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Seeing Majikoi S in VNDB, the seiyuu for Kawakami Momoyo and Christiane Friedrich is written as Kamishiro Misaki and Misaki Rina respectively. People that is not too into seiyuu might not know, but the seiyuu-otaku are very likely to know that they Kamishiro Misaki is Asawaka Yuu and Misaki Rina is Itou Shizuka. The first is even more easily recognizable by non-seiyuu-otaku and non-anime-otaku since she is the voice provider for the VOCALOID Megurine Luka.

Heck, even people that doesn't know this would be able to find it relatively easily with some Googling. I tried entering the name Kamishiro Misaki in Google and the 5th entry states Asakawa Yuu's name.

Kawashiro Misaki on Google

Misaki Rina is even worse. It clearly shows that Misaki Rina is Itou Shizuka.

Misaki Rina on Google

If they are relatively unknown seiyuu, then it can be said that they use such alias so that later when they finally get famous people wouldn't link them to their previous work as eroge seiyuu. But these two are famous seiyuu even during the time Majikoi S was released. Also the Majikoi anime was aired between 2 Oct 2011 and 18 Dec 18 2011, while Majikoi S was released in 27 January 2012. Given that

  • those 2 reprise their role in the anime,
  • they voiced it the same as when they voice the character in the Visual Novel,
  • and that the anime clearly stated that Christiane Friedrich is Itou Shizuka and Kawakami Momoyo is Asakawa Yuu,

it doesn't take a genius to figure that it is them.

This is apparently common in female seiyuus while many male seiyuus use their usual name even when voicing eroge. For example the BL Emperor, Toshiyuki Morikawa, uses his name, Toshiyuki Morikawa in most of his Visual Novel works even if the said work is a R-18+, such as Gin no Kanmuri Ao no Namida.

Most, if not all famous female seiyuus use alias to voice R-18+ games. Examples other than Itou Shizuka and Asakawa Yuu would be Sato Rina, Goto Yuko, all use an alias when doing most of their eroge works.

My question is, since it is clear that it is them, why do most popular female seiyuu still bother using alias when voicing eroge?

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絢瀬絵里
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  • Knowing nothing about seiyuu's background, I could see a reason why they keep the alias even after becoming famous : as long as they are famous, they want all of their works to be linked on the same name. But again, I don't know anything about seiyuu's background – Ikaros Sep 05 '16 at 16:38
  • But the example I use, Asakawa Yuu and Itou Shizuka actually uses a lot of different aliases. If they want to keep their works under the same name, then there is no reason for them to use that many aliases. – 絢瀬絵里 Sep 05 '16 at 16:45
  • It could be the case that their agencies don't want to spread the (immediate) negative image of a client of theirs doing eroge, or that they want to disassociate themselves from a work that they're not particularly proud of. – Makoto Sep 05 '16 at 18:54

1 Answers1

2

H-actors and eroge seiyuus indeed use aliases because of following reasons:

1. Avoiding union penalties and expulsion (legal reason)

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) is a union most voice actors comes under. SAG-AFTRA forces their members to only take on union work. This is how the union makes sure that its members get paid fairly, have good working conditions and aren’t taken advantage of.

The problem with hentai voice actors is that hentai sometimes don’t meet SAG-AFTRA's standards for working conditions and pay (as little as $150 to $450 per video). In those situations, there are willing buyers (the studio or small business hiring a voice actor) and willing sellers (the voice actor wanting to do the work). So it can make sense to use an alias to sidestep the issue which means that if a voice actor wants to do non-union work, being credited in their real name could cause them to be in breach of their contract with SAG-AFTRA. Being in breach of contract with SAG-AFTRA can result in a fine. Actors can also be expelled from the union, which can make it a lot harder for you to get work from companies contracted to SAG-AFTRA.

2. Using unique name/aliases/stage name to avoid personal or professional confusion

Sometimes one might have a common name/surname. In order to tackle any personal or professional confusion (getting confused with other actors), they use stage name or aliases. Using a stage name can help one distinguish the work life with personal life and also can use the name to make it as a "brand" (actors can become famous by that name and people can recognize with this name rather than the personal name).

3. To protect their identity and professional career due to nature of the work

Using an alias has an advantage for h-actors because they can hide their identity due to nature of work being "adult oriented". Voice actors are extremely popular in Japan and have a huge fan following which also includes some messed up people like stalkers and their name can reveal a lot about them so the information can be easily misused (more than 20000 stalking cases reported to Japanese police in 2020).

This can also be a way for the actor to do any non h-work work without future clients knowing about the work in the past and avoiding any miscommunication because some company feel strongly against h-work. It can also protect themselves from exposure from any "bad/low-budget h-projects". A lot of independent clients can easily find the gigs with a quick Google, it could reflect badly on the actor.

References

  1. Why Do Voice Actors Use Aliases?
  2. Why do people use aliases and pen names?
  3. Why do anime actors go by different names in different anime
  4. H-anime voice actors
  5. Why do some anime voice actors hide or do not reveal their name, even though people know its them?
  6. Why seiyuu (voice actress) in Japan always use a stage name instead of their real name?
  7. anyone know the reason why voice actor for anime usually use fake names instead of their real name?
Fumikage Tokoyami
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  • #1 and #2 are very good answers but what's the point of #3? Hmmm... aahhh you mean like a reverse search: I can easily find out that 'Kamishiro Misaki' is an alias for Asawaka Yuu, but I can't as easily find out that Asawaka Yuu has an alias of 'Kamishiro Misaki' ? well ok...but someone will put it on their wikipedia pages anyway like after jk rowling was discovered to be Robert Galbraith ? – BCLC Jan 10 '23 at 06:21