Cho

Cho was born in Konosu, Saitama in 1957, graduated from the literature department of Nishogakusha University, and trained at Bungakuza's research establishment and the Seinenza Theater Company before joining the agency Production Baobab in 1986. He moved to the Tokyo Actor's Consumer's Cooperative Society in 2007. He worked under the stage name Yuichi Nagashima until 23 August 2006, when he changed it to Cho, taking it from a character he had played on the children's programme Tanken Boku no Machi. He is also a narrator, and off the clock a badminton player, a jogger and a licensed teacher of calligraphy.

His most famous role is Brook in One Piece, and it is a genuinely peculiar assignment: a skeleton musician who is a running joke, a straight man, a singer and, when the series wants it, the saddest thing on screen. Cho holds all four in one voice without any of them undercutting the others, which is why the character survives being the punchline of half his own scenes. He has carried it through the feature films as well, from Strong World to Film Z, GOLD, Stampede and Film Red.

The rest of the catalogue is enormous, well over a hundred credits, and it leans on his ability to sound very old, very small, or both. Jaken in InuYasha is the shrieking retainer. Kazuo Yamashita in Kengan Ashura is a middle-aged salaryman surrounded by fighters, which is the closest thing he has to a straight leading role. Add Golgius in The Seven Deadly Sins, the Penguin in Batman Ninja, Sebasu in Kaiju No. 8, a martial arts elder in Frieren, Tokitoki in Super Dragon Ball Heroes, and a gallery of narrators, gangsters and grandfathers in everything from Redline to KonoSuba.