リクルート フロム・エー ナビ | 熱唱 | 2016
"Your Voice Is Tenryu! Totally Tenryu!" / Recruit From A Navi "Passionate Singing"
Right at the start of 2016, a new series for From A Navi kicked off with a back-and-forth between Mayu Matsuoka and Panda Ichiro. Matsuoka hears Panda Ichiro singing live and blurts out "Tenryu!" - that surreal moment was the best part.
The insight
By this time, Mayu Matsuoka's acting skills were already getting noticed - she wasn't just cute, she was being recognized in the industry as a "fiercely talented" actress. I think the back-and-forth with the character Panda Ichiro played a big role in instantly loosening up the stiffness you'd expect from a job-listing site.
The idea
Panda Ichiro belts out the jingle "♪ For part-time job hunting, it's From A, From A means From A ♪" live. When he lets out a shout in the scene where he gets paid for his part-time work, Mayu Matsuoka jumps in with "Your voice sounds just like Genichiro Tenryu?" and "That's Tenryu! Totally Tenryu!" What makes it funny is the meta twist that Genichiro Tenryu is actually the one providing that voice.
Afterthought
"I hope this keeps going all year" and "I wish they'd do a slightly longer story someday" - those are my honest thoughts on this series. In fact, this series did run from 2015 into 2016, and the pairing of Mayu Matsuoka and Panda Ichiro became the face of From A Navi. I think this was a commercial from a great era, where the surreal choice of the word "Tenryu" meshed perfectly with how natural Mayu Matsuoka's acting felt.
