Megumi Hayashibara

Tokyo-area artist Megumi Hayashibara is a Japanese figure who counts voice actress, singer, lyricist, and radio host among her many talents. Best known for her voice work on anime series such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Pokémon, she also remained a fixture on the Japanese charts with a lengthy solo career that kicked off in 1991 with her debut album, Half and, Half. During her peak period on the pop scene, she scored six consecutive Top Ten hits, starting with 1994's Sphere and extending to 2002's Feel Well. As she continued to balance her multiple roles, she hit another chart high in 2010 with her 14th full-length, Choice.

Born in Kita in 1967, Hayashibara originally planned on being a nurse, but when she happened upon an advertisement for an anime voice acting audition, she took a chance that would change the course of her career. Her early roles in the 1980s included stints on Maison Ikkoku and Ranma ½, but a bigger break arrived in 1995 when she joined the cast of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Other notable castings included prominent roles on Pokémon, Slayers, Detective Conan, and many more. In addition to that work on anime films and series, she also recorded for video games and dubbed foreign films, lending her voice to Japanese versions of notable blockbusters such as True Lies, Scream, Amélie, and Pacific Rim.

Outside of visual media, Hayashibara fostered a solo pop career that started with 1991's Half and, Half. The smooth contemporary sounds followed closely with mainstream trends, veering from bright dance pop to emotive balladry. Through the '90s, each successive album brought her higher up the Japanese charts, peaking in 1996 with her matured eighth work, Bertemu, which featured her takes on the enduring Neon Genesis Evangelion songs "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" and "Fly Me to the Moon." The album peaked at number three and became her first gold-certified release. Her next three LPs -- Irāvatī (1997), Fuwari (1999), and Feel Well (2002) -- were also Top Ten gold-certified hits.

While Hayashibara's solo output slowed into the 2000s and 2010s, she remained at the top of the Japanese charts, hitting another peak in 2010 with Choice. Almost a decade later, she issued the comeback effort Fifty-Fifty in 2018. She hit the U.S. charts with fellow Evangelion vocalist <a href="spotify:artist:2RSmBT9gH02j53dMSw982t">Yoko Takahashi</a> in 2021 on the commemorative compilation Evangelion Finally. ~ Neil Z. Yeung, Rovi