Tomo Sakurai
| Tomo Sakurai | |
|---|---|
| Native name | 櫻井 智 |
| Born |
Tomoe Hatta (八田 友江 Hatta Tomoe?) September 10, 1971 Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan |
| Occupation | |
| Years active | 1987–2016 |
| Agent | I'm Enterprise |
Tomo Sakurai (櫻井 智 Sakurai Tomo?, born Tomoe Hatta (八田 友江 Hatta Tomoe?), September 10, 1971 in Ichikawa, Chiba) is a Japanese former voice actress and idol singer. Sakurai was a member of I'm Enterprise. She announced her retirement on September 1st, 2016.
At the age of 14, Sakurai debuted as a sub-member for "Kiss Fairlies," a group that worked as campaign girls for the local Kijima Motorcycle Racing Team. All members were over 15 years old, aside from Tomo.
At 17, she joined the idol pop unit, Lemon Angel, a counter project of Cream Lemon coordinated by the same company that produced "Kiss Fairlies". The project contained comic, animated, and idol pop units. The unit played themselves in Midnight Anime Lemon Angel. She released 5 albums during her time in Lemon Angel.
Sakurai joined a new video game idol unit and released one album with this unit. After leaving, she focused her career to mainly voice acting work.
On September 1, 2016, Sakurai announced her retirement from her professional voice acting career on her official blog post titled "Arigato/Thank You."
She explained the reason as: "I used to have a strong vocal cord that couldn't be broken and became stronger even after singing for hours. But recently, I have realized it's becoming more and more difficult for me to use my important voice as an actress. I know it's a natural thing as time goes by, but I myself can't accept the change, then I understand it's almost the time to retire."
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