During Anime Central 2025, we got a chance to interview voice actress and singer Asami Imai about her long-running career in anime.
Imai debuted as a voice actress back in 1997 and has grown a sizable discography since 2009. Her most popular role today is Chihaya Kisaragi from The iDOLM@STER whom she has voiced since 2011 and performed in live concerts. She is also well known as the voice of Makise Kurisu from the time travel sci-fi series Steins;Gate. In recent times, Imai even debuted as a VTuber named Shishu Mingos in October 2023.
From visual novels and anime to concerts and VTubing, Asami Imai’s career has been quite the unexpected journey for her. Check out what she had to say about it!
After 20 years as Chihaya Kisaragi from The iDOLM@STER, what have been your favorite moments about performing as her?
Asami Imai: Chihaya has a slightly dark side. She was compared to Nakamori Akina who is a big singer in Japan that also has a very stoic image. Akina is amazing at singing and has a lot of hard songs. When I found out that I got the role of Chihaya, I also found out that each character was getting their own song. I loved singing ever since I was a child, but Chihaya turned out to have a lot of hard songs like Akina.
It actually shocked me how hard these songs were though. I had about a month to learn them too, so I practiced every single day to the point that my family could also sing the songs. I needed to give everything that I had to this role. That itself was very memorable.
Obviously The iDOLM@STER has a very long history, and Chihaya is on stage a lot. That’s normal now but in the beginning of The iDOLM@STER they didn’t really have the technology to put the idol characters on stage. They would sort of have the seiyuus go on stage, but that was also new. The staff didn’t put much thought into the process back then because at the time voice actors didn’t perform on stage, especially singing as their roles.
But we had so many songs, so I kept bugging the staff and saying that we should perform them and do concerts. I finally managed to convince them to let us perform at a small venue. That clearly worked out very well. Now we do it often, we perform regularly. Again, we didn’t know what we were getting into at the time. It was a very innocent request. We just wanted to do it. But now The iDOLM@STER is huge.
One of my most memorable moments performing is at the 9th Live concert. Not all the members were there, but there was a song called “Yakusoku” that I was set to perform. On that day I was so into my role that everyone, even makeup artists and other staff, had a hard time approaching me. I was so just into my role. But something happened right before the performance that shocked me.
During rehearsal I was crying so much there was a literal puddle of tears on the ground. And then my co-stars, without saying anything, came up to me and started singing with me. So I was very thankful to have them by my side. I’ll never forget that. Before the performance I asked them “if I start crying could you sing with me?” And it happened so they did. That was something that we can’t recreate.
The visual novel for Love, Elections, and Chocolate, which you’re a part of, finally received an English release earlier this year…
WHAT REALLY?! THIS YEAR?? I had no idea, I’m so happy!
What can you tell us about your role as Michiru Morishita from it?
At the time I didn’t audition for the role, but the job came to my agency and we received the promotional materials. When we got to see all the girls I immediately picked out Michiru and said “oh I wonder if I’ll get her role”. And then I did, so I felt an instant connection. She’s very shy and speaks very quietly. Michiru is very precious to me.
When I’m playing any character, I pretty much take a part of me and then grow it into the character to make them my own. I also have that similar side to me where I don’t want to talk to anyone at times. When I don’t want to talk to anyone or be near anyone. Michiru taught me that I was sort of more like that.
There’s a lot of roles where I play them for 10+ years so I find myself blessed in that way. Finding out now that Love, Elections, and Chocolate is worldwide with an English release, I’m very touched to hear that Michiru will have even more fans. I highly recommend her character song “Kotonoha”.
From your time as Kurisu Makise in Steins;Gate, what aspect of her character do you personally relate to?
Maybe the fact that she’s a tsundere… (laughs)
We’re very different overall, so initially the tsundere side comes to mind. She’s very smart. Extremely smart. But I’m just a normie. I think a lot about how to sound as smart as she is. I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out. But I do think I’m fast on my feet like she is. Like I’ll figure something out if I have to immediately and I always think ahead.
Since we’re completely different though I thought we were only alike in that way. But now I realize the fact that she’s not experienced with romance and is innocent when it comes to guys is very much how I was when I was younger. We’re very similar in that way. Which has been embarrassing though…
Between Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0, what are your thoughts on the different sides of Kurisu you had to play?
Yes, there were key differences in how I played Makise Kurisu and Amadeus.
With the normal Kurisu I spent a lot more time on her human side. I acted like there was an actual person to play there, and made sure it’s not just some template I’m following. Okabe Rintaro was also played the same way so it worked out very well. People often say that we were both pretty much meant to play those roles.
Meanwhile, Amadeus was essentially made with the latest AI, so I made sure to suppress my emotions a bit. When I spoke it wouldn’t seem as natural and my emotions weren’t as gradient and wide. Every emotion was packaged separately and very distinct. My voice may not be different when I play the two sides, but the emotional range is a major change in playing those roles.
For Steins;Gate 0, you perform one of the ending songs “World-Line”, what does the song mean to you?
I worked for the recording company that did Steins;Gate already at the time. They always put so much into their work. Even though I could’ve technically gotten that song through connections, they wanted to make sure it was a perfect fit more than anything.
They thought it would be perfect for me to sing the song as Amadeus for the ending, and I was super happy to hear that. It was because they thought it was a perfect fit for the flow of the series at the time that I got the opportunity. And you can really hear her pang and the emotions in the song even though she’s a machine.
The phrase “world-line” is very normal in Japan now. Everyone uses it in normal dialogue. And they use it without even knowing that it probably came from Steins;Gate. Knowing that people use the phrase, it feels like we sort’ve made it into a page of history. It might be a little overboard but that’s how it feels.
If you could send a message to your past self when you were first starting as an entertainer, what would it say?
How I got here is basically just a bunch of luck, coincidences, and circumstances. Even when becoming a voice actress I went down a very narrow path. But I always seemed to make the right decision when it came to important choices. At times I would think “why am I even making this choice, why am I picking this path?” I wasn’t sure why yet I still chose it. I didn’t plan to be a seiyuu but eventually I dove into the role. VTubing wasn’t something I planned to do before either and now it’s also part of my profession.
Even in the beginning I was pretty hesitant when I started doing the job. I was just a normal girl who liked anime and manga, but when I was in fifth-grade I had a dream one night. This was when the Dragon Ball anime was becoming Dragon Ball Z in Japan. Goku now had a child named Gohan who would show up in the anime soon. That’s when it happened. I dreamt that I was offered the role of Gohan even though I wasn’t a voice actress at the time (laughs). And I lived so far away from any possibility of it happening. And also I was a child.
I always had respect for the work going into becoming an adult. Even when I became an adult I had a very different career path planned out but somehow I ended up at a voice acting academy. It was just on a whim. That all led to me being here now. So the thing I would want to tell myself when I was younger is: “Believe in your gut, it’s always right. Don’t be too nervous, just continue down the path that you think is right.”
The reason I became a seiyuu was slightly by mistake. I was trying to be an announcer and I went into a voice acting school because it’s sort of the same thing. But that school was specifically for seiyuu. I saw a poster for the school so I applied and got in, but I also got an award while I was there. One of the judges that gave me the award was Nozawa Masako, who plays Goku. It feels like that dream was a premonition. It was destiny. It’s all very amazingly strange yet wonderful. It’s been an interesting life.
Location: Anime Central 2025
Interview Date: 5/17/2025
Guests: Asami Imai
Note: Interview edited for length and clarity.
Thank you so much to Asami Imai for her time and for Anime Central for hosting this interview!
