This interview was conducted at Otakon 2024. Uchida Aya is a Japanese voice actor, famous for playing the character Minami Kotori in Love Live! School Idol Project.

Many of my questions will be Love Live!–related because I’m a fan, but coincidentally, I was in Tokyo last December, and I visited the Love Live! cafe.

Uchida: Ahhh!

I just happened to sit at a table you autographed.

Uchida: In Akihabara!

I was wondering, for my own curiosity, do you remember when you visited to sign the table?

Uchida: I think it was December!

Love Live! Is now a worldwide phenomenon; people know it everywhere. But I know it was much less popular at first. How did you get started in Love Live!?

Before I was on Love Live!, I got my first regular role on an anime project, and the music director told me that his next project was something called Love Live! That’s how I got into it.

What was it like when you first started, and at what point did you realize it was starting to get huge?

Uchida: Love Live! was a very new creation, so there was a lot of motivation across the time. And personally, I love anime and also idols, and the fact that both those things are core to this project made me very excited. This made me want to really want to take the lead and bring it to the next level, and make this work even more fun. As it gained more popularity among fans, and as I realized more and more people were listening to the songs, it made me feel very, very happy. But because it started very small, I feel like I grew with this project, and that makes it more special.

Speaking of growth, that’s something I also noticed. I first became a fan of Love Live! through the anime, and when I looked at the prior material—all the song performances and recordings and such—I noticed that you and the other members of μ’s had grown a lot as performers. In what ways do you think your performance as Kotori, in acting but also singing and dancing, had evolved over time?

Uchida: I’m not so sure about my skills improving…I was always aiming to become a voice actor and didn’t necessarily want to be an idol, standing in front of a crowd smiling and dancing. I didn’t have any intention of doing it professionally, and it was something I had to get used to and was hesitant about in the very beginning.

At some point in the middle, we started doing more live performances, and it was a challenge. But because the other members were there and we were a team, we taught each other things—dancing, practicing, etc.,—and gradually, we acquired those skills and got better. I’m glad I had friends in the same boat with me who I could strive with and improve with together.

So you’ve performed many songs with the others, including with Hanayo’s voice, Kubo Yurika. One of your songs, “Suki desu ga, Suki desu ka?” Did the ’70s feel of the song change how you two approached it?

Uchida: It’s been quite a while, so give me a moment! So it’s a song featuring our characters, Koizumi Hanayo and Minami Kotori, and it was a duet of a kind we had never done before, so it was very fun. Hanayo-chan’s voice has a very “howaaah” fluffy and cute feel, and Kotori is a very cute character herself. So I was confident it would be a cute song. 

Thank you for this interview!

Postscript

Two days after I interviewed Uchida, I managed to get an autograph from her. As she signed my copy of Love Live! The School Idol Movie, she actually recognized me from the interview. I point this out because I’ve had cases where the guests do not recognize me despite having spoken to them, and it made me realize that Uchida is indeed a pro at this, be it through her experience as Kotori or in her voice acting career. I left with an even more positive impression of her.