Mariya Akiyama

Mariya Akiyama is Pastel Project's leader.

## Background

On a particularly warm afternoon on July 26th, Mariya Akiyama was born to Shizuka and Koutarou Akiyama. As could be expected of a professional vocalist and a celebrated concert pianist turned CEO, Mariya was surrounded by music pretty much even before birth, having technically been present for some of her mother's most celebrated recording sessions, albeit microscopically. As a result, Mariya grew up expressing a great many musical talents, taking to nearly any instrument with a mechanical intuition rarely seen. While some, like one of her father's pianos, were fairly easy for her to figure out and play around on, others took young Mariya days or even weeks to figure out — the old trombone she found in one of their home's storage spaces giving her particular troubles. Still, when offered lessons, Mariya always objected, insisting she could figure it out on her own.

While this wasn't always true — Mariya would be quite happy to never hold a trombone again in her life — it was true more often than not, the girl becoming a veritable one-person guide to the orchestra. Eventually though, when it was clear she was hitting the limits of what she could teach herself, her parents insisted she choose just one skill for them to arrange lessons in so she wouldn't fall behind despite her considerable natural gifts. Thinking of the most troublesome answer, and hoping that a difficult enough choice may make her parents back down, Mariya surprised them by naming not an instrument or singing style, but asking to study the composition and recording process, having spent many hours in the studio while her parents were recording, watching carefully as the engineers and producers masterfully worked the many knobs and dials under their control. Though her father thought this was a ridiculous request for a young girl, her mother saw it was one Mariya was making earnestly, and promised that she would find a way to make that happen as long as Mariya would keep up with her vocal training. Her parents reached a compromise — Mariya would be able to pursue whatever interests her mother would endorse as long as she also signed on to her father's fledgling talent label, ensuring that whatever success Mariya had in the future it would always benefit the family.

While Mariya wasn't thrilled at the condition, she agreed, and two weeks later her mother took her along to one of the recording studios she frequently worked at — a newly established recording company called I MY ME. While Shizuka went off and recorded her vocals, Mariya was left in the care of one of her old industry friends, Masamune Ono, who gave her an introduction and rundown of what everything on the giant control panel did. Mariya was proud of herself, already having had an idea of what many of the knobs and sliders would affect, and while she wasn't able to return often she still came with her mother as often as she was allowed, eager to show Mr. Ono her own projects and progress. Other times she would spend a few hours shadowing a composer or arranger or other industry professional, until Mariya had a better idea of what went on behind the scenes in the music business than most actual performers. By the time she was in middle school, she was already concocting experiments to make her friends help her test, slowly turning her dorm room into a makeshift recording studio with pieces taken from her parents' rehearsal spaces at home, liberated from the label's music labs, or just bought outright with daddy's platinum credit card.

Now a third year student at Kinmokusei All-Girls Private Academy, Mariya is the go-to resource for girls at her school who need an in with a talent agency, a talented singer in the school's choir program, and one of the most promising composers and arrangers the school has ever seen. After enough begging from her long-term roommate Ai, Mariya agreed to help her form Starsphere's first new idol group in years, reasoning that having some more professional credits to her name may not hurt once she graduates and chases her life goal — being the best sound engineer and producer that the music world has ever seen, the only sensible next step for the Akiyama dynasty. And if not, at least it would give her a steady source of vocalists to experiment on who couldn't say no.

## Other Data

Mariya attends Kinmokusei All-Girls Private Academy.

She features in an issue of the 4koma: 21.

Her Blood Type is O+.