Hayami Saori in Love Plus "gal-game tamagochi" for DS

Hayami Saori, Minaguchi Yuuko (right), and Tange Sakura star in the highly-anticipated Nintendo DS dating game, Love Plus (Rabupuras ラブプラス) which will come out 3 September.

Minaguchi (Sailor Saturn) and Tange (Sakura in Cardcaptor Sakura) are veterans, aged 42 and 36. Hayamin is 18. As Minaguchi writes: "I'm old enough to be her mother."

After recording a Love Plus CD drama together, Minaguchi praised Hayamin in her blog today: "All three of us are playing high-school girls, but Saori-chan is actually currently in high-school. It's the first time I've worked with her, and she's fabulous! She's a naturally outstanding actress, very together, with a light feeling, and sounds so cute.... I just love her!"

The game is highly interactive. The player chooses a character to aim at and she gradually becomes his girl friend. The girls can interact with the player, using his name, talking about common subjects, and even reacting to various ways he might touch her. The game has been called a "gal-game tamagochi."

There will be a live event for the show when it comes out in the fall. Here is the TV promo. Hayamin's character introduces herself first:



An audio clip of the theme song is now available, sung by the three leads. And there are audio/video clips of each character on the official site's general info page (order: Hayami, Tange, then Minaguchi).

And here are some pics of Hayamin's character, Takabe Manaka:



Hayamin has just finished starring in Eden of the East, is currently a main sub-character in Sora no Manimani, plays minor characters in Basquash and 07Ghost. She will star in Sora no Otoshimono in the fall, as a wish-granting angel who (once again, as in Sekirei) falls from the sky. Hayamin gets another role as a non-human, lol, like Momoka in Touka Gettan, Kou in Wagaya no Oinari-sama, and Musubi in Sekirei. Then she plays Saki again, in the two Eden of the East films, which will come out in November and January.

Hayamin actually finished high school in the spring, but has apparently decided to pursue her career rather than go on to college just yet. 2channel thinks her marks weren't good enough. She can definitely be a bit of a dumb blonde on her radio shows, but seems fairly with it to me.

In Sora no Manimani, we hear her natural ojou-sama voice in anime for the first time. There are differing views on it on 2channel: that it sounds a bit unnatural, and that it shows she has learned to act. To me, the voice is as incredibly beautiful as Hayamin's voice often is, but does seem a little artificial. Perhaps that is intentional, since she's playing a responsible senpai, especially in episode 3.