Kagami Ochiai


 * This article is about the celebrity. For the character based on the celebrity, see Kagami Ochiai (character).

Kagamine "Kagami" Takajima (高島　鏡) (née Ochiai (落合　鏡)), or just simply by her stage name Princess Kagami (カガミ姫), is a Japanese theatre and voice actress currently working as the vice president at Drillimation Studios. She joined Drillimation in 1998, and was inaugurated as vice president in 2003.

Her maiden name is Ochiai. After marrying Susumu Takajima, she left it behind. As of today, her maiden name exists as an in-name only unit, specifically used for crediting her in anime productions and video games.

Early years
Ochiai was born on December 21, 1979, to Hideo and Kisumi Ochiai. She was the first child in their family, and she has a younger sister named Yumi Ochiai (born 1982). During her early years, she loved watching dramas and musicals, which inspired her to enter the theater industry.

Junior high and senior high years
Ochiai attended Shinjuku Ritsushinjukunishitoyama Junior High School in 1992, where she began performing as an idol and a voice actress. Her voice acting career began when she was cast as the roles of Remilia and Flandre Scarlet in the Japanese version of Touhou 6: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. This experience later influenced the character of herself in the Chuhou Joutai series. Within the same year, Ochiai released her first album Princess Kagami Begins. Despite being a rookie, it did see some success and sold 110,000 records within six months. During that time during her third year, she met Susumu Takajima, who would later go on to become her future husband. After graduating from junior high school, Ochiai moved to Nagasaki, where she would not meet him again until after senior high school.

After moving to Nagasaki, Ochiai's parents set up Drillimation Studios Nagasaki for Ochiai to record and publish songs. During the time she was in senior high school and college, Ochiai, along with her sister, Yumi, worked as a miko at a shrine near her school. She was collectively nicknamed Ochiai no Mikohime (落合の巫女姫) during the time she was in both Nagasaki and Tokyo. This experience would also later go on to form the basis for the character Kumiko Uchida. During her experience in Nagasaki, Ochiai played the lead role of Kaguya in a production of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. This experience drove Takajima to create Ochiai's persona in the series.

College years
After graduating from senior high, Ochiai attended Tokyo University, where she received a performing arts major. Around that time, she was reunited with Susumu Takajima. They began dating throughout their years and were eventually married in 2003. Ochiai was engaged to Takajima at the Shinjuku High School homecoming festival in October 2002 and officially married in March 2003 with their ceremony being held at Drillimation Studios.

Business years
After Ochiai and Takajima married, she continued great success in voicing characters for episodes of the Mr. Driller X anime. Around that time, she was signed with Lantis and began publishing her songs under that label. Between 2004 and 2008, she gave birth to three children: a son named Minoru Takajima (高島　稔) on December 9, 2004, named after Minoru Shiraishi from the Lucky Star series, then to a daughter named Konata Takajima (高島　此方) on September 6, 2006, named after Konata Izumi from the same series, and to another son named Satoru Takajima (高島　悟) on June 11, 2008, named after then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. According to a September 2007 interview in Comptiq, Ochiai stated:


 * When I was recording my songs and of course, rehearsing for plays, I had a lot of free time between rehearsals and performances, that wasn't until Susumu and I had children. During that time, life was completely changed when that happened. I have a three-year-old son named Minoru, a one-year-old daughter named Konata, and I'm about ready to start having another one in a month, and things will get even crazier.

Ochiai became pregnant with Minoru in the spring of 2004, after their one-year anniversary. Upon hearing she was pregnant, she stated this in an interview for Nintendo Life saying, "I wasn't really expecting this to happen, but my husband Susumu really made me do this. I was shocked at first, but he and I really made it happen as a gift for our anniversary." Susumu Takajima announced their upcoming child at E3 2004 later that year.

Ochiai was hospitalized in 2016 during the development of The Canada Odyssey after she had suddenly fell very ill due to appendicitis and had to undergo emergency surgery to remove it.

Ochiai is not very fluent in English and prefers to speak her interviews in Japanese.

Video games

 * 1) Appears only in the Japanese version of the game.

Appearance
"Listen, I didn't just "love" Ochiai just by how she looked, but I simply loved her because I thought she was a wonderful person."

- Susumu Takajima, during his interview with Olay

Ochiai's real-world appearance has green eyes and brown hair. She was born with black hair but her mother dyed it brown as a youngster. Before becoming a voice and theatre actor, she had short hair until it grew down to her upper body, where she began wearing it in a "twin-tails" fashion. She kept this style until after high school, where she dyed her hair in a light-to-dark brown gradient. She decided to stop wearing her hair in a twin-tails style and sported a hime-cut. Ochiai kept letting her hair grow until after she graduated from college, where it now comes down to her upper legs.

Quotes
"While I was pregnant with my two sons and only daughter, every day, my belly just kept growing and growing bigger! Inside, my organs were getting crushed, like Godzilla stomping and crushing a small shack! The crushing wouldn’t stop until I released them into the world, thus creating the individuals that both me and Susumu know today."

- Kagami Ochiai, during an interview with Parents magazine

"I’ve always had a dream of being a magical girl and a princess as a youngster. You can’t obviously achieve that in real life unless you go to Disney World. Naoko Takeuchi dreamt that too, and that led to Susumu Takajima getting a lot of inspiration from me."

- Kagami Ochiai, from the book How the Famous Duo Made It to the Anime World