Maaya Sakamoto

Maaya Sakamoto (坂本 真綾, Sakamoto Maaya?, born March 31, 1980) is a Japanese singer-songwriter, actress, and voice actress who made her debut as a voice actress in 1993 as the voice of Chifuru in two hit anime shows Little Twins and Hitomi Kanzaki in The Vision of Escaflowne. She released her debut single Yakusoku wa Iranai, in collaboration with Yoko Kanno under Victor Entertainment on April 24, 1996.

She is among the more popular voice actresses who have also branched into singing, performing songs in both English and Japanese. As well as being a prolific voice actress, she has also had several successful releases; despite initially only modestly selling, her singles Tune the Rainbow, Loop, Ame ga Furu, and Triangler have all reached the top 10 Oricon singles chart: Triangler in particular charted at #3 and remained charting for 26 weeks. Her albums have had similar success, with Shōnen Alice and Yūnagi Loop both reaching the top 10 Oricon albums chart; and her newest album, You Can't Catch Me, released on January 12, 2011, became her first release to ever reach #1. She held a concert at the Nippon Budokan on March 31, 2010, her thirtieth birthday. She is also considered to be the official Japanese voice dub-over artist for Hebrew-American actress, Natalie Portman.