi Kohama in the quiet and entirely un-fantastical Ocean Waves (1993), and she has kept turning up in long-running institutions like Detective Conan. Taken together it is a 1990s anime career in the fullest sense, with Magic Knight Rayearth, Saint Tail, Black Jack, Corrector Yui and Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals in the same decade, and RahXephon, Gilgamesh and Zoids: Fuzors after it.
Movies (13)
- Ocean Waves (1993)
- Digimon Adventure 02: Revenge of Diaboromon (2001)
- Sailor Moon SuperS: The Movie - Black Dream Hole (1995)
- Sailor Moon R: The Movie - The Promise of the Rose (1993)
- Sailor Moon S the Movie: Hearts in Ice (1994)
- Digimon Adventure (1999)
- Our War Game (2000)
- Hurricane Touchdown (2000)
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Afterglow of Zeon (1992)
- Sailor Moon SuperS Plus: Ami's First Love (1995)
- Sailor Moon: Make Up! Sailor Senshi (1993)
- Sailor Moon SuperS: Special (1995)
- Super Real Mahjong: Mahjong Battle Scramble (1990)
TV (27)
- Detective Conan (1996)
- Sailor Moon (1992)
- Digimon: Digital Monsters (1999)
- RahXephon (2002)
- Black Jack (1993)
- Fushigi Yûgi: The Mysterious Play (1995)
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (1995)
- Magic Knight Rayearth (1994)
- Saint Tail (1995)
- Corrector Yui (1999)
- Hungry Heart: Wild Striker (2002)
- Shippuu! Iron Leaguer (1993)
- Zoids: Fuzors (2004)
- Gokudo (1999)
- I'll Make a Habit of It (1994)
- Hand Maid May (2000)
- Voogie's Angel (1997)
- Remy, Nobody's Girl (1996)
- Gilgamesh (2003)
- Gunsmith Cats (1995)
- The Mischievous Twins (1991)
- Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals (1994)
- Legend of Black Heaven (1999)
- Shin Hakkenden (1999)
- Alice in Cyberland (1996)
- The Mysterious Play: OAV II (1997)
- Gestalt (1997)
Where to start with Kae Araki
If you only hear one Kae Araki performance, make it Fushigi Yûgi: The Mysterious Play. Miaka is the lead, she is present in almost every scene, and the show swings between broad comedy and full melodrama in a way that would expose a weaker voice actor immediately. It does not expose her.
Sailor Moon is the famous one and the reason she has a page here at all, though Chibiusa is a divisive character and it is worth knowing that going in. Digimon: Digital Monsters is the gentler, more heroic version of the same register, and probably the easiest start if you grew up with neither.
For something entirely different, Ocean Waves is a small, careful drama with no monsters and no transformations in it, and her work there is the most naturalistic thing on this page. Mobile Suit Gundam Wing and Gunsmith Cats are the two for hearing her in an adult register, and Magic Knight Rayearth rounds out the 1990s run.