is a Japanese singer,

voice actor Voice acting is the art of performing voice-overs to present a character or provide information to an audience. Performers are called voice actors/actresses, voice artists, dubbing artists, voice talent, voice-over artists, or voice-over talent ...

, and

live streamer An online streamer or live streamer is a person who broadcasts themselves online through a live stream to an audience. History Streaming arose in the early 2010s, originating on sites like YouTube where users could upload videos of themselves i ...

. He is a member of the

J-pop J-pop ( ja, ジェイポップ, ''jeipoppu''; often stylized as J-POP; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively also known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1 ...

group

Strawberry Prince is a Japanese boy band formed in June 2016. The group consists of six members: Nanamori, Jel, Satomi, Colon, Rinu, and Root. Each member is represented by an illustrated character when appearing in media. History Strawberry Prince was found ...

Biography

Rinu was born on 24 May 1998 in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. As a child, his family was constantly in debt, and he had a poor relationship with his parents. One of his childhood friends died from

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

in junior high school; he decided to become a voice actor because this friend's dream was to be a voice actor. He became interested in singers on Nico Nico Douga to impress a classmate in whom he had a romantic interest, and began uploading his own song covers to the site in late 2015. In mid-2016, he was recruited by Nanamori to join Strawberry Prince. From 2018 to 2019, Rinu played the character of Fūma Shirayuki in

HoneyWorks is a Japanese VOCALOID musical group. The group started uploading their original VOCALOID songs online to NicoNico in 2010 and began to collaborate with singer CHiCO in May 2014 (CHiCO with HoneyWorks), which they maintain to this day. They made ...

's fictional idol unit "Dolce" (). He recorded one album with the group before it disbanded. On 11 December 2019, Rinu released his first full solo album, ''Time Capsule'' (). It placed second on the

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...

weekly album ranking, and first on the Oricon daily album ranking. Additionally, the song "Ruma" from the album placed ninth on the Oricon

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

chart. His second solo album, ''Shutter Chance!'' (), released on 12 January 2022 and placed second on the Oricon weekly album ranking, and first on the Oricon daily album ranking. On 24 May 2021, Rinu released an official fanbook, ''Rinu Memory''. The book sold 56,000 copies its first week, and ranked first on the Oricon weekly book ranking. As a voice actor, Rinu often goes by the name Koinu (). Rinu came out as

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

in 2017. He underwent

gender-affirming surgery Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) is a surgical procedure, or series of procedures, that alters a transgender or transsexual person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their identified gender, and alle ...

in October 2022.

Discography

Albums

Singles

Filmography

Anime

Video games

References

{{reflist

External links

Official YouTube channel
1998 births Living people Strawberry Prince members Japanese male pop singers Japanese male voice actors Japanese LGBT singers Japanese transgender people Japanese YouTubers Musicians from Tokyo Transgender male actors Transgender male musicians Transgender singers