Aya Hisakawa

In 2018 Hisakawa inherited one of the most recognisable voices in Japanese animation, taking over Bulma in the Dragon Ball series from Hiromi Tsuru, who had played the character from the anime's 1986 debut until her death in 2017. It is the kind of succession that only goes to someone with thirty years of trust behind them.

She had spent those years inside other people's childhoods. Ami Mizuno, the studious member of the team, in Sailor Moon, across the series and the films. Kerberos in Cardcaptor Sakura, played broad and comic against her usual register. Rem Saverem in Trigun, Retsu Unohana in the Bleach films, the antagonist Priscilla in Claymore. She performs several of her roles in her native Kansai dialect, which in anime is an entire comic mode, and she deploys it deliberately rather than by default.

The range is wider than a magical-girl reputation suggests. She has played boys, most notably Yuki Sohma in the 2001 Fruits Basket and Miki Kaoru in the Revolutionary Girl Utena film. She has played mothers in Blue Spring Ride, TONIKAWA and Scum's Wish, Minamo Kurosawa in Azumanga Daioh, Storm in the Japanese X-Men anime, and small parts in Ocean Waves and Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop. Her default instrument is cool, articulate and slightly clipped, which is why she keeps getting cast as the clever one, and why it registers so strongly on the occasions she drops it.