Megumi Nakajima/Ranka Lee Conquers NicoNico Douga
- Categories: Anime, News
- Date: Dec 5, 2008 02:15 JST
- Tags: Censorship, Megumi Nakajima, Music, NicoNico Douga, Ranka Lee, Video Gallery
Singer-seiyuu 中島愛 / Megumi Nakajima, famed as Ranka Lee and little else, has caused a NicoNico sensation in more ways than one, by uploading a charmingly amateurish, but extremely skilful and kira-laden, rendition of her single “Be Myself” in a spot of cunning marketing. A mere 32 hours after release and she has accumulated 180,000 views, probably a record success.
However, the storm of censorship she invoked from Nico’s management to quell insufficiently worshipful comments also caused something of a sensation…
Player 1
Nico.
You might be forgiven for having never heard of her – this seems to be the case on Nico too – as she has only the role of Ranka Lee to her name as yet.
Controversy soon followed in her wake, as not all the comments were laudatory; Nico management soon stepped in to expunge any such comments, doubtless keen to avert the horrifying prospect of mere consumers besmirching the good name of a celebrity product, and spoiling her marketing exercise to boot.
They excused themselves in an announcement by accusing commenters of being slanderous and out of control.
Possibly Nico’s management is naïve in expecting to be able to thrust celebrity marketing down the throats of ever intractable Nico-goers? Some question the wisdom of uploading a video to Nico without being prepared to accept the community response to it…
Nakajima Megumi. How can one not know of her? Well, except if he/she didn’t watch Macross Frontier… Her voice on Ranka was win!
I fell in love with her all over again.
Very cute, reminded me of her TV performance doing the Seikan Hikou dance.
yep shes the rankanator. she should just release albums in the name of ranka lee. then i could think in the world of macross and Totsugeki Love Heart!!
No matter what anyone else thinks, I’m cheering for Megumi Nakajima. Her voice is too cute to go unheard!
Censoring the comments on Nico is going a bit too far, but I wonder how many negative comments there really were. I thought it was a good video, and I’ll get the single whenever it comes out!
oh also, what were all those “negative comments” about?
she’s my angel of moe~
I thought that performance was cute. People that dissed her must have really high standards.
Or they’re Sheryl fans.
LOL!
but I have to agree the performance was good. And I personally like her voice~ both singing and voice acting..
Anyone still have the link to that website where you can extract mp3 from niconico?
This? http://nicosound.dip.jp/sound/smXXXXXXX
(Replace the XXXXX’s with the code following the /sm… in the URL of the Nico page.)
That’s quite adorable, although that hat…needs to go. And I suppose that if I were her producer, I would also require better colour coordination for her outfit — although it does add to the charming amateurish touch. But I hope to hear more of her as a seiyuu as well…
All hail Ranka Lee!!
All hail Ranka Lee indeed, but let’s not forget the mastermind of Ranka’s songs: Yoko Kanno. Megumi’s new singles, still being cute and all, are of a much lower production quality than Ranka’s songs and eventually will probably slowly flush her career down the drain.
This considering Yoko Kanno’s music production immediately put her at the peak of her success because well, it doesn’t really get much better than Yoko Kanno. In effect having us fans expect more of the same high quality songs and just getting same-ol’ mass produced pop songs on our plates.
Think I’m wrong? I already see things like “she should just release albums in the name of ranka lee” in just these comments, I’m sure a lot of those censored niconico users felt the same way.
If I was her manager I would’ve gone as far as to stopping all singing activities and immortalizing her Ranka voice. Of course regular voice acting wouldn’t be a problem and would only further boost her fame.
What the fuck is this manager person thinking? Ride the wave of her success and get rich quick probably, I really hope she finds another one because she is extremely talented and pretty unique in my opinion.
Insightful.
Indeed. Remember the “other” Yoko Kanno product? Yes, Sakamoto Maaya. It took her like 5 years to finally release an album WITHOUT Yoko Kanno’s influence.
In my honest opinion, she’s still stuck with the “Ranka Lee” title. And when I listened to that, I don’t feel the same vibe of what I heared listening to the Macross Frontier soundtrack.
May’N is different from her. While Nakajima was scouted just for the role of Ranka, May’N was already an artist. Thus she has nothing to loose, and honestly, she had gained more credibility singing as Sheryl. Compared to Ranka, Sheryl’s song are more mature, and suits her better as she are already singing that kind of songs before.
I’d like to add Yuki Kajiura as one of the best composers the anime industry has seen, in addition to Yoko Kanno.
Indeed that is true. And from what I’ve gathered around, people are still attributing her singing to “Ranka Lee”, not “Nakajima Megumi”. While both debuting under Kanno, Sakamoto Maaya has the luxury of not being attributed her singing to the in story character, compared to Nakajima.
The way I see it now, Ranka is both a blessing and a curse to her
is there any way to download this clip? probably better if artefact teach a trick how to download on every video we saw on sankaku XD
I’m in two minds as to whether to include the link in the player or not… Might cause problems.
At any rate, I will get a guidance wiki up soon to cover these skills and more.
In the meantime, anyone interested in downloading the video can install a Firefox addon such as NicoFox ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8888 ) or any similar embedded Flash download tool, go to the NicoNico page and use the addon to download the file directly.
I thought she was old looking until i read her wiki. Damn 19 years old.
I’ve fallen in love to her angelic moe voice <3 <3 <3
She and May’n are both younger than me… Sweet, now if only i could meet her like i interviewed may’n at AFA08.
5feet away during the interview and i didn’t have anything for her to autograph when she asked. (#)$)(#*$!!!!
Indeed the video looks amateur enough to get such comments
But the song itself isn’t bad
Those of you looking to download the song/video there is a browser that will let you download the video to your format of choice avi/ipod mp4/mpeg or you can just download the audio. But the instructions are in japanese.
http://www.crav-ing.com/download.html
Based on her interviews and the way she acts, she’s a real life Ranka Lee. She’s just being herself. I love this video. She’s probably going to be really famous!
Who knew she was half Filipina =D