[Warning] This post may trigger flaming reactions for unstable readers
It's not that much valid of a complaint (hence the [Rant] header), but here goes anyway.
I heard the opening song and knew it was sung by Sakamoto Maaya long before.
Halfway through the first episode I started getting curious about the voice actress of Kobato. When she started singing I was curious enough to pause halfway to check.
Her seiyu is Hanazawa Kana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana_Hanazawa
A relatively new seiyu whom I have some of my attention caught by, primarily because I like the cute voice characters voices done by her.
And when I heard her sing in ep 1, that was the last straw.
Why the hell did they let Sakamoto Maaya sing the opening song?
The song totally misrepresented the show - I thought it was going to be somewhat slow, serious, heartwarming, yet light story. I expected a Mary Poppins. Then I saw a dojikko with a cute voice.
Seriously, wtf?
And no, after watching Ep 2 my opinion hasn't changed - Kobato IS a dojikko.
It's not as if Hanazawa-san can't sing either - she is in Idolm@ster, although in a more recent addition.
And Sakamoto-dono is not even in the show.
Tell me, is it because of Clamp? Tsubasa Chronicles?
(Sakamoto Maaya voiced in and sang the famous theme songs "Loop" and "Kazemachi Jet" for Tsubasa Chronicles, the single CDs (also containing one other song used in Tsubasa Chronicles each) got #7 and #14 respectively on Oricon)
Is it because she was in and sang for Macross Frontier? (Oricon #3)
I'm not complaining about Sakamoto Maaya - she is good in her own rights. In a sense, she is even better because her singing voice is "more normal" compared to other Anime characters, that makes her ideal for the more serious shows expecting non-Otaku audience. (Look at above again, note the high-scores on Oricon. Oh the power of mainstream exposure. Well duh isn't it, statistics. Tsubasa Chronicles and Macross Frontier and not the more deep (as in underground), latenight, Otaku shitz only helped even further.)
But really, her singing does not match Kobato.. At all.
And to hit the jackpot, Sakamoto-dono isn't exactly flawless in her singing, at the chorus she goes flat at the E-flat when going for the fifth interval (meaning from A-flat to E-flat, for those not into music). That is the best way to kill the most dramatic part of the song.
Want to use a person not in the show to sing at least make it perfect, else there is no point isn't it?
Now, lets try to make sense of why this has happened.
The target audience of Kobato., my guess is, young females. Who are into fantasy and daily-life settings/slice-of-life probably...? Who are into trying to grow up and do mature stuff, you know, like, stuff.
Wait, I don't know of any stuff that you can call mature stuff. (Sex-related does not count.)
And young people like to watch older people. Kinda like old people like to watch younger people; we always like things that are not ourselves.
So, an onee-chan (to them) type of voice will work.
But still...
Ok, that's all. This is just my personal opinion.
Now I'll put my flame shield on.
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