Akira Kamiya

Akira Kamiya's voice built a decade. Born in Yokohama in 1946, he became one of the defining male leads of Japanese animation across the late 1970s and the 1980s, and the range inside that workload is wider than the volume suggests. He was Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star, a role made mostly of silence, breath and one enormous scream. He was Ryo Saeba in City Hunter, who flips from lecherous idiot to the calmest marksman in Tokyo inside a single cut. He was Shutaro Mendo in Urusei Yatsura, Shun Mitaka in Maison Ikkoku, Suguru Kinniku in Kinnikuman.

The mecha work is a career on its own. Ryoma Nagare in Getter Robo, Sanshiro Tsuwabuki in Gaiking, Ainzu in UFO Robot Grendizer, Tadashi Daiba in Space Pirate Captain Harlock, and Roy Focker in The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, whose swagger he sustained across the television series, Do You Remember Love? and Macross Zero years later.

Then came Kogoro Mouri. He voiced the blustering detective from the start of Detective Conan in 1996 and through more than a dozen of the films, and the credits collected here stop in 2009. The later work is selective and often affectionate: Tamasaburo in Pom Poko, Garlic Jr. in a Dragon Ball Z feature, Elizabeth in a Gintama film, Ryo Saeba once more for Shinjuku Private Eyes in 2019, and a news announcer's voice in the 2024 City Hunter, which is a graceful way to appear in a film about your own character.