Kaoru Morota
Kaoru Morota is an actor, born 1971.
Kansai dialect is a casting instrument in Japanese animation, and Morota's accounts for a good deal of her work. She is a voice actress from Osaka, and the accent has typecast her into genki and tomboyish parts: the loud one, the one who talks fastest in the room, the girl who will not sit still.
The credit list complicates that, and in a useful way. Lirin in Saiyuki: Requiem and Mikami Inaba in Usagi-chan de Cue!! are the register she is known for, but the roles that stick are older ones. She is Weda in Haré+Guu, Mayoi's Mother in Monogatari, Haruka's Mother in HeartCatch PreCure!. She has spent a large part of her career playing mothers, which is a more interesting line of work than the typecasting implies.
She also records under the alias AYA, which covers voice work on adult games, and has sung theme material for Evangelion and Le Chevalier D'Eon. The rest of the page is the ordinary shape of a jobbing anime voice career: a child in Cowboy Bebop, Hakuryu in Saiyuki, Chelsea Rorec in Tokyo Underground, a maid in Najica Blitz Tactics, small parts in features.
Movies (4)
TV (11)
Where to start with Kaoru Morota
Haré+Guu is where to start and it is not a close call: Weda is the biggest role on this list, and the show is a genuinely strange comedy that keeps tipping over into something sadder, which gives her much more to do than the genki typecasting suggests.
Saiyuki and Saiyuki: Requiem are the fan entry point, and Lirin in the film is the undiluted version of the hyperactive register. Monogatari and HeartCatch PreCure! are the two large franchises she passes through, in small but well-placed parts.
Cowboy Bebop is on here for a bit part as Child 2, so treat it as trivia rather than a reason to watch, though the series needs no defending. Saint Tail is the nineties one, and Tokyo Underground the most obscure thing on the list still worth trying.