Hiroki Nanami (七海ひろき, Nanami Hiroki) is a Japanese actress, singer, voice actress, and former otokoyaku (male role) star of the Takarazuka Revue (2003–2019).
Troupe History
2003–2015, Cosmos Troupe
2015–2019, Star Troupe
Biography
Unlike many Takarasiennes, Nanami Hiroki’s life pre-Takarazuka was not marked with an abundance of performing arts experience. Rather, with a brother two years older, from a young age she'd roleplay the heroes in stories and do other boys' things.[1] She was class representative every year of elementary school,[2] an honor student in whom the teachers placed great faith.
In her 6th year of elementary school, she happened to catch Takarazuka Moon Troupe's "Gone with the Wind" on television. She fell immediately in love with the star, Amami Yuuki, and began collecting all the shows she appeared in on video and watching them on repeat.[1] A year later, Nanami went to see Amami Yuuki live for the first time in "Me And My Girl," and made the decision that she wanted to enter Takarazuka.[1]
Though she had no previous dance experience, after entering middle school, Nanami enrolled in a ballet class in Tokyo that her father found specifically for those aspiring to enter the Takarazuka Music School. Once a week, she commuted 5 hours round trip from her home in Ibaraki to attend.[1]
She entered a high-level high school and her parents gave her the ultimatum that she couldn't take the exam to enter the Takarazuka music school if her school grades slipped, so she worked hard on her studies and took her lessons simultaneously She passed the Takarazuka exam in her second year of high school on her second try.[1]
Her stage name, "Nanami" takes one character from her real name ("Mi" from "海," "Sea"), combined with "Nana" ("七," "Seven") from the name of a character she liked from the anime "Tico of the Seven Seas." "Hiroki" (which can contain the character for "vast" in Japanese) comes from the vastness of the ocean.[2]
After graduating from the Takarazuka music school, she made her onstage debut in 2003 in Moon troupe’s Takarazuka Floral Diaries/ Senor Don Juan. She was then assigned to Cosmos troupe, where she would stay until 2015. During her time in Cosmos troupe, she was given the opportunity to play many different background roles, and in 2009, she received her first and only shinjinkouen (young performers) lead role, Justin in Raindrops Fall on Roses. In 2011, she was cast in a female role, Natacha Rambova in Valentino- playing the wife to then-Top Star Oozora Yuuhi. In 2013, Nanami had her first true theatrical lead in a Western-themed musical titled The Wild Meets The Wild. Following this, she was cast as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.
During her time in Cosmos troupe, Nanami was also offered a voice acting role in an anime, an uncommon occurrence for a current Takarazuka actress, and in 2014, she voiced the character of Uesugi Kenshin in Satelight’sNobunaga the Fool.
In 2015 Nanami was transferred from Cosmos troupe into Star troupe, where she would spend the rest of her time in Takarazuka. Through her time In Star troupe, Nanami progressed to playing larger roles, from the lead role of Takenaka Shigeharu in Strategist Takenaka Hanbei, to Shou Fu Kan in both the local productions and overseas tour of the stage adaptation of Thunderbolt Fantasy, a Taiwanese puppet drama. In 2019, Nanami decided to retire from the Takarazuka revue, stating that she had: “...decided I wanted to leave at the time when I could show my fans the best possible otokoyaku I could be."[3]
Nanami Hiroki resigned from the Takarazuka revue on March 24, 2019, after sixteen years as an actress with the company.
Post-Takarazuka career
Three months after her retirement from the Takarazuka Revue, Nanami announced her signing with Andstir entertainment and the King Records music label.
She made her post-Takarazuka artist debut with the release of her first mini album, 'Galaxy', and an accompanying one-man live show with a four-concert run in Tokyo and Osaka. At the same time, she announced her post-Takarazuka seiyuu debut as Shizuno in Satelight’s Somali and the Forest Spirit.
Her first theatrical performance post-Takarazuka was the titular role of Red, in Red and BearArchived 2019-12-08 at the Wayback Machine, an original musical which ran from January 24, 2020, to February 2, 2020, at the Sunshine Theatre in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Japan.
In addition to her voiceover, theatrical, and musical work, Nanami has hosted weekly radio shows such as 七つの海への大航海, (‘nanatsu no umi e no dai koukai’, A Voyage to the Seven Seas) on Tokyo FM, and a television program on the Takarazuka Revue’s television channel, Takarazuka Skystage. Her self-produced television program, ときめきタカラヅカSTYLE (‘Tokimeki Takarazuka Style’), originally slated for a limited eight-episode run, extended to twelve episodes and ended in September 2020.
^男役１６年、七海ひろき退団へ「今の姿で終わりたい」 [16 years as a man, Hiroki Nanami leaves the group "I want to end with what I am now"]. 朝日新聞 (Asahi Shimbun) (in Japanese). January 11, 2019.
