Horipro, one of the major talent agencies in Tokyo, annouced an Anime Vision Development initiative to cultivate new voice actors and anime theme song singers. One of their talents, May'n, who had her big break doing the singing parts for Macross Frontier's Sheryl Nome, has been a hit on her Asia tour in places like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Singapore. She has a solo show coming up in March at the Yokohama Arena (which has a capacity of 17,000 people).
Inspired by her success and eager to emulate it, Horipro held their first Future Generation Voice Actress Audition event last year as their 36th Talent Scouting Caravan. Over 10,000 people applied! Check out the winner, Azusa Tadokoro:
It's not as if it's rare for Horipro talents to be involved in anime related projects—Tatsuya Fujiwara played the title role in the live action Kaiji movies and Kenichi Matsuyama co-starred in the live action Gantz movies—but now the office is even investing in animated movies, such as Letter to Momo, which hits Japanese theaters this April.