TriviAqours Vol. 7 – Kobayashi Aika

Helloooooo, and welcome back to another installment of TriviAqours!

If you don’t know what this particular segment is, fellow aniblogger and great friend Leap250 and I have been writing factoid/trivia posts for each and every one of the seiyuu/voice actresses of the Love Live! Sunshine!! school idol group, Aqours, for the past few weeks. This was actually the very first collaboration idea I presented to Leap a few months ago, since he happened to enjoy following these nine ladies as much as I do.

We’ve already covered 2/3 of the group, them being Saito Shuka, Aida Rikako, Takatsuki Kanako, Komiya Arisa, Suwa Nanaka and Inami Anju. This week on my side, I’ll be talking about the very passionate and lovable Kobayashi Aika!

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Kobayashi “Aikyan” Aika

• Born October 23, 1993
• Image color is grey
• Height: 155 cm/5’1”
• Talents include dance, singing
• Hobbies are taking photos, wearing Western-style clothing, sleeping
• Favorite foods are fruit, cod roe pasta, chicken karaage (kinda like fried chicken, i think)
• Voices Tsushima Yoshiko in Love Live! Sunshine!!, as well as minor roles in other anime such as Piace: Watashi no Italian and Itsu Datte Bokura no Koi wa 10 Senchi Datta.

1. Dakara Yohane yo!*

*the ending to Aikyan’s call-and-response, meaning “I told you, it’s Yohane!”

In my opinion, out of all the Aqours seiyuu, Aikyan has taken on her respective character (Yoshiko/Yohane) the most. A few examples being she tends to sing in a more deeper voice, actually doing Yoshiko’s bizarre way of doing scissors with her hand when playing “rock-paper-scissors/jan-ken-pon” during Niconamas, calling her followers on Twitter “little demons”, using the “devil” emoji on a lot of her pictures/tweets, and even had a goal to work out her abs in order to maintain that “cool” fallen angel voice before the First Live.

We can definitely appreciate and see that she genuinely loves the character and personality of Yoshiko, to the point of her acting like or referencing our lovable fallen angel both in and outside of Love Live.

2. A Fallen Angel

But the ironic thing about the relations with Aikyan and Yohane is that Aikyan really does not like scary things at all. She’s been quoted saying that she doesn’t like many frightening things like horror movies and video games. Aikyan even said if she happened to go on a first date, she would be down to go to the amusement park… just not anywhere near the haunted house.

3. Born to Be A Singer

Like many of the other Aqours seiyuu, Aikyan’s life goal was to become a singer. According to her interview in My Girl vol. 21, she always loved to sing and sang a lot with her grandmother as a young child. Her first ever CD was of popular J-idol group, Morning Musume’s “Hyoukkori Kyoutan-jima” and later found Amuro Namie, whom she became Aikyan’s most respected and favorite J-singer.

But her start in the musical/singing career possibly began sooner than she expected. Aikyan debuted as a 17-year-old artist in 2011 with her performing the ending to the action sci-fi romance drama harem ecchi martial arts seinen anime (yes, there are that many genres in this particular show) Freezing, “Kimi wo Mamoritai”.

(video to the ending is a little NSFW, just warnin ya lol)

You can also see Aikyan’s early days as a singer thanks to her own YouTube channel that features covers of various songs like Soutaisei Riron’s “Shougakukan” and even Amuro Namie’s “CAN YOU CELEBRATE?”, accompanied by cute music videos that she made herself.

4. Master of Nicknames

While Leap and I have talked about the various origin stories of some of the Aqours seiyuu’s nicknames, Aikyan actually came up with a couple of them for her colleagues. The nicknames “Shukashuu” and “Rikyako” for fellow Aqours members Saito Shuka and Aida Rikako, happen to come from Aikyan’s mind.

5. @kyansta_il_gram

Similar to fellow first year seiyuu Takatsuki Kanako, Aikyan seems to also be a fashionista and is pretty expressive on social media about what she wears on a daily basis. She even has a separate Instagram account from her main one (@kyanstagram), devoted towards posting pictures of different outfits she wears (the IG handle in this fact’s title). Aika-san has also expressed her interest in designing clothing, mainly ones of Western-style since that’s her favorite kind.

And going back to how much Aikyan has become one with Yohane, she also fiddled with the idea of including all-black colored outfits in her preferred fashion styles (stated on episode 6 of the Aqours Uranohoshi Girls’ High School Radio!!! program).

6. Laelaps IRL

Aikyan has two pet dogs, Chocola and Laela.

Episode 5 of Love Live! Sunshine!! 2nd Season revolved around Yoshiko, Riko, and a dog Yoshiko found on the street which she later took in. If you remember, Yoshiko and Riko gave the dog two separate names, with Yohane’s being “Laelaps”. I bring up this particular episode because it’s a pretty big possibility that Aikyan’s dog, Laela, was the inspiration of what Yoshiko named that dog in the anime.

7. Meeting an OG

A good amount of Love Live fans already know that all the school idol groups of μ’s, Aqours, and even the recently created Perfect Dream Project, have come together in various events to promote the upcoming game, Love Live! School idol festival ALL STARS. And just to quickly talk about this if you didn’t know, the first “cross generation” meeting happened in September 2017 where Inami “Anchan” Anju and very special guest Nitta “Emitsun” Emi (voiced Kousaka Honoka from μ’s) unveiled the PDP seiyuu group to the whole fan base for the first time. It was definitely an exciting time for the LL community, not only because someone from the original group appeared in something Love Live-related ever since the μ’s Final Live in 2016, but this was sort of the first time seeing μ’s and Aqours actually interact with each other. And to top it all off, they both came together to introduce a new generation of school idols.

However there have already been instances before where the seiyuu of both groups happened to meet/work on a project together (example w/ Suwa Nanaka and Suzuko Mimori), and one of the most early interactions was when 17-year-old Aikyan went on a radio show hosted by Kitta Izumi and Uchida Aya, who most know voiced μ’s member Minami Kotori. A very different-sounding and timid Aikyan was there to talk about/promote “Kimi wo Mamoritai”, while both Kitta-san and Ucchi kept giggling and mentioning how cute and young she is.

8. Annyeonghaseyo-shiko!*

*a play on words with how Koreans greet each other/say “hello” (Annyeonghaseyo/안녕하세요) and Yoshiko’s name, also a reference to a particular Aqours Niconama where they say that

Aikyan is part-Korean and has tried to learn the language for a bit now but has struggled to do so. Even when she started back in 2011, Aikyan was still learning Hangul, the Korean alphabet, three years later. But other than learning the language, Aikyan is a big fan of K-pop and is a fan of an abundance of groups. However she has stated that SHINee is probably her favorite out of the bunch.

(Bonus fact: Pile, who voiced Nishikino Maki from μ’s, is also part-Korean… so there ya go lol)

9. Kobayashi-sensei

Let me me first say that this one is probably the most interesting Aikyan fact I’ve learned about lol

During an interview in the April 2018 Ultra Jump magazine issue (also the one with Guilty Kiss in it), Aikyan mentioned that she actually has a preschool teacher’s license and would’ve pursued that career if she wasn’t a voice actress/singer. Imagine someone like Yohane dealing with a group of kids (oh wait, episode 5 of 2nd season)… 😛

But all jokes aside, Aikyan definitely seems like the kind of person who would be great with kids, and those preschoolers would be a real happy group, getting to hear the beautiful singing voice of Kobayashi-sensei.

Actually, you can watch an early video of Aikyan singing to a group of kids here:

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Aaaand that’s Aikyan for ya!

Kyan is someone I really should admire more as a person who adores this group of seiyuu. Words alone cannot describe how passionate and happy Aikyan is when being the character of Yoshiko, and as I mentioned earlier, we can see that she loves Yohane to death and has made her a better person. Other than being pretty much Yoshiko’s real-life counterpart, her talents in singing and dance, as well as her goofy personality and beautiful looks, it’s no surprise that many people love Kobayashi Aika.

And I’ll leave you off with a nice English-subbed video/stream from Aikyan’s Instagram where she celebrated Yohane’s birthday with fans, talking about her good points, a few weeks ago (7/13):

(also this video makes me want to buy a nesoberi now lol)

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out Vol. 8 over on Leap’s blog by clicking here!!!!

-al