Ibuki Kido

Ibuki Kido came in through the front door. She won a Horipro voice-acting audition in 2011 and had her first main role the following year, as Akiko Himenokoji in OniAi. Agency auditions are how the Japanese voice industry recruits, and landing a lead on the first attempt is rare enough to state plainly.

What followed was a decade inside the seasonal anime machine, which is less glamorous than it sounds and demands more range than it is credited with. She has been Chinami Oka in Golden Time, Yuka in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Nanami Knight Bladefield in If Her Flag Breaks, Megumi Jinno in Eromanga Sensei, Mio Minato across the Aikatsu Friends! run, and Natsuki Ando in Chronicles of the Going Home Club. Club comedies, harem shows and idol series: the bread and butter of a working seiyuu, delivered on a schedule that leaves no room for precious.

The outliers are the credits worth noticing. She voiced Shiki Magata in the mystery series The Perfect Insider, Rinka Urushiba in Tokyo ESP and Mikawa in the film Kase-san and Morning Glories, three jobs with almost nothing in common with each other or with the club comedies. She sang too, as half of the duo Everying! with Erii Yamazaki, which has since disbanded. Idol work and voice work run on the same rails in this industry, and she has done both.